No, dear, YOU see post #1. I didn’t ask jack. I just jumped in to back up poor Otto against a horde of self-righteous coupon police, who I’m sure have foibles of equal moral reprehensibility. It’s inevitable, since this one is so minor that many decent, normal people don’t even think it’s wrong. Like it or not, this is a genuine moral gray area. As much as you’d like to say it’s a clear issue of a person’s moral fiber, integrity, and evilness quotient, it just ain’t, and to claim it is in even abstract terms is hyperbolic and histrionic.
Triviality does not equal grayness. Stealing a penny may be trivial, but it’s still clearly wrong. And it’s not that anybody cares about the coupon. Any supposed “histrionics” are directed solely against the general rationalization that if a wrong is minor, it’s not really a wrong.
So you’re telling me that I should disregard what the coupon itself says, and bow down to your moral certitude? Whatever, dude. If it were such a loophole, the coupon did not need to draw attention to itself by capitalizing the fact that purchase of wine was not necessary for the beef offer. It could have been astrisked to a 5-point footnote.
The way I see it, there are five ways of issuing coupons.
those little clippy magazines that come in newspapers. Customers have to remember to clip and bring them with them, and may decide not to buy something because they left a coupon at home
Coupons inside an item. Ensures repeat business, but has same flaw as #1
Coupons on the web. Easier to locate than #1), but same flaws
Coupons in the store. Easy to find, but need co-operation from idiots who work in store
Coupons attached to the box.
The only reason to attach a coupon to an item is because the manufacturer hopes you pick up that item and buy it. The coupon is extra incentive, but if you want to limit that incentive you limit the coupon to that particular item.
If the manufacturer doesn’t limit the coupon in that way, all they care about is moving anything they sell, so customers are free to rip and use as they wish. Anyone who gets upset about this is just mad because someone else came along before them and took the coupon.
Regarding taking the coupon off the wine bottle, you stated that b) It’s not something I do. (post 112)
Why is that exactly? Why don’t you take the coupon when it will save you $4. Do you not eat beef? Certainly you have some friends that eat beef. You could give it to them.
Or do you have a sense of fair play and realize that the coupon is intended for the person that buys the wine?
Adding some bolding of my own to point out your rather snotty response in an IMHO thread.
I still look at this from the viewpoint of someone who has run coupon promotions. I wouldn’t consider it stealing or immoral or anything other than customers taking advantage of our promotion. If they don’t take advantage of it in the way we intend, then we didn’t plan it well enough.
Now, if Otto had taken the coupon off a product in someone else’s cart, heck yeah he’d be stealing. But that didn’t happen here.
I went to a party last night and ran into my friend and her fiance, the one who stocks the natural grocery section at Wegman’s. I told him about this thread and he said this: “Boca doesn’t care who uses the coupon because the vast majority of coupons they issue never get used. If you use them to buy Boca products, they’re fine with it. Wegman’s doesn’t care because all the Boca stuff will sell anyway, regardless of the coupons. The only person who has the right to be aggravated is the person who buys the box that should have had a coupon on it.”
That person misses out on saving 50 cents. If you want to call that stealing, fine. I don’t.
Let me say this once more, with feeling: I DO NOT THINK IT IS WRONG. You have not been able to convince me, nor probably anyone else. While you may be in the majority, it’s not a mandate that gives you the right to make blanket statements about my moral fiber. If you’re without sin, you can cast the first stone. As it stands, there is clearly a case to be made, a VALID case, that it’s not stealing.
The intent of the company that attaches a coupon to a product is that you would buy that product.
Similar to the example that pulykamell gave. Four dollars off of a beef purchase with this coupon.
Do you think that it would be OK to walk into a liquor store and pull all those coupons and walk out?
It is legal. It says so right on the coupon. “No purchase necessary”
Does something have to be legal to be right?
It doesn’t matter if it’s one or one hundred coupons. That’s not the point. If you owned a liquor store and I pulled all those coupons, what would you do? I’d say it was product tampering. I don’t need legalize to know right from wrong.
Does anyone really believe that taking a coupon off one product, and using it on another is ethical? In the store? Before you have purchased the product that had the coupon attached?
It’s all about intent, and common sense. People like Otto, RubyStreak, and pulykamell are the reasons we have lawyers (no offense to lawyers) and have to have a contract for everything.
Just don’t call it late for dinner. In case this hasn’t been made clear to you, I don’t care what you call it.
I disagree. The intent of the coupon is that you buy A PRODUCT. You don’t know why it’s on some products and not others, even though its use is valid for multiple purchases. Could be all the boxes had coupons, and some sold and were replaced with boxes that don’t. Maybe they put the coupons on the burgers because the burgers are their highest-profile item. You assume that you know their intent in order to bolster your position, but you don’t have the data to make that assumption,
No, and that’s a straw man, because I have never taken a coupon off an item when I did not intend to purchase an item right then and there to which this coupon applied. I wouldn’t take 5 coupons to save for later and only buy one thing, or take a coupon from an item I had no intention of using on that company’s products. In the situation Otto described, yes, I would take the coupon. You’re not going to score points off me by getting me to make analogies for your edification.
Huh? It’s neither illegal nor wrong, IMO. I think I made that clear.
I don’t think it’s important enough to warrant a deep soul-searching. I would use the coupon to buy a Boca product. If I already had a box of Boca burgers in the fridge, I’d use the coupon to buy another Boca product. No harm, no foul.
Oh, the hyperbole! Oh, the histrionics! Oh, the humanity!
