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In yet another example of “promotions gone wrong”, Target just got robbed by it’s Facebook fans and a bunch of thieves opportunists.

Target had a promotion via its Facebook page for a coupon which gave a customer a $10 gift card for spending $50. The coupon could be printed only via coupon printing software and you could only print it a certain number of times, yet the coupons did not have unique barcodes. (Kinkos anyone?) It was a great deal for Christmas shoppers or even grocery shoppers (via a Super Target) but a bunch of people figured out how to game the system and abuse the promotion.

I became aware of it through SlickDeals, a forum for bargain hunters. As people used and experimented with this coupon, they found that they were able to purchase gift cards and get the corresponding free $10 gift card from the promotion even though the coupon stated that gift card purchases were ineligible. Also, seeing as the coupons were not unique, any photocopier skirted the whole printing limitations from the coupon printing software.

As you can see via this 37 page thread with almost 1500 posts, people found that they could effectively rob Target legally (At least I think its legal. I’m not an attorney.) What they found they could do was this:

They would buy a $50 Target gift card, use the coupon and get a $10 Target gift card free. They would then purchase another $50 Target gift card using the FIRST $50 Target gift card to pay for the SECOND Target gift card, use another coupon and get another $10 Target gift card. (Initial purchase: $50. Profit: $20. etc.) Rinse and repeat. (Since you’re not actually purchasing anything, you’ll always have your initial $50 in the form of a gift card and, since you’re using the gift card to buy more gift cards, each transaction just nets you $10.)

There are a number of people who claim to have netted as much as $5,000 in free Target gift cards off their initial $50 investment. This promotion started November 30, 2011 and ended December 3, 2011.

What was surely as a result of the “resounding success” of the first coupon (probably solely judged by redemption quantity), Target decided to bring back this promotion 4 days later (December 7, 2011 through December 10, 2011). I’m sure someone at the corporate office was so impressed by the results, they wanted to start giving people raises and handing out trophies to stores for having the most “loyal” fans in their area.

By re-starting the promotion, you can see via this second thread which is 51 pages long with over 2000 posts, they effectively green lighted all of the original people who abused the promotion to do it again and also allowed those who missed out on the first opportunity to rob Target to join in the looting. This was a concerted effort by people who conspired to abuse this program on a national level. (Gotta love the internet!)

The thread is addicting to read. It’s like watching a train wreck reality show. It’s hard to believe that someone somewhere connected to Target isn’t watching this. In fact, based on statements made by the Slickdeals moderators, Target was aware (however minimally) of the thread since they asked SlickDeals not to post a PDF or image of the coupon. I’m sure they wanted the web traffic to their website versus to SlickDeals.

The dedication, time and effort invested by some of these people is impressive. I’m also astounded by the apparent lack of training or caring shown by the Target employees who allowed this coupon abuse as well as the failure of store management to recognize that it was happening in the first place. This failure and lack of training is obvious due to the inconsistency of success these people report experiencing. When you have to start disguising yourself, visiting multiple cashiers and you get rejected but still keep trying, an intelligent person would know that they are, at the very least, doing something wrong, even if their conscience hadn’t already told them that earlier.

Oh, and to put further emphasis on the failure of this promotion, many of the looters people, once they had collected as many free gift cards as they desired (or the promotion ended), then took all those free $10 gift cards and proceeded to buy Visa and Amex gift cards with them, thus negating them from even having to spend the free money they stole got from Target at Target. I’m sure other retailers appreciate Target’s monetary infusion into the economy and into their store’s Christmas bottom line. (Hey, I got a bunch of free Target gift cards, let’s go spend them at Wal-Mart!)

In my opinion, this tops the absurdity of the “Kindle Fire Deal That Wasn’t Supposed To Be” post I wrote a few weeks ago, and is another reason why social media promotions must be monitored and measured carefully. Just looking in your computer and seeing how many coupons were redeemed, at least in this case, isn’t an indicator of how effective the campaign was. It was an indicator of how screwed over Target got.

Merry Christmas, Target!

[UPDATE 12/2 – This phenomenon is still going strong. People are STILL trying to get this deal.]

For many, Black Friday has become more about the “thrill of the hunt” than about a real need for savings. People lined up 9 days early at a Best Buy in Sarasota, FL. In my opinion, there really wasn’t anything worth waiting NINE DAYS IN LINE but, hey, that’s just me.

On to the sale that wasn’t supposed to be.

A Target store in Trumbull, CT didn’t have enough Kindle Keyboard 3G’s in stock for their Black Friday sale so, in an act to make their customers happy, they decided to sell their stock of Kindle Fire’s at the same discount (38%) that was being offered in the ad for the other item. This effectively reduced a very popular, just-released item from $199 to $123.38 plus tax. Kudos to them.

One of the people who managed to get this deal (and it is a good deal) decided to post the deal to a popular deal website, Slickdeals, to inform other bargain shoppers. Many people saw the deal and attempted to get their local Targets to sell it at that price to little success. Then one person attempted to get the item price-matched at a Wal-Mart using the display pictures and receipt images as proof of the price…and succeeded.

This prompted a mad rush on the country’s Wal-Marts. The crowd talking about and trying to get this deal kept each other up-to-date on where they had succeeded and failed posting pictures of receipts and store locations as they went, in real-time. Remember, this started with one store who made a special deal to its customers.

This thread has grown to over 59 pages (2300+ posts) as people scramble around all over the country, sometimes visiting 3-4 Wal-Marts and other retailers in an attempt to get this deal price-matched and save $75. Some people just want a deal. Some are looking to resell these which, by my calculations, would net them AT MOST $50 each.(Check for yourself) Many just bought them because…well.. for no reason other than it was a good deal.

I like a good deal as much as anybody but this is just insanity. The unsuspecting managers at these competing stores are getting hammered. In many cases, these deal seekers report having to “convince” (ie. complain vigorously) the managers to even give them the deal in the first place. I suspect many managers just gave them the deal to save themselves headaches. I’m fairly certain that these deal-seekers aren’t being straight forward when attempting to get this price-matched deal (ie. telling them the circumstances under which only this one Target sold the item at that price and why) which, in my opinion, is fraudulent, or, at the very least, dishonest. To top that off, many people are doing this simply to say they succeeded as, more often than not, they are failing. However, just enough people are succeeding to keep people trying.

What compels people to waste so much time in an effort to get a deal on an item they may not even want under circumstances that take advantage of retailers requiring them to be dishonest because one store made a special deal to their customers?

This started on Black Friday and is still going on today.

What are your thoughts?