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.