Recently I watched a video that awoke some deep forgotten memories I had. It’s hard to think some of my teenage years are now deep forgotten memories, but that’s besides the point. The video mentioned how people used to make fake manufacturer coupons on 4chan. At the time I didn’t know they were fake, so I used them. This then dug up another memory of mine. When I used to get free beef jerky coupons from Jack’s Links in high school from Jack’s Links. These were because my school kept selling expired bags. I’d buy $2 of beef jerky from my school and get a coupon that gave me up to $10 in beef jerky. It was a nice way to “make” money. Thinking about it now, who paid for the coupon? In fact, who pays for any coupon? Like when you go to Walmart and you use a 30 cents off coupon. Who paid for that 30 cents? How the hell do coupons work?
If you don’t know there are coupon management companies, like Procter and Gamble (P&G). These companies make insane amounts of money every year. According to some figures I can find, quick Google search, P&G made over 20 billion USD last quarter. How do you make money giving away coupons? My assumption, again I haven’t done much research into this, is manufacturers contract them to make and distribute the coupons. Which means these companies are basically making free money. It turns out this isn’t true. How do I know? Well, the man who made all of those fake coupons on 4chan, and later released a how to guide, was sued by these companies because he made them lose money. P&G lost over 200k because of his coupons, and he had to pay restitution. Not every coupon was a buy 1 get one free or just get an item for free either. Most of the coupons he made were $1 or $5 off an order.
This raises more questions to me. Why did these coupon companies lose money? Are they the ones fronting the bill? Well, stores were fed up with these fake coupons too. When scanned they showed as legit coupons and would mark down your items. As far as their systems could tell everything was legit. This is important because it’s how the stores get reimbursed, at least from my current understanding. So, why would stores care about these fake coupons? The inventory is getting marked as sold and reimbursement comes later. If anything it seems like stores would want these coupons going around. Think about it. If a person normally comes in and buys 1 Red Bull you’re only making the money from that 1 being sold. However, if they have a BOGO coupon then you get the money for one right away and the money for the second at the end of the month. It’s quite literally the perfect scam for stores. They’re accepting fake coupons without generating/passing them out. Sure it’s fraud but technically legal because the store doesn’t know and when scanning it into the system, which cross checks with the manufacturer, it shows up as a valid coupon. This means the error wasn’t with the store but either companies like P&G or the manufacturer themselves. Which goes back to our question. WHO PAYS FOR THESE!?
I know some stores have done their best to clamp down on couponing. If you don’t know what couponing is, it’s pretty self explanatory. You collect coupons throughout the week/month and when you go shopping you use them all. Some people can buy $500 worth of groceries for $100. Hell, sometimes people get that shit down to $8.17. There’s been a few instances, and I can’t stress the word few enough, where the store owes the couponer money. Yes, imagine buying $500 worth of groceries and the store owes you $6. Couponing was pretty niche until the show Extreme Couponing happened. This caused a drastic rise in the amount of people couponing, and even led to Reddits/forums gaining popularity. People in those communities do not share coupons online, especially fake ones. Despite this whole thing being legit, stores have started to clamp down on couponing. They’ve done things from implementing a max amount you can save, your amount owed can’t be less than 10-25% of the original total price, set a max amount of coupons allowed, and they’ve done the last one while making it so any new coupons added after you’ve hit the max will replace your coupon that saves you the most amount of money. Some stores are trying to make sure you can’t save too much money, but why? Don’t they get reimbursed from the coupon companies, or manufacturer?
Speaking of these coupon companies. The amount of money they earn per quarter has skyrocketed since couponing has taken off. How are they making more money by people using more coupons? This is where the system completely falls apart for me. It’s like gift cards. If you don’t know Delaware lays claim to every gift card that isn’t empty. If you let a gift card sit with .24 on it for too long then Delaware will take that money from you and the company. You’d think if you gave GameStop $25 for a gift card they’d make $25, but it’s possible for them to make $0 if you don’t use that gift card in time. It’s a weird system that also confuses the shit out of me. Back to coupons, I have no idea how this system works. I’ve only started doing basic research and there’s tons of conflicting reports. Even from people who work at these companies. It seems like no one knows where the money comes from, or where it goes. How does the coupon company make massive amounts of money by a store owing you $6. In fact, how do stores operate if they lose money on these coupons? How do manufacturers operate with these too? This is a web that will eat my mind for a while.