Coupon fraud: Catalina coupons and cashier theft

There's a great post over on Coupon Wizards today on how catalina coupons can actually increase cashier theft at the grocery store.

Have you ever been checking out and noticed a long stretch of catalinas dangling out of the coupon printer?  That cashier might not be unobservant -- he or she could be hanging on to the coupons in order to help themselves to cash from the register.


The concept is pretty simple -- when customers leave their catalinas behind, there's several things that could happen:

  • the cashier can give them to the next customer in line -- cool
  • the cashier can throw them away -- kind of wasteful, but okay
  • the cashier could take them for their own personal use -- getting a little fishy here...
  • the cashier could put them in their register and pocket the corresponding amount of cash -- hello, coupon fraud!

Couponing has become big business in the last couple of years, so it's not surprising scammers and thieves have figured out a way to profit from coupons.  And unfortunately, some of those scammers will be actually working at your grocery store.  I spent many years in retail management, and I can tell you that internal theft is every bit as serious of a problem as shoplifting or other forms of customer fraud.

This is another great reason to keep your cool if a manager gets involved in your transaction -- chances are he or she is just as interested in what the cashier is doing as what sort of coupons you have.

Read the complete Coupon Wizards post here.

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