Coupon Crazy by Mary Potter Kenyon

Author:Mary Potter Kenyon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Familius
Published: 2013-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

For someone like me who had never attended a refund convention, their subsequent demise was of little consequence. But even the most isolated refunder would hear about Ellen Biles, a Norcross, Georgia, woman indicted for rebate fraud. Biles was arrested at a March 19, 1993, refund convention she was hosting. Authorities began investigating Ms. Biles after a Pep Boys automotive center in Norcross received an anonymous letter accusing Biles of creating false Pep Boys receipts and selling them along with $5 rebate claims on tires. Store managers had received fifty-five claims from across the country for tires supposedly bought at the Norcross store. Most of the receipts were dated October 28, 1992. Evidence submitted at her trial revealed that Biles had received in excess of seven hundred thousand dollars from her fraudulent rebate business between December 1990 and March of 1993. Besides renting out post office boxes under alias names, she taught others how to use her questionable methods to wealth in a monthly bulletin called, “Ellen and Tony’s Catalog.”

“I remember reading in her bulletin about how to make a Pringles lid work for half a dozen offers instead of a single offer and how to make shampoo hinges that looked genuine for those offers that required only a hinge and a code written from the bottle. And of course, she also published the code or even tracings of parts of the bottles that were required for the refund. I wouldn’t even need to purchase the product to get the refunds. It was all about beating the system and getting back as much as possible from the manufacturers,” one former subscriber told me.

By the time Dateline NBC picked up the story in a May 1995 report, “The Rebate Game,” no one wanted to hold or attend any refund conventions, in case they, too, would be targeted by investigators.

These “professional” refunders did more than tarnish the image of refunding. Their illegal activities prompted manufacturers to require much more than a simple receipt for a refund and led to a sharp decline in the number of refunds offered. By the mid-1990s most of us had abandoned collecting and saving our trash in preparation for the next “big deal.” I built a bonfire with my labels in 1998. Refunding had changed forever, but at least I could count on my hobby of couponing to remain the same.

Or could I?

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