25 Million Dollars Worth of Fake Coupons Seized

thefadedone

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http://www.kpho.com/story/18992975/...art=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=7487836

This is crazy! This is one of the reasons why I would never buy any coupon from Ebay or from any other place.
 
Wow! That is something! I only get coupons from coupons.com and other sites... would never BUY coupons.
 
Man, these gals were serious! No buying coupons here either. I do know some extreme coupon collectors do this on a regular basis.
 
I have seen coupons for free items on ebay before. I assumed they were legit, but maybe they weren't. I never bought any.

I never gave coupon counterfeiting a thought before, but really, they are worth money. One time I wrote an email to Morningstar and they sent me a coupon for a free product. That saved me almost $5. It would be a lot easier to counterfeit that coupon than it would be to counterfeit money. Maybe this will be the next big thing. That will lead to crackdowns and stores won't take coupons printed from your computer, security features like money has, etc, etc. This could get crazy.
 
That will lead to crackdowns and stores won't take coupons printed from your computer

Stores where I am are already strict about computer printed coupons. (If it doesn't scan, they won't take it at all, and no store here will take home-printed coupons for free items.)

Since I know that, for example, a lot of coupons for free drinks at Starbucks are stolen, I just assume all coupons for free things that are for sale on eBay are stolen or scammed somehow. I don't want any part of that.
 
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I really hope this doesn't discourage stores to accept printed coupons. They have been such a money saver for me.

The only coupons I ever buy come from coupon/Entertainment Guides from my local area. I would never buy anything like the coupons shown in the story or on ebay. I too always assumed that most of those "free" coupons were stolen from the company.

I print out a ton of coupons, but I always have a bunch that I won't use before the expiration date or if I can't find a decent sale to match it with. Usually I will leave those coupons in the store right next to or on top of the product so someone else could use it. However, I was just warned never to do this with printed coupons due to the fact that people were photocopying printed coupons to buy multiple items. Each printed coupon can be traced back to the computer it was printed from so if they get busted , I get busted! It's a scenario that I never thought of!! I was also unware that each printed coupon can be traced like that. My unused printed coupons now go right in my recycle bin, after they are shredded of course.
 
this stinks....99.9% of the stores here wont accept net coupons no acceptions due to fraud and losing money its sad all round and only hurts the honest couponers like all of us....I never buy coupons and if it sounds and looks to good to be true it usually is....

peace:)
 
Usually I will leave those coupons in the store right next to or on top of the product so someone else could use it
I do that too. I got a coupon in the mail from my local grocery store for twenty dollars off a hundred dollar purchase but I never spend that much at one time. So the next time I was there I gave the coupon to a sweet-looking older lady with a very full cart. She was just so thrilled, it made my day. :)
 
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I never buy coupons and I don't print coupons from the internet. I stick to the old fashioned kind that come in the newspaper or that are available from the store (Whole Foods and the co-op). Even then it's a problem due to widespread fraud.

I once clipped a coupon from the Rite-Aid drugstore ad circular offering a free $10 RA gift card with the purchase of a $25 iTunes gift card. My nephew's birthday was coming up, so I decided to take advantage of it and get him the iTunes GC. However, when I got in line, the cashier was a new employee who didn't know what to do with the coupon. She got another employee AND the manager to help her. The manager looked at me suspiciously and asked me where I got the coupon. I told him I clipped it from the RiteAid ad. The coupon was scanned, I got my Rite-Aid gift card, but that idiot made me feel like a criminal just for using a coupon. Sheesh. :no:
 
I once clipped a coupon from the Rite-Aid drugstore ad circular offering a free $10 RA gift card with the purchase of a $25 iTunes gift card. My nephew's birthday was coming up, so I decided to take advantage of it and get him the iTunes GC. However, when I got in line, the cashier was a new employee who didn't know what to do with the coupon. She got another employee AND the manager to help her. The manager looked at me suspiciously and asked me where I got the coupon. I told him I clipped it from the RiteAid ad. The coupon was scanned, I got my Rite-Aid gift card, but that idiot made me feel like a criminal just for using a coupon. Sheesh. :no:

I almost always have issues at Rite Aid, even with the manager who has no idea how to use the hand scanner.:rolleyes: There's only one cashier there who doesn't give me problems and who knows how to scan a coupon.
 
I'm so glad my supermarket has self-checkout lanes so I can scan my own coupons in peace. It's very rare that one doesn't go through, but interestingly one of the ones that didn't scan (and flagged a manager to my lane) was a coupon I got in the mail from Kashi. It was a thank-you coupon for belonging to their customer survey program a while back, and I have to admit even I thought it looked suspicious, like it was just run off a photocopier or something. When I contacted Kashi to tell them nobody would accept their coupon they apologized profusely and sent me enough regular cardboard coupons in the mail to keep me in Kashi cereal for many months. :)
 
so at least I'm not the only one who has had problems at Rite Aid. BTW, this girl who was a trainee scanned the coupon, but she didn't realize that she had to give me the RA gift card. I chalked it up to being relatively new at the job, but the attitude of the manager is what ****** me off. :rolleyes:

and for anyone who's interested, FOX is repeating the episode of Bones about the extreme couponer tonight at 9:00. :D
 
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I'm so glad my supermarket has self-checkout lanes so I can scan my own coupons in peace. It's very rare that one doesn't go through, but interestingly one of the ones that didn't scan (and flagged a manager to my lane) was a coupon I got in the mail from Kashi. It was a thank-you coupon for belonging to their customer survey program a while back, and I have to admit even I thought it looked suspicious, like it was just run off a photocopier or something. When I contacted Kashi to tell them nobody would accept their coupon they apologized profusely and sent me enough regular cardboard coupons in the mail to keep me in Kashi cereal for many months. :)

I remember that happened before too. It was a year or so ago though. Kashi was doing some promotional thing and sent out a bunch of "Free" coupons. I remember reading that a great majority of us who had gotten the coupons had issues with it. I had used mine on their roasted veggie cheeseless pizza and even though it was a hassle with the whole coupon fiasco, it was worth it because I found out the pizza sucked! I'd rather go through that coupon hassle instead of wasting $6 or whatever on a crappy pizza. :p