Walgreens being sued based on coupon fraud!!

[Pennstater]

CA Firm Sues Walgreens On Coupon Fraud Allegations | Fox News

[clippyclippy]

"But the suit claims the coupons Walgreens submitted to the company appeared unused. They were in pristine condition and in consecutive order."

Yowzers... hard to explain that!

[joshmamabear]

If allegations are proven true, it looks like a case several years ago where mom n pop stores cut all coupons from Sunday papers and submitted them to clearinghouse even if they don't carry the products. In this case, WAG carries the products but their sales may not match the number of coupons submitted that manufacturer is now looking into.

WAG IVCs says they are mfr coupons (although they don't have remit addy) that is why some stores do not allow stacking of reg MQs with them so we may see more restrictions later if other companies start monitoring discounts for their products. If they view it as double dipping, then WAG may stop allowing the use of WAGc with reg MQ for one item

This is interesting to watch.

[YouPdWhat]

Yes it will be interesting to see how this plays out for sure.

[ScrappyDoo]

It wouldn't surprise me if more stories like this surface.

[clippyclippy]

Here's another, more detailed article:
Walgreens accused of coupon fraud | UTSanDiego.com

It's bazaar - you see a picture of someone standing next to (millions?) of Register Rewards.

Apparently, the company was promoting "Celadrin Inflame Away softgels".
Regular price $29.99, on sale $10 with a $10 RR. (FARR).

Here's some detail:

Debbie Spencer, office manager for Imagenetix, was in charge of logging coupons. She noticed that most were not creased. Then she found duplicates and triplicates, even though each coupon was supposed to be unique. And some of the bundles were in numerical order the way they were printed, even though they were supposed to be collected in the order of redemption.
“It took a while for people to listen to me,” said Spencer, who is married to William. “These coupons were like they had been freshly minted. They had never been out in the public, in someone’s pocket or purse or bag.”

Walgreens also claimed an “implausibly high redemption rate,” the lawsuit said, saying that more than 95 percent of the coupons issued were used. Coupon redemption rates vary widely but are typically much lower than that, said the PMA’s Carlson. “Ninety-five percent is exceedingly high,” she said.

An audit of the coupons revealed that more than 1,000 stores claimed to have issued more coupons than the number of bottles they had in stock, the lawsuit said. Stores typically had eight to 10 bottles in stock, but seven stores had issued more than 100 coupons each. One store issued a whopping 1,306 coupons.

Spencer said he paid part of the bill and contacted Walgreens, but no one from the company acknowledged there was a problem. When the bill wasn’t fully paid, Walgreens deducted money from an account it held in reserve for Imagenetix, he said.

Like I said, it's bazaar because it involves so many stores. I can see one corrupt store manager boosting sales, but 1000+ stores??
Something is really wrong here.

By the way, does anyone remember this FARR item? I don't. Maybe Imagenetix (the company) is right, maybe WG never ran the promo, and just took the $.
Did they think they could get away with it since they were being reimbursed directly by the mfr, rather than a clearinghouse?
If so, they sure were sloppy about it.

[meggers]

Wow! That's gonna be really hard to explain.

[cody82414]

now that puts a new angle on things!

[joshmamabear]

the case has been filed in court;

http://media.utsandiego.com/news/doc..._Complaint.pdf

this explains the case very well. Interesting!

[vica]

Well, what about cases that involve certain customers 'ordering' a bid quantities of free after RR (or even MM) items with manager's approval? Limits are set by the manufacturer for a reason and I don't think they are OK with this kind of practice whatever its for charity or not.

With $10 q its 53 items - can well be a 'preorder' from a fellow couponer. If that's the case RRs would be in order and appeared to be unused.