Discounts & Deals: Little White Pills

I've talked before about warehouse clubs. This is an example of why I find them to be worth the membership fee:

Do you take over-the-counter allergy medication? I do. About three months ago I bought a bottle of cetirizine hydrochloride tablets (the generic version of Zyrtec) at CVS, 60 tablets, regular price around $18 but I think it was on sale, or the Mrs. had one of their register-tape coupons, or something.

Last week I finished the bottle and figured I could get a better deal at BJ's, and I needed a couple of other things there anyway (toothpaste, giant box of Frosted Mini-Wheats). They had a bottle of 300 tablets for $15, which is a pretty stupendous deal, but it was made even better by a $2 "instant rebate" discount (which was automatically deducted at checkout).

If you prefer loratadine (the generic version of Claritin), the same deal applied. That's basically a year's supply, given that you will probably forget to take it now and then, and you probably don't need to take it during January and February (I don't, anyway).

But wait, there's more! Now they've gone and made the deal even better, at least online: the instant rebate has gone up to $4. I don't know if it's the same in the stores or not.

If Costco is your club of choice, don't fret: they have you covered with a similar deal, a bottle of 365 cetirizine hydrochloride pills for $16, or 300 loratadine pills for $12. Both stores also offer the brand-name medications; at BJ's the Zyrtec was about three times as much as the generic version, but for only 100 tablets, so it's really more like nine times as much. As they say, do the math. I know you have to factor in the cost of the membership, but even so you're not going to be able to match this kind of deal anywhere else.

My BJ's membership expires this week, and we chose to go back to Costco. The cost of the membership is about the same (discounted a little through my job, which is nice), but we decided we just like some things about Costco a little better.