Sears promotion this week is 15% off any Craftsman tools you can fit in a grocery bag they supply. I honestly can’t think of anything I need that would fit and wouldn’t be better with this coupon — but I’m not in the market for any power tools right now.

All I know is that I may have spent a bit too much $$ in all.

The general manager (not the ops manage, with whom I’d spoken previously) of my local Sears just called me and apologized for their mishandling of the situation. He was away from the store for a while and returned to find this issue unresolved. He promises the clerks will all be informed that it’s a real coupon, and they should accept it.

No word yet on whether the district manager who sent out the bogus “it’s fake” email will get involved.

I’ll head up this afternoon and see what happens “on the ground”.

The coupon is still hosted on Sears’ website and it’s still in their POS system, yet many managers have resorted to making up their own rules regarding whether to honor the coupon or not. It was to be expected that people would run amock with the coupon. Even when Lowes issued unique one-per-email coupons for the free screwdrivers, the system was abused and many people ended up shafted by stores’ lack of inventory.

It would be foolish to think that Sears was clueless as to what would happen - they’re not exactly new to retail. A simple “one per customer” announcement or correction would have made most people happier. With some Sears allowing 20 coupons per visit, and others allowing none, who knows what the repercussions will be.

I wonder just how many people recently vowed never to step foot into Sears again because of this debacle.

Also, go to Document Properties (Ctrl-D) in your PDF viewer, and you’ll see that it was created by Illustrator CS2, with the creation timestamp and everything. Theoretically you *could* use Illustrator to save a scan as PDF, but it’s sort of an expensive elephant-gun for that. It’s more likely that someone would just save as PDF from within their scanning software, were that their goal, in which case the file would indicate that software.

Anyway, if Sears had simply said “One coupon per customer”, or “One coupon per customer, not valid unless part of printed email”, or some such, then they’d have every right to refuse the coupon, as they’ve been doing. No customer is “transferring” the coupon to any other customer, we’re all getting it straight from Sears. I don’t think we’re in the wrong for trying to hold them to what their fine print says.

Now, if they wanted to claim that the whole thing was a mistake, hide behind the “not responsible for typographical errors” doctrine, then they’d have a defense. But they’d have to correct the error as soon as possible, and the fact that the original PDF sits unaltered on their site tells me clearly that this is not a mistake, it’s quite deliberate, and that they’re probably enjoying the stream of customers it brings in. The fact that people tend to still buy things after being told they can’t use the coupon is just a happy side effect for their bottom line. I think it’s somewhere on the spectrum of “false advertising” and “bait and switch”, but I’m not a lawyer and don’t really have the resources to pursue that angle.

As for using multiple coupons in a single transaction, I actually did read about it. There was a single case described in a tool/woodworking forum where the customer was allowed to use 10 coupons in a single transaction for $50 off. This was when the coupon just came out and the manager probably didn’t know what to do about it or didn’t want to deal with long lines right during the pre-christmas frenzy.

Who said that? I certainly didn’t. Nate didn’t. Stuart didn’t. Poor aaron can’t even get his Sears to accept a single coupon. That covers most of the posts here.

Look, their computer system wouldn’t *let* the register jockey scan the coupon more than once per transaction. It’s that simple. It’s not even possible for a manager to override that — it’s simply built into the system. (For argument’s sake, the manager *could* take $5 off each item by hand, but then he’d be bypassing the system checks on whether or not it’s a valid coupon for the item, he’d get questioned over what the heck this massive discount was, etc.).

If you bother reading the other posts you’ll see that Nate, Stuart, myself, etc. are all doing one transaction at a time. I’ve made sure to only go to the registers when nobody else is in line, and I’ve let others go ahead while I’m in the middle of my 10 transactions. I’ve even had bored cashiers split the checkouts between their registers.

This is the price WE pay for using this coupon like mad. Don’t like it? Don’t use the coupon, or only use it once per visit regardless of how many items you have. Don’t jerk off Sears even further by using your credit card (although, again, doing so is likely to get your card locked by the provider; and if it doesn’t, I’d _seriously_ consider switching cards since their fraud department sucks).

As an aside — Stuart, if you carefully at the coupon it’s pretty clear that it was scanned from somewhere. It has what looks to be dried splatters from water or some other kind of liquid. But, as we’ve both noted, if they didn’t want it there, then they would’ve taken it down by now.

I had walked in with the intention of getting answers and to the bottom of this rather than using my coupon, and I was somewhat successful.

They’re not being totally unreasonable. The manager said that he would accept the coupon if the customer could show on a computer that he received the coupon directly. So far, everyone that agreed to the challenge showed him links to 3rd party deals sites.

The manager’s arguments were very creative. First he said that this was scanned in from a “Sears Book” or similar print advertisement. Then he claimed that it was a scan of an existing coupon. I showed him that the coupon was directly on the site. He said void if copied. I asked him how else to scan in a web coupon than to print it.

We then went over the letting and it clearly shows void if transferred. One can argue that Sears transfered the coupon to the public by posting a non-unique coupon viewable to all on their website. Technically, by using the coupon without specifically being invited to do so may be voiding it under the “transfering” clause.

