The other day, I was shopping for coupons on eBay and ran across a listing for Kohl's Department Store coupons. The listing was for 15 coupons each for $5. I noticed that many sellers do this, offering the coupons in batches of 10-20 at a time. Completed listings show over 3,300 listings for Kohl's $5 coupons.
I bought the coupons for $2.75 thinking they were actual store coupons that were going to be mailed to me. The coupons don't expire until 1/31/09 and 1 coupon can be used for each $5 or more purchase. My daughter's birthday is in January, so I am always looking for after Christmas deals to buy her birthday gifts.
The coupons were send as download links. I received a list of links that took me to a page to print each coupon. Then I began to wonder, how is this seller getting these coupon codes and passing them on?
After asking around, I learned how it works. If you go to this link at Kohl's.com, you can enter your email address and receive a $5 coupon from Kohl's. The coupon is emailed to you within a week. But you can only get one coupon per email address. I took a look at the coupons I received. Each one had a slightly different email address on it, like this:
maryA123@hotmail.com
maryB123@hotmail.com
maryC123@hotmail.com
and so on. So, these sellers are going out on the internet and opening a whole bunch of free email accounts, signing up for the coupon, batching the downloads, and selling them on eBay.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. eBay sellers have found a way to manipulate the system and stockpile these coupons. Coupon sellers do this all the time by purchasing multiple Sunday papers, clipping the coupons, and selling them, so is this the same? I think this technique is more of a scam than a legitimate way to sell coupons.
I can't say that this is a great way to make money. Using the seller in my example, the person had to go open 15 free email accounts, and sign up for a $5 coupon 15 times. That in itself took at least an hour. Her profit after eBay and Paypal fees is probably only $2. I can think of plenty of other things I can do for an hour that makes more than $2. Click here for a list of ideas.
I'm sure this "business model" (and I use that term loosely) is used all the time for other coupons. What do you think? Does this border on fraud, or a legitimate way to earn money on eBay? Please leave a comment below.
12 comments:
I'm not sure this is legal. Here's the wording from ebay:
Electronic "scanned" coupons: All coupons sold through eBay must be physically delivered to the buyer, and may not be delivered by electronic means for home printing.
yeah, you really have to be careful buying "coupons" and even "gift cards" on eBay. Here's another business model, did you see the $100 gift cards being sold for $115 with the 20% or 30% Live.com discounts for Buy It Now last month? Interesting biz model
-Michael
Twitter: @mandreano
Thank you for pointing out what we can get for FREE..the biggest waste is all the unused email accounts..that costs the email provider money and in turn may cost us a free account one day. As far as coupon clippers they buy the papers and cut and list up to thousands. I admire them and with saving money so important I know why people buy lots from them..if you use a product a lot you can save money.
Leave it to some people to find a way to rip off businesses like Kohl's. I once purchased shipping labels on eBay. When they were delivered, the UPS driver asked me when I had opened up a corporate account with UPS. I had not. The guy selling these labels had a corporate account and UPS provides the labels free to these type of accounts. He was selling the free labels his account afforded him and the kicker is UPS shipped them free!
thanks so much for taking the time to investigate this. i have often wondered how these sellers are able to do this.
a couple of years ago, i tried selling coupons online and received a strongly worded letter from the mars corp. seems selling their coupons was illegal. oooops! didn't do that again.
i was glad to see dave's comment. i ordered shipping labels online and when they arrived they had UPS printed on the edges. well, i use the USPS, so that caused a bit of extra work. i was amazed at how cheap the labels were and now i know why.
just want to let you know that i have learned so much already in just the short time i have been reading your blog. i have several blogs, but have just begun a new ebay/etsy blog...and have included your link in my blogroll. thanks again!
guess i need to register for another account to sign in under my new blog. just another thing to add to my to-do list. :)
I am glad to hear that I am not the only one that sees this as shady and underhanded. Nowhere on the listing did it say that you would receive a download link - I honestly thought I would receive some kind of promotional coupon, just like the grocery coupons I buy all the time. I feel like I was deceived.
one word, catch-all ;)
definately fraud, in my opinion.
Kohls is a big profitable company. They probably know there coupons are on Ebay. They would have it stopped along time ago.
HI I contacted Kohls directly becasue I bought 40 + of these coupons and I was having a hard time using them .. I almost felt like a criminal but I did pay for them... They did nto seem all too concerned becasue the coupon does state one per person per transaction...????????That was over a month ago and there is still a ton on ebay!
I wanted to comment that these scammers may not even be opening bnches of free email addresses. Most free email accounts have several ways to show the email address.
gmail for example if your email were ebaysellingcoach@gmail.com
then all the following will get to you but on websites where you have to enter an email addy htey will be different .
[a dot or more anywhere before the "@"]
e.baysellingcoach@gmail.com
ebay.seller.coachgmail.com
[a plus sign and then a word..any word before the "@"]
ebaysellercoach+huggies@gmail.com
ebaysellingcoach+qualityhealth@gmail.com
Boy, do I feel even worse! I almost bought those same coupons for $10 on Craigslist. Thank goodness someone replied on craigslist that it was a ripoff b/c they are so much cheaper on Ebay. When I googled the question of how this was done, this website explained a lot to me.
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