Attention scam artists.... You cannot use a coupon if its worth more than the item!

[BowserKoopa1]

Yesterday at self check I had a lady trying to use a $30 coupon, so I go over to assist her. She tells me she's using 2 of them on 2 electric razors, which she says are $27 Ok something's obviously not on the up and up here. Nobody is going to issue a coupon for an expensive item like this that gives them the whole thing off, and then $3 to boot. Sorry folks, but that's just not how it works. Turns out that the coupons were $30 off for a $70 or $80 razor. Way to read the coupon and.... Oh I forgot, they are customers, they either can't read or don't want to read.
I call a sup and he was about to just go ahead and give it to her, to which I quickly inform him that we were told by higher ups to not accept a coupon that is worth more than the product, as its obvious that when this happens, the customer is trying to scam us. He goes and checks with someone else, and they tell him to tell her that he cannot accept it. It is then that I inform him that she is most likely a scam artist. Those of you who might say that its just an honest mistake, no it is not. She knows the price of the razors and how much the coupon is and that she's trying to get them not only for free, but get some cash as well. This lady is most definitely a scam artist in my book.
Well she insists that she had the right razors but she goes back to look at them again and says she'll be back. Yeah right, she never did come back, and I made sure to let the sup know that she might try to check out at another register and possibly catch another cashier off guard.
Ok customers, plain and simple, DO NOT try to use a coupon like that. There's no way that you people should be getting stuff like that for free, especially in this economy where most businesses are struggling to make a sale. No I don't give a rat's ass if I work for the "Big bad evil corporation that puts mom and pop businesses out of business" and that we have billions and billions of dollars and can just give it to you for free, and then some cash on top of that. Stop being fucking cheapskates and pay for the things you want to buy, like everyone else.

[jjc927]

Probably a product of "Extreme Couponing".

[Pixilated]

Maybe she got this confused with the cash-back option on debit cards ... ?


As for big corporations, people who don't like them almost always have the option of shopping somewhere else. Just because they are (depending on your take on things) "EEEEEEEEBIL giant megabucks vacuum cleaners" doesn't mean they owe customers freebies.

Besides ... how do these people think these companies got so big in the first place??

[flybye023]

Actually, I have had coupons that were worth more than the item but they usually specified that there would be no cash back and the were refunds from the manufacturer for a defective item.

[notlovinit]

Actually, I have had coupons that were worth more than the item but they usually specified that there would be no cash back and the were refunds from the manufacturer for a defective item.

Yeah, I've had coupons that were worth more than the product that were legitimate, but nothing of that high of a value. Actually it happens quite a lot at Target. Last month they put out a coupon for cat treats on their website that was over the price they were charging for the treats. They just adjust the price down so they don't give cash back. That being said that would never happen on something as expensive as that and that lady, if not a scam artist, was definitely stupid. If you're going to use coupons read them. I'm always wary when I get a coupon that's over the amount of the product. I read it over and over and over and read the product over and over to make sure it matches and then I let the cashier know that my coupon is higher and they will have to adjust it down. I would never expect the store to pay me for taking a product. What the hell is wrong with that lady?

[TigressChar]

Probably a product of "Extreme Couponing".

Im a couponer, (and in fact TEACH Practical Couponing) and I hate SC who give honest people like me a bad name. Walmart will in fact, pay overage on a coupon, so long as the terms are right, and there are no restrictions on the coupon.

I wish people would stop trying to pass along high value coupons for more than they are. use them right or go home and stop making it harder for the rest of us people who are just trying to feed their families!

[Caractacus_Potts]

Actually, I have had coupons that were worth more than the item but they usually specified that there would be no cash back and the were refunds from the manufacturer for a defective item.

I had a mfgr's coupon for up to $5 off any one mfgr item. I picked up a $3 mfgr item along with some other shopping and the cashier put the coupon in as $5. I pointed out that it was UP TO $5 and the item was $3. She told me it was a $5 coupon. I pointed out where the cashier is supposed to fill in the actual amount the coupon is used for. She called a manager.

Cashier: He has a $5 coupon but he says it's for less.
Manager: (looks at the coupon for one second) Put it in as $5.

I stopped fighting it at that point.

