TLC’s “Extreme Couponing”-Evidence of Coupon Fraud

Many of you have expressed your disbelief over TLC’s Extreme Couponing show. I was excited about the show when I first heard about it. However, after viewing it, I was very disappointed in TLC’s portrayal of couponers.  Not only that, they included some couponers who have very questionable practices.  There are ethics involved when couponing and these ethics were breached during the show.  My friend Lauran over at  wrote an article about the show as well.  Below are some thoughts from her post that I thought you may find interesting. Included is a link to a site that discusses one of the women from the show, Jaime.

There are many things that I see wrong with this series:

1. They are NOT average coupon users, they are extreme and overboard and over the top.
2. The show does NOT show the good that using coupons can do for the community, getting free items can greatly help your local community, donating to food pantries and shelters is a great way to help out those that are in need.
3. Stores will NOT bend the rules for the normal shopper, but they did for TV. For example the $10 off $50 coupon, it was one per person so she called her friends to come use them. I do not know of any store that is going to wait for friends to get there so someone else can hand over a coupon.
4. The 60 plus bottles of mustard at .39 each, honestly MOST couponers have condiments like mustard on their FREE list, mustard goes on sale for $1 very frequently and there are .50/1 coupons out so often that when used at a store that doubles it is free. So for me to see them show someone who is an “extreme” couponer to actually PAY for mustard boggles my mind.
5. The use of coupon sites and finding deals, bloggers like me, spend the time each week to go through the ads, match the coupons and then find the deals to share with everyone because we want to promote coupon use, and help you save money. However it bugs me the amount of importance they seem to put on searching for deals online. Couponing is not just about finding the deals other people are posting, it is learning how to match the coupons with the sales to get the most fo your money. But somewhere along the line it got lost for TLC as to show HOW to start finding the deals and teaching people. I will say that there was the one family they showed going through the ad to match coupons. I would have really liked them to show the HOW to match ads, especially for those who do not have the internet.
6. Employees helping put stuff on the belt at check out… REALLY? Yes my Acme I shopped at in NJ was great and they helped me bag my groceries and if something was super heavy one of the guys would lift it out of the cart for me, but in reality no one is going to help you put your groceries on the belt.
7. The portraying of hoarding, a house is for people to LIVE in, when you are putting groceries and bathroom supplies in you KIDS bedroom and playroom and YOUR bedroom, it maybe time to reevaluate what all you are buying. The house looked big enough to me that slimming down would make their living in the home much better. I would also be concerned about my kids getting into the stockpile items and getting hurt, cause we all know kids are adventurous.

 
I wish TLC had done their homework before selecting people, like Jaime Kirlew, who has shown that their coupon ethics and usage of coupons, is not always ethical or legal, there have been many blogs posting about this person. Using coupons on products that they are not intended for is FRAUD and STEALING! In my opinion by having this person on the show, TLC is saying that unethical coupon usage, fraud and stealing are acceptable!

There are plenty of posts that have been written with a lot of time invested in them showing that the fraud was done on national TV.  Here is onte  that I think shows all the proof needed.

 Another thing that really upsets me about this, is that some of the people on the show magically had blogs as well, what upsets me about that is that some of them their archives start in MARCH! For some people they may not understand about Alexa ranking, it is a ranking tool used to rank a website. The closer you are to #1(which is google and facebook is #2 and Luxury Living Frugal Style is currently 143,117 just so you have an idea of the numbers that I will be posting and what they mean ) the more traffic the site has. Websites (including us) work VERY hard to bring in traffic, gain readers and followers and its not like a 1 day BAM!  However when I went to check these extreme couponers and their blogs before the show aired, and here is what I found: (please remember these are MY opinions)

 Jessica- has a blog called Livingonacoupon.com, there is no archives to be found. Her Alexa ranking went from over 16 Million to just over 4 Million with in a few days of the show airing. So basically this blog was made as away for TLC to have another link to their website and show.

Jaime– has a blog called Extremecoupondiva.com which is not her first blog, she had another one that she stopped using, but the posts on that one (divaforcoupons.blogspot.com) only start on March 7, 2011 but then on March 16, 2011 she changed her blog to the new one. Which I think is a bit weird personally, because mine changed names when I changed my domain to my own .com and my old blog (midgetmomma1200budget.blogspot.com) i set up to be redirected….makes me wonder. So why the need to make a brand NEW one when you have one? Was it not what the show wanted her to have? She also has 2 facebook pages, one that she uses now(that she has turned off the ability for people to comment on) and one that she has stopped using, why the need to a new coupon page? The names are similar but the new one has Extreme in the title, seems like a marketing plot to me.

 Rebecca– Her blog is couponphenomenon.com -Brand new blog as well, posts started in March 2011

 The other 2 blogs that are from people on the show, have been around a long time (since 2008) and you can see a big big difference between the ones made for show and the 2 that are long standing (iheartthemart.com and mylitter.com) And while I dont think they need as much stuff as they do, these 2 have not given in to the hype of TV and made a blog just because, they have been around for a while!

 Most blogs start off being hosted by free hosting, and when the person feels that they can afford to go to a .com they do (which is why you see paid posts on here at times because it costs money to run a blog that is a .com, hosting fees, domain fees, designer fees, ect) So to start out as a .com and spend the money (especially someone who is and EXTREME COUPONER who loves to save money) why would they waste the money if they were not getting something out of it?

 Coupon Fraud is no joke, TLC Allowing the fraud on national TV is only giving couponers a bad name, and portraying couponers as hoarders makes us all look bad. It will make manufacture’s mad, which in turn they could stop putting out coupons!

People may not think that these actions will affect anyone, but it WILL! It will make it harder for those who need coupons to survive and have difficulty at stores then they already do! As you can see I have many issues with this show, the practices that were shown, they way they portray couponers!

 So, what are your thoughts?