Lawsuit: Nation's largest drugstore chain sought money for fraudulent coupons
A San Diego nutritional-supplement company is accusing Walgreens of coupon fraud, saying the nation’s largest drugstore chain sought to get reimbursed for coupons that had never been used by customers and appeared “freshly minted.”So apparently it isn't just one store that turned in a ton of Register Rewards (RRs)... I'm not sure how they managed to print off and turn in a lot more RRs than they had products for... in numerical order. HELLO NEON SIGN THAT READS: WE ARE COMMITTING FRAUD HERE. For real?! They didnt necessarily deny or not give out the RRs to customers. With the current coupon/drug store craze, I think people would have complained - BIG TIME. It seems like the managers were just over riding and printing as many as possible... and a few extra!
The evidence in the case includes stacks of white, paper coupons without creases or marks that Walgreens said customers had redeemed in stores.
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.
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.Wow. No telling what this will mean for RRs in the future... but I hope those stores are shut down and new managers are hired and trained...
3 comments:
WoW! I hadn't heard of this one. I work at Walgreens and I know they have been definitely a lot more strict when it comes to accepting coupons and such lately. But wow... I hope those stores get new management because the only way to get a register reward to print is to "purchase" it. So the only thing I can think of is that the manager rang up RR items then voided them off then kept the RR that printed. We're supposed to rip up (at least in my store) ANY coupons that are printed, regardless if a customer wants them or not. It's a shame to see people doing this though.
I want a list of the stores. I feel like it is our right to know if OUR stores were doing this!
And WOW!! AshleyAnn, I cant even believe this hasnt been talked about within your store!!! Seems like management would make an example out of these stores! I would love to hear more about their fines too.
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