How to Spot a fake Coupon?

[chel]

I was just at Wal mart and the CSM refused to accept my 2 coupons for $2/any kashi item from the recycled bank. I received these from my sister and she received these from one of her customers. My sister is always extra nice to the couponers at her store. She never questioned them and goes the extra mile for them since I her sister is a couponer too. Every time her cashiers have coupon issue she never questioned the customer and always honor their coupons. In return some of her customer gives her coupons and then in turn she gives them to me. One time she received 40 coupon inserts (wow)!!! More for me.

So I never questioned any coupons that I get from her 'til today. The coupons are in black and white and they are printed from Recycled Bank. CSM said that the numbers are all the same and she will only honor one of them ( I only used 2). I was upset and ready to make a complaint. I started looking at my q's from coupons.com and the numbers are all the same. PLEASE HELP.

[rolla]

I don't know if this will help you or not but I have looked at some of the IPs I have printed and in the upper right-hand corner is a dot-scan barcode with numbers right below it - those numbers are different even if it is for the same q. I don't know if that is always the case for every IP as I've only printed coupons off the internet from sites listed on couponmom.com or from manufacturer websites. I've never received IPs from anyone but I do know that there is so much fraud out there that it could be where your sister , through no fault of her own, received some IPs that aren't legitimate.

[Bear]

The barcode numbers on IPs are the same, but in most cases there is a serial number or a pin number on the coupon that should be different on each coupon. You can only tell that the coupons you have are not copies of each other. It is harder to tell if the coupons are copies of other coupons that the original person already used. Trading IPs is a tricky business.