Sigh. Please, go over to GD or the Pit and find a meaningful, productive subject upon which to exercise your self-righteousness. In this thread, it seems petty and absurd. Don’t you think Kraft has an army of marketing people who know exactly what’s going to happen to those coupons? Or do you think you’re more on top of it than they are, and you know better? I doubt it. Kraft pours big money into R&D on how these things work, and if they didn’t mean people to take it off the box, they would not have put it there. End of story.
Still waiting for that response from Boca, which I’m starting to think isn’t coming. Checking with my friend’s fiance was enough for me. He said he’s sure that neither Wegman’s nor Boca is hurt by the coupon swiping, and if he were working and saw it happening, he wouldn’t say a word about it because it wouldn’t faze him. That’s good enough for me.
But I have to leave with this. I believe that there is a social contract. It’s not on the books.
That contract is how we interact. It keeps most people from doing wrong to others. I think that removing a simple coupon from a box that you don’t’ buy oversteps that contract.
And I think that it says a lot about the person that does it. Some people seem to think that it’s OK to screw the other guy, or the company that made the product. “Heck, they can afford it”. Or, they won’t miss it.
I think that that is a piss poor philosophy.
Getting a deal at the expense of others is not a deal.
For some things, there is a black and white line. Stealing a gumball is wrong. It doesn’t matter how wrong it is. It is still wrong.
Don’t condescend to me about the social contract. I’m a coupon thief, not a moral simpleton as you wish to suggest. I think I more than hold up my share of the social contract.
I don’t care what you think it says about me. I don’t need your approval and your disapproval isn’t going to convince me I’m a bad person with deep moral flaws. I hope someday that I can find a thread in which you show a moral gray spot and then I’ll be sure to link to this thread so that you can see how it feels to be skewered in writing over something like this.
A coupon is not a gumball. This is just another invalid analogy.
Yes, stealing a gumball is wrong. So is taking more than one paper from a vending machine when you pay for only one. But taking advantage of a marketing campaign is different.
When we set up a marketing campaign, we set the rules and invite you to participate. If you do so and use those rules to your advantage, you’ve done nothing wrong. If I set up a game, write the rules, and invite you to play, you can use the rules to your advantage with as much right as I can.
We once set up a campaign in which customers were given 90 days to take action. However, in some of our disclosures we inadvertently listed “three months” as the time frame rather than 90 days. You bet some clever customers found that and wanted to act on the 91st day (the months worked out that way). We accepted full responsiblity for that. It was our error. No one would think of blaming the customers. The 90 day intention was pretty clear. Our lawyers said we could go either way (stick to the 90 day deadline or honor three month requests). We decided to honor the three month requests. It was our game and our rules–we should have written them better.
Otto’s case is much less one of a marketing error. Boca’s probably just happy that people are buying their products. Maybe buying product A is perferable to buying product B based on their coupon promotion, but either is probably a good result for them. If they don’t like it, then the fault lies with the marketing manager who set up the campaign, not with people like Otto.
I never thought I was ‘skewering’ any one. It’s just my opinon.I have no ‘gray spots’ in my integrity as far as I know. I admit that I see many things as black and white.
If you see a gray area feel free to take it to the pit.
Except, I am being a bit condesending there aren’t I. I guess that is pit-worthy.
Heh, I’m being condesending about being condesending. I guess I can be an ass sometimes.
I agree that it’s not illegal. I disagree that it’s not wrong.
Bolding mine. See social contract.
And bud, I never said that you where a bad person with deep moral flaws.
Maybe I went over the top. I didn’t intend to do that. I do believe that there is a contract that all people should live by.
Coupons. Of all things. I disagree with the OP, and you.
Either you are very young, in denial, or live in a cave away from society. Otherwise, I am sure you are not blemish-free in the integrity department. No one is. If you think you are completely without ethical flaw, then I don’t know what to say or think that I can post in this forum.
This topic is so tired and dumb it’s not Pitworthy. But it is a little upsetting to be tarred with this board brush of immorality over coupons.
You and others have said that those of us who’d take the coupons, well, this whole thing reflects badly on our integrity. I think it’s so small that you’d have to use a mirror the size of a planet to make it reflect anything at all. Why people can’t say, “I wouldn’t do it,” instead of “you are bad to do it,” I don’t know.
And you think that you have the book on this social contract because…? My copy of the social contract is missing the chapter on coupons. It has a big one on eating meat, for example, and other things you might consider perfectly moral but I think are reprehensible. See? Another gray area.
No, really? I wasn’t quite getting that. Why not say it again, in stronger terms, so we’ll be sure to feel the weigh of your moral judgement? :dubious:
Exactly. So don’t use them to try to bring home a dog that can’t hunt, OK? (See, I can used mixed metaphors to combat your bad analogies!)
I never said anything about you or your moral fiber! I was just talking about rationalizations in the general sense. Please don’t take this so personally.
That you have no moral gray spots. Will you be ascending to heaven on your death?
So do I. I don’t this is unfair. The guy who stocks that section in my grocery doesn’t think it’s unfair. That’s all I need.
You assume you know Boca’s intent. Despite Maddy Strut’s many, many explanations of marketing strategy WRT coupons, you still persist in your interpretation of Boca’s intent because it suits your worldview. That does not mean that you “understand intent.” It means you ignore arguments that go counter to your opinion.
I said that to you, so you say it back. Good one!
It’s not NOT mine. It’s no one’s. But hey, let’s just agree to disagree, eh?
Ya know, then people have the nerve to wonder why I’m taking this personally. As if my coupon pilfering = I don’t know right from wrong. Really now. REALLY NOW. Seriously. I plan to attend your canonization-- what should I wear?