I have been couponing for awhile and have seen some really silly coupons come out but this has got to top the cake and get the idiot award for the biggest WHOOPS I have seen ever!
Just imagine a major electronic store goes and emails out a coupon to some customers that reads Buy $100 worth of items in the store and get $50 back when you use a certain credit card! The coupon has very few restrictions it excluded things like camera's, certain TV's, and prepaid cell phones but did not exclude GIFT CARDS and was good all week long! It did not even say anything about one coupon per person.
People receive the emails and contact the company. The first noted one that I saw was at 10:30am within a few hours a reply was made that read "The coupon you received this morning is a legitimate offer from *** and we appreciate that you've reached out to us concerning the issue." Within a time frame (not seen) it is noted several post down that their had been some changes from the original email. Like you had to buy one item over $100.00 and that you can not buy gift cards, and it was a one day sale!
Well to little to late...the original coupon went and was posted on deal sites all over the internet. Copied thousands and thousands of times. Used and printed thousands and thousands of times by people thinking they are getting in on an awesome deal! Damage control by the electronic giant was an epic fail... for they did not pass the memo out fast enough and did not make it a SOLE priority of theirs to make every store in the US know very fast not to take the coupon. But then again they can not just put out a coupon realize the MAJOR mistake and say to their customers sorry we made a mistake you can not use this. People are not going to go for that!
Did they not forget that the coupon was sent as a printable coupon in an email and once it is out and you have verified that it is real you can not just go and change it! That was by far the dumbest thing that I have heard of in awhile.
Some people choose not to post deals such as this due to ethics and I stand behind that. Although it was verified to be real I as well as other bloggers and couponers know if it is too good to be true then more then likely it is fraud or a HUGE mistake. But in reality the coupon itself was in deed real and was put out by the company. So people just thought wow! But as I always say just because you can do something does not make it right!
Within a few hours it was a total mess all over the United States and as it stood the people who claim to had originally have received the email had to jump threw hoops to get in on the deal to save themselves some money. Customers where being called thieves and treated like criminals at their local stores that they went to. But that was just at some stores for some stores did not get the memo that the first coupon was worded wrong.
During that time people went NUTS! This was not just a Florida Store or Chicago Store there are Best Buy locations set up all over the United States and with the power of the internet and again no exclusions it turned into a crazy mess. I read a post on a blog where someone bought $36,000 in gift cards for $18,000. He spent the day driving to every store in the state to do this! Sound silly? Well him and his silly self (probably just your average Joe) just made an $18,000 profit on one day.
Was the guy wrong? Depends who you ask about this. I mean it was the companies error and well he did what the coupon said it is not his fault that he happened to get the coupon and he happened to use the coupon over and over and over again. The coupon did not state otherwise. Their was no email address printed on the coupon for verification of who was aloud to use it. So in the end it was the companies fault for sending out the email without reviewing it 1,000%!
Now let's say the email that was received and posted without knowing on a blog or site somewhere on the internet and then that same email post was then used by ten's and thousands of people. This is why it is so important not to post coupons such as this on blogs. Now if their was a way to pin it back to that poor person who posted the original coupon (or one of the ones that where emailed) well let's just say they could be in some serious trouble! So for the record do not post emailed coupons on a blog. Not smart!
The great electronics store that put out this coupon will more then likely loose billions! Also they can not hold the credit card company responsible for this either because even though it did not exclude gift cards it did mention on the coupon in bold letters that the credit card company is not the sponsor of this ad and will not hold no liability so guess who is left holding the bag on this one.
Well if you recall another electronic giant went under not to long ago and you will never guess who is looking like they are going to follow in their foot steps!
As of today this story has hit media outlets all over the world. Making Best Buy look really bad! Here is a story put out by Yahoo Fiance Click Here!
I guess the moral of this story is that if we all do not work together and do things the right way we could be in a lot of trouble. Stores will be forced to shut down and people will loose their jobs and things will just get worse. Yes mistakes are made either by the couponer or the store but in the end we all loose out in one way or another. I hope this post is read and that people become aware of how something so simple as a repost of an email can have major effects so it is very important that people learn and use correct judgement when couponing.
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