Greg Vernon

I Almost Got Coupon Scammed…

And here is how it happened:

Around 6:20 She (who I will refer to as "Ana", the first name on the 2009 hurricane name list) entered queue and proceeded to put her items on the conveyer.

When it was her turn to be rung up, she preemptively apologized for being "my worst nightmare" - which didn't seem out of the ordinary considering she had a few dozen items, most of which were air fresheners or pet treats.  Considering these items were on clearance and relatively complimentary, that aspect didn't seem to out of the ordinary either.

Before I was able to start processing her transaction, Ana requested $400 in gift cards, which is a lot, but she said she was doing this as a fund raiser, which seemed to make sense considering gift cards make good raffle prizes.  Once these were put in the register, she immediately put the cards in her purse.

Here's the scam: It adds $400 to the total, which is important in this situation as you will see later.  Additionally, she may have thought if she was caught and had the transaction canceled (which is what happened) she could quickly exit the store and have the gift cards still work, though they do not.

While I was ringing up her items, Ana was more talkative than the average customer; which isn't bad.  She asked questions about where I lived, where I was going to school, what major I was in, how busy we were, and how long I have been working at the store.  It was actually sort of nice, considering how long her transaction was.

Here's the scam: A few things are happening here.

First the small talk forces the brain to focus on the conversation and the guest - rather than the prices of the products being rung up or the $400 worth of gift cards which are no longer in sight.

Second, she's sizing up her competition: me and store security.  Knowing how long I've been working allows her to have a better guess of my ability to catch a coupon scam.  Knowing how busy we are gives her a better guess of whether or not we would just "let it slide."  The other questions and small talk are simply there to act as filler to hide her hidden motives.

Once all of her items were bagged and in her cart, Ana once again apologized about her transaction and presented a stack of coupons.  I don't have an exact number of coupons, but there was at least 2 dozen.  Her coupons were a mix of "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" for both the pet treats and air fresheners, which was a really good deal considering how many she had purchased.

She said every single one would work, and sure enough they all did - our registers reject coupons where the required items are not present.  After her coupons had been entered into the register, I turned on the "Help" light at my register to get clarification of the coupon policy.

Val, the acting front end manager at the time, verified the policy but with one caveat: the air freshener coupons were for singles, rather than two packs.

Though, technically, Ana could use all of her coupons since she was purchasing the required products, the shear number of coupons concerned Val to the point where she called for Craig, the store manager, to the register to make sure everything was ok.

At this point, Ana stated she "was in a hurry and [she] didn't have time for this", requested her coupons and left the store taking only her coupons.

Here's the scam: Remember the gift cards which "added to the total" and the that the items where on clearance? Each coupon was subtracting close to $10 from the total - when they should have subtracting around $1.50.  This resulted in the bill being $16.52 - when at the very least it should have been $400.  Had Ana not had those gift cards, I would have owed her money - increasing the chances I would have known something was wrong.  Since I forgot about the gift cards - due to the small talk - the result seemed normal.

Now, in a typical scam operation the guest would simply return the products for cash or store credit, since the registers do not factor in coupons during returns.  However, there is something rather odd about this instance: most "buy X get X free" coupons require me to enter the amount of the coupon into the register and may even require a manager to sign off on the coupon.  This time, these coupons subtracted an incorrect amount automatically.  I have to believe that Ana somehow knew this would happen, because scamming $1.50 clearance items simply does not pay off well.  It is, therefore, my opinion this was an inside job as only someone who works with the company would know about this coupon error.

For those who are worried about this post helping "the bad guys", I wrote this on the basis that full disclosure can result in fewer successful scam payoffs in the future.  Understandably, this post may help the amateur scammers, but this information is already out there and well known to professionals.  But the information here can help "the good guys" close security holes and prevent scams.

Update
I was informed that coupons can have a value of up to $10.00 embedded in the bar code.  It is very possible these coupons were "pre-programmed" or even altered to talk off the specific amount.