Coupon Queen: Beware coupon scanning scams

I belong to social media groups that tell you ways to use your coupons in different ways than what (the coupon) says.

For example, a shampoo coupon may say ‘Not valid on travel size,’ but in these groups, they tell you when a coupon will work on something else.

Sometimes they discover you do not have to buy the item shown on the coupon at all, and it will just scan for $1.50 off anything you buy.

The groups say it is safe to use any of the coupons they talk about because if the brands really wanted people not to use coupons in this way, they would code them to stop them from working on other items.

So many people are doing it that it doesn’t seem to hurt anybody, and nobody gets in trouble for it.”

Holly E.

What these groups are doing may seem harmless, but there is a real cost to their actions.

Groups like these use terms like “glitching,” “glittering” or “balanced couponing,” but they all refer to the same thing: Coupon fraud.

If a coupon states “$2.50 off 12-ounce shampoo or conditioner,” that’s exactly what shoppers should use that coupon to buy.

However, there are groups dedicated to exploiting possible loopholes to see if that $2.50 shampoo coupon might be valid on something with a price far less than $2.50, such as a travel-size bottle, or perhaps a small cosmetic item from the same brand.

These groups use a variety of methods to see what might “work” – everything from coupon decoding tools to trial and error in the self-check lane.

Once they discover a loophole, they share it online with their followers, encouraging people to get as many of the item free with coupons as they can. If it scans, it “works” – right?

Think of this practice from another perspective.

If you had a counterfeit $20 bill, and you succeeded in slipping that $20 to the cashier without it being discovered, would you consider that a win?

You would have gotten away with it, but at some point, the store will discover that the piece of paper they accepted wasn’t a legitimate form of payment for that sale.

Without knowing on whom to pin the counterfeit, the store will then accept a loss on that product.

The process isn’t that much different for a fraudulently-used coupon: The store accepts a $2.50 coupon for a 12-ounce bottle of shampoo, but they sold a travel-sized shampoo instead.

Over the course of a month, thousands of couponers found out about this “glitch” and also did the same transaction at this same store – not just one store, but locations all over the country.

At the end of this particular coupon campaign, the shampoo brand that issued the coupon will want to see how many 12-ounce bottles of haircare products they sold while the coupon was active.

The brand can audit the stores for a copy of their transaction data showing that the store had legitimate sales corresponding to the number of coupons that the retailer accepted.

If the store cannot prove that they sold the right quantity of product for which the coupons were intended to be used, the brand does not have to reimburse the store for those sales.

At that point, the store can face thousands of dollars in losses. Or, the brand and the store may work out a compromise where the brand reimburses the store for some of the coupons they accepted, but not all of them.

Less scrupulous shoppers do not seem to care about what happens after the coupon leaves their hands though. They “beat the system.”

Some of them feel that they should take advantage of glitches, because they’re “punishing” the brand or retailer because the coupon scans in a way it wasn’t intended.

All of these actions hurt couponers, because the brand may retaliate in its own way – reducing coupon values for the next round of offers, or not offering a coupon for its product at all.