Sunday, August 7, 2011
Within the coupon world online, there can be a lot of drama. Wait, let me back up. There isn't a "lot" of drama. There's a LOT of drama. Make that a TON of drama. Why all the drama? Well, when you combine money, people talking online, and some often blurry lines when it comes to policies and allowed methods, you get drama. Some people take coupon ethics very seriously. Some feel that it is no one else's business what they do. I lean more towards the former. Let me explain why I believe so strongly that ethics matter.
- When you use a coupon improperly, there's a good chance the store won't be reimbursed by the manufacturer. If you do it by accident, that's a mistake and no one will hold it against you. If you knowingly do it on purpose, that is in essence stealing from the store.
- What one of us does affects all of us. One person clearing the shelves repeatedly along with a wave of coupon fraud in the Liberty Township area caused the area stores to not only limit how many coupons shoppers could use at one time, but to become very suspicious and treat honest couponers poorly. Note that after recent waves of coupon use for reselling items for profit, P&G has begun to put "Limit 4 per transaction" and other restrictions onto their coupons. What the few do affects the many.
- Retailers and manufacturers lose millions every year to coupon fraud. Millions. One White Castle coupon meant for 1000 customers was spread on the internet without permission, and 100,000 were redeemed. White Castle removed all internet coupons for a long time afterwards.
- Honest couponers have trouble redeeming legitimate coupons because someone altered the original, and it has now been declared counterfeit. For example, recently a legitimate Lean Cuisine printable was declared fraudulent and counterfeit after photocopied coupons were discovered. Stores were notified that the coupon was fraudulent. However, the original coupon was still available to print on Smartsource. The counterfeits were the photocopies--coupons printed honestly from Smartsource.com were still legitimate. But cashiers and stores rarely know the difference once a counterfeit notice is sent out. So no one could redeem the coupon--even those who obtained it honestly. This scenario happens at least once a month.
- Coupons are a form of advertising, and the money paid to stores are set aside in an advertising budget. When coupons are misused, manufacturers are put into the spot of either not reimbursing the store for coupons a customer redeemed fraudulently (in essence punishing the store for a customer's actions) or in seeing their advertising budget destroyed. Guess what that does for future coupon advertising campaigns? They become fewer and farther between, for lower coupon amounts.
- The more misuse and fraud there is, the more hoops we have to jump through to get our coupons. It takes more work now to download, print and redeem a coupon than it did when I started using them in the 1990's. All due to necessary security measures.
We have a list of coupon don'ts that we call the Dealbreakers. I encourage everyone to take a look at it to see the specific things that we shouldn't be doing when using coupons. Most of the time people who break these rules do so unknowingly--either they've been told it is okay, or no one has told them the rules yet. There are many out there who take a survival-of-the-fittest approach to coupon use. We are not one of those sites.
I wrote the Dealbreakers list two years ago. I have one more 'Dealbreaker' I'll add to the list that has come up since writing that post. Using other zip codes to get a coupon online. Don't do it. Sure, lots of fairly ethical sites tell you the zip codes to use to get the coupons. Unfortunately, it is common practice--but that doesn't mean that it is ethical. Here's why you won't see us doing that here on cincysavers: those offers are targeted only for the people of a specific region. A manufacturer has allotted a specific budget in order to boost sales in that region. If coupons meant for California are being redeemed in Ohio, not only does it bust that budget, but there's a good risk that the store you're using them at won't be reimbursed.
One common misconception is that stores are only interested in quantities sold--that they make the same profits if they sell 200 bottles of shampoo whether it be to 1 person or 50 people. That isn't true. The majority of customers purchase other items when in the store--so the more individual customers buying from that allotment of 200 bottles, the more profit they make.
Couponing can be a LOT of fun! Please enjoy yourself--but always remember that coupons must be used properly, or the fun will end very, very quickly for everyone!
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