The bottom line is that once a store manager decides to refuse the coupon, there’s nothing to do to fight it. Sears definitely would have pulled the coupon and put up an error message in its stead by now if they no longer wanted any stores to honor it.

Sorry you live out in the sticks, Matt. I’ve got 10 Sears within a half-hour drive. Many folks have mentioned they’d accept multiple coupons on a single transaction, but my store did not. They accepted the coupons, decided to ring up each item separately, so chide them online if they go out of business.

I spend plenty of money at that Sears, so it’s no skin off my tooter nor of theirs.

It appears that at least my local Sears has been updating their database about what the coupon should be valid for — as noted above, I was able to purchase the 10-in-1 screwdriver with coupon earlier this week when I couldn’t the week before. I bought the Auto-switch as well, no problems this time.

I’ll definitely check out the Sears Essentials stores; I’d feel a little chintzy using it at Lowe’s or HD, even though they won’t be as forgiving as Sears. Plus my experience with using non-brand coupons at both stores means adding 10-15 minutes to the checkout time as the clerks desperately try to figure out how to do it.

Anyway, using a competitor’s coupon policy to bring this good deal to other stores is just plain devious. I love it! From the bit of reading I did, it seems that acceptance of customer-printed (email, web) coupons is spotty at best, but definitely worth a try. I’m fairly sure they wouldn’t let you use a dozen in an afternoon all in separate transactions, though.

One of the other significant differences is that their mechanics tools aren’t behind the plexi cages found at most regular Sears stores. I think that Sears Essentials were converted from existing KMARTs.

I was able to use a coupon at Lowes earlier on a Stanley demo driver 2 pack.

The first Sears Essentials I visited didn’t have an impressive selection, but I picked out a few items and made my way to the tool department cashier. He was skeptical of the B&W coupon (I use a laser printer), but when I explained, and it scanned correctly, he accepted it and let me use a few more in separate transactions.

The second Sears Essentials I tried, I got to late. Like, 8:35PM late. So by the time I’d made my selections, the tools cashier was already counting down his drawer, so I just went up to the general registers in front. I got a young cashier who didn’t so much as bat an eyelash at the laser-printed coupons, and since there was nobody in line behind me, he didn’t seem to mind doing separate transactions at all.

Even before checking out, I was impressed with that store. The aisles I walked past were clean and well faced, the tools section was pretty well stocked, and the cheapie tools (the K&R crap in the cardboard bins) were impeccably organized, not scattered all over like in most stores. I saw a few tools that I didn’t even recognize from my local genuine Sears store. I’ll definitely stop in there next time I’m in the neighborhood.

My local store, well, let’s just say they’ve ratcheted down a few notches on my list of “favorite places to dispose of disposable income”.

I’m keeping the URL written down on a separate page in my pocket notepad, so if I get grief, or if it comes up in conversation, I can just tear off the page and hand it over. Writing it down ahead of time lets me mind my penmanship, and point out the “upper-case letter O” which I think screws a lot of people up when they try to type it in directly.

No, it’s not a nice way to do business, but the store manager is the one who doesn’t want to believe his own company’s website.

Nate, I agree — your local store is being a bunch of jerks over this. This is a national promotion, the stores get reimbursed by national for the coupons, so there’s absolutely no valid reason to not honor it.

As for the link to the coupon — there is no link to it from sears.com itself. This is not unusual, nor does it say anything about the validity of the coupon. There are a number of other pages on sears.com (and most other websites) that aren’t internally linked but are still valid.

Really, if this wasn’t a valid promotion then it would be simple for Sears to stop it — remove the link (or replace it with a new file of the same name indicating it’s invalid) and send out a corporate notice to all stores to place official signage declaring the coupon invalid (think they can’t do that? Wanna bet? How do you think they deal with weekly or daily sales, or (better) misprints? What about recalls?). That would take a day or two at most, while this deal has been going on for two weeks now.

http://www.sears.com/ue/home/5Offcoupon.pdf

I was turned down at a different Sears today. Spoke with the manager. He let me redeem my 2 coupons. Some of the shelves really are barren, so it’s obvious that the store had seen quite a few coupons before mine.

Basically, the stores have some freedom in accepting or denying a promotion like this. What’s also happening is that people are coming in with low quality prints or B&W prints, and the UPCs are not scanning.

From my conversation with the manager, it seemed like he was completely confused about all this. Some “higher ups” are telling them not to accept the coupon while others are telling them that the coupon is okay.

If you stand your ground, reasonable managers will likely let you use a coupon or four. If the manager’s not reasonable, then get the store number and manager’s name on record, file a complaint, and find a different Sears to shop at.

and again, to quote nate:
“One more thing: If anyone can find the Sears page that links to the PDF on their website, rather than external sites like Toolmonger linking to the PDF on Sears’ website, it would be helpful. Being able to walk up to an in-store kiosk and navigate straight to the coupon on their own site would quash this, I think.”

yes yes yes. The manager kept insisting that he couldnt get to the coupon by navigating to the website, thereby (apparently!) validating his claim that the coupon was put there illigitimately. so does someone know the path?

It may pay to try to use the coupon at Lowes or Home Depot - they typically accept “competitor’s coupons” but printouts fall into a grey area and can be denied.