So. Is the manager spineless for giving away the stores money (or the mfgr's in this case maybe) or does he have a spine of titanium for not giving in to an SC's crazy demands?

[simplyanother]

Neither, he's just stupid.

[emax4]

Shucks... this whole time I've been sending out resumes and hunting for jobs and trying to give my best professional impression. This whole time, who knew I should have just dumbed myself down and I would have gotten a job as a manager...

[CKoch]

I got stuck behind an extreme couponer at the supermarket the other day. I swear she had more coupons than she had merchandise. She walked out with four plastic bags of stuff for just a little over $5.

After the customer left, the cashier printed out a duplicate receipt that she would look at on her own time, just to see if the customer actually bought the merchandise the coupons were for.

Now maybe I'm ignorant here, but I would think in today's techie world and bar codes that the system would be able to warn a cashier if the coupons and merchandise don't match up??

[Andara Bledin]

Nope.

They're getting better; there's a new barcode system that is rolling out that actually prevents this sort of fraud, but there is a way to scam the system.

See, it turns out that the standard barcode only lists part of the item code when scanning, so if you know how to game the system you can buy a lesser item and get the discount that's supposed to be applied to a more expensive product from the same manufacturer. This is coupon fraud, and I suspect that if you're an extreme couponer, you could actually get into grand theft territory if you do it long enough.

However, the new fat-looking barcodes that are showing up on a lot of coupons actually contain the entire product code as part of their data, closing that abusable oversight.

The worst part is that most of the time these fraudsters don't think they're doing anything wrong, despite the fact that they know the coupons aren't intended for the purchases they're making. They think it's just fine and dandy to defraud both the stores and the manufacturers; they just don't care how it might affect anyone else, and I hope a few of these guys (preferably the ones that know it's fraud and not just the ignorantly self-centered) get themselves prosecuted in a rather well-publicized manner.

^-.-^

[PepperElf]

Now maybe I'm ignorant here, but I would think in today's techie world and bar codes that the system would be able to warn a cashier if the coupons and merchandise don't match up??

I'm thinking maybe the SC forged the coupon somehow to make them match.

I mean having a coupon that ends up worth more than the product... I've seen it before, well back when the grocery store doubled coupons etc... but these days most stores cut you off at "free" and won't go below that.

but even then it had to be for the exact item...

[wagegoth]

There was a woman on Extreme Couponing who committed that type of coupon fraud. Disgusting. I doubt she's able to afford her designer crap now.

[wolfie]

A few years back (when it was still Dominion, not Metro), I did something similar. From time to time, they'd have prepared fruit, granola, and yogurt bowls (kept by the store-made salads and cut fruit) on a BOGO sale (regular price $3.99 each). Also, fresh goods that would hit their "best before" date the next day would get markdown stickers on them (the yogurt bowls used to get $2 stickers, now Metro does $1 stickers).

I'd only get the yogurt, salads, or cut fruit when it was marked down (tasty, but not worth the regular price). If there were 2 marked down yogurt bowls during a BOGO week (careful to put them on the belt behind my other merchandise, so the total wouldn't go negative), I'd have 2 tasty breakfasts along with a 1 cent discount on my other purchases ($3.99 for one bowl + $0.00 for second due to BOGO - $2 for markdown coupon on first bowl - $2 for markdown coupon on second bowl).

About a quarter of the time, the cashier would pass the sanity check and do an override so the 2 markdown coupons would only zero out the price on the yogurt instead of resulting in a 1 cent discount on my other purchases, but I would take it in stride.

Of course, when my favourite tubbed salad was after the "sell by" date, triggering their (now discontinued) "fresh or free" (i.e. if they missed their stock rotation, so a stale-dated product was still on the shelf without a markdown, and you brought it to their attention, they'd give you a fresh one free), and I found a bunch (I'd check the date on every one of them) with stale dates, I'd show up with half a dozen at the checkout. "Here's an out-of date one that was still on the shelf, here's the fresh one for your 'fresh or free' promotion, and you might want to get rid of these other outdated ones before other customers claim the 'fresh or free' on them".

[notlovinit]

wolfie - when I was first reading that I thought you went through them all and got six free because of it and my thought was 'oh gosh, i hate this person', but now that I have read it correctly, that is very nice of you *high five*