Category Archives: Security

Security

Starbucks coupon and Police warnings

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In an article from February of 2006, Police in Lawrence, Kansas were said to have issued a warning about fake coupons:

In general, the fake coupons offer large discounts or a free item with no required purchase.

Hmmm, like the Starbucks coupon? In this case, again, the retailers have a hard time knowing whether the coupons are legitimately created by a manufacturer.

Employees at Checkers called police this week after they received an e-mail from one of their saleswomen warning of the scam. They checked their records and found that three of the coupons had been recently accepted, Smith said — two of them by the same woman who came to the store twice and each time used a coupon offering $5 off a bottle of Advil.

So and Advil coupon is very different than a Checker’s coupon being redeemed at Checkers, from a security perspective, but it nonetheless highlights the changing landscape for retailers.

Energy, Security

Virgin Alternative Energy

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Richard Branson is diving into the Ethanol market by promising $400 million in investments for alternative energy, according to Bloomberg. Let’s hope he also supports biodiesel and hybrid/electric technology for vehicles, but so far it looks like just more of the same Ethanol hype:

Cilion, which was formed in 2006, builds and runs factories producing ethanol, an alcohol derived from plants. The company plans to build as many as seven plants with capacity to produce as much as 440 million gallons a day of ethanol by 2009. The first three units will be built in California, Branson said.

Branson plans to expand the investment program, which will also target other forms of alternative energy, into the U.K., Europe and other parts of the world, he said.

History, Security

Olbermann on the hole in Bush’s logic

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Keith Obermann referenced an interesting episode of the Twilight Zone, in his harsh critique of President Bush:

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An “alien” is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, “they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves.”

I thought this section was also worth noting:

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President — and those around him — did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, “bi-partisanship” meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, “validate the strategy of the terrorists.”

They promised protection, and then showed that to them “protection” meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ‘something to do’ with 9/11 is “lying by implication.”

The impolite phrase is “impeachable offense.”

Food, Security

Starbucks Sued in Coupon Frape

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The status of Internet coupons and their validity (integrity) just keeps getting more interesting by the minute. Since my last comment, the latest news reveals someone decided to file a lawsuit against Starbucks after being turned down at the counter for a free drink:

On Aug. 23, Starbucks e-mailed the coupon for the free grande drink to selected employees with instructions for them to forward the coupon to friends and family. The offer was valid through Sept. 30.

But, Sullivan said, Starbucks got jittery and refused to honor the coupon after the company saw how widely it had been distributed. “I believe they were surprised by how successful the promotion was,” the lawyer said.

“The excuse proffered by Starbucks, that they did not believe that an offer released over the Internet would be so widely distributed, is ridiculous,” Sullivan said. “Clearly, Starbucks chose to initiate a viral marketing campaign to counteract their slumping sales.”

Coupon fraud is a real problem:

Just a few years ago coupons for grocery products could easily be found online, but because of all the fakes that began cropping up, many grocery stores began refusing Internet coupons.

This type of theft may be viewed by some as harmless, but there is little difference in using a bogus coupon and reaching into a grocery store’s register and stealing the money.

A Virgina TV news story (strangely lacking a date) suggests that retailers are upset about the ease of counterfeiting coupons and a law is about to be (or has already been) passed:

The House of Delegates has now passed a bill that could make it a crime to use fake coupons. One local grocery store manager says technology may be to blame for all of this. “The fact that the Internet is so available and there are so many legitamate coupons out there that the consumer can print off the internet, it is just as easy to print the counterfit coupons,” says Jay Hite, Co-Manager of the Staunton Kroger. The bill, which criminalizes the use of fake coupons, now goes to the Senate.

More information is available from the Virginia Petroleum, Convenience and Grocery Association (PDF), which suggests the House passed the bill in 2004:

House Bill 170, sponsored by Delegate and VPCGA member Tommy Wright will make it illegal to knowingly present a counterfeit manufacturers coupon. This legislation was filed as the result of numerous complaints we received over the past few months from members regarding the increasing number of counterfeit coupons they were receiving. House bill 170 will make it a class 4 felony to knowingly present a false manufacturers coupon.

The difference is that the grocers are redeeming the coupons themselves and so they can end up holding worthless/false paper when they are informed that the coupons are counterfeit. But in the case of Starbucks, they created the tender themselves and they are the only ones who can honor it. So what happens when a retailer makes a coupon exceptionally easy to duplicate, actually encourages employees to send it via email to “family and friends”, but then cancells it ahead of time with an “oops, sorry” as an official explanation? This will be a good one to watch.