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Counterfeiting is on the rise, and, in defense, some store owners are refusing to accept any coupons printed from home computers.
“Counterfeits can be devastating,” said Bud Miller, executive director of the industry-sponsored Coupon Information Center. “A single instance can easily cost the manufacturer a million dollars if it’s distributed on the Internet.”
That’s why the 12 Woodman’s stores in Wisconsin and Illinois don’t accept coupons printed from the Internet, said President Phil Woodman.
“We just don’t accept them because there’s too much fraud and theft,” Woodman said. It’s difficult to communicate to checkers every day what coupons should be taken and which not, he said.
“You either have to take the coupons and suffer the consequences, or not take them at all,” he said. “We choose not to take them.”
The La Crosse-based Quillin’s supermarket chain generally accepts coupons printed from the Internet unless it’s received a warning about particular coupons, company President Phil Quillin said. “It’s getting bad,” he said of the problem of Internet coupon fraud.
“So we are still accepting some,” Quillin said. “There are more and more warnings on Internet coupon fraud every day. The availability of excellent printing makes it easy to do authentic-looking coupons.”
Festival Foods accepts all coupons printed from its own Web site.
As for coupons printed from other Web sites, “We still accept Internet coupons with a value of up to $3,” said Marlin Greenfield, chief operating officer for the 12 Festival Foods stores owned by the Barb and Dave Skogen family. “We do not accept Internet coupons for free products, regardless of value. We’ve found that frequently the fraudulent ones are in the form of free products.”
The problem of Internet coupon fraud is becoming worse, Greenfield said. “We’ll continue to evaluate our policy,” he said.
With a softer economy, customers are looking to maximize buying power at the grocery store, and coupon values from manufacturers have increased by at least 10 cents since 2007, said Brandon Scholz, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Grocers Association.
“We expect that coupon usage for both manufacturers and in-store coupons as well as other discounts could increase this year by 20 percent, although we won’t know for sure until the redemption process and cycles are complete through the end of the year.”
Though the majority of coupons come from newspapers and magazines, Scholz said, fake coupons can be downloaded from the Internet, bought and sold on the Web or created at home using common software.
Counterfeit coupons were rare prior to 2001, but the Internet boosted activity. Hitwise, an online research company, reported that weekly visits in the U.S. to coupon Web sites increased 56 percent for the week ending June 6, as compared to the same week last year.
Consumers can help by being smart, Scholz said. “A good rule of thumb for consumers to determine whether or not an Internet coupon is legit is whether or not it seems reasonable,” he said. “If a coupon is too good of a deal, chances are it’s a fake.
Coupon tips
There are a lot of online coupons out there. You may come across offers that appear to be legitimate coupons, but you aren’t sure. Here are some simple guidelines on how to verify and get the most from online coupons:
Source: Coupon Resource Center
Patricia Simms is a reporter at the Wisconsin State Journal. Steve Cahalan can be reached at (608) 791-8229 or scahalan@lacrossetribune.com.
antieverything wrote on Jul 11, 2008 10:37 AM: