ALERT: $2/2 Johnson & Johnson Counterfeit Coupon
First off, I am literally sick to my stomach. Just a little bit ago, I received an email from an awesome reader, Kristen, who alerted me to the fact that the $2/2 Johnson & Johnson coupon pictured above is counterfeit. This coupon actually had bricks.com in the URL and appeared to me to be 100% legitimate; and as a result, I have referenced the coupon on Hip2Save several times in the past few weeks and have printed it myself. The Coupon Information Corporation (CIC) just added this coupon to its list of counterfeit coupons as of yesterday, April 15th.
Now that you are likely sick to your stomach as well, you are probably wondering what you should do if you already unintentionally used this coupon at a store and/or have this coupon in your possession?! First and foremost, you want to immediately destroy any of these coupons that you may have. If you used the coupons to purchase items that are still in un-opened packages, I highly encourage you to take the items back to your store and return them immediately. (Please note that I mean that you should return the items and only be reimbursed for the purchase price minus the coupon amount so in some cases you may not be reimbursed at all if the item was free after the coupon). Stores that accepted these coupons will NOT be reimbursed by the manufacturer so by returning the items that you purchased with this coupon, you are preventing the store from losing money. If you have already opened/used the items purchased with this coupon, I am honestly not sure what to advise you to do; however, I would encourage you to contact your local store manager and ask him/her what is recommended in this situation.
From the bottom of my heart, I am so sorry. I spend countless hours researching deals and evaluating coupons to ensure that all deals on Hip2Save are 100% legitimate. I value all of your trust and am still in shock that this was a fake coupon.
Please feel free to share your thoughts below….
thanks for the heads up colin I never would have found out about this otherwise I remember I had bookmarked the link to the coupon to print out later but now I can delete it
Yikes! A friend just emailed me your post, and I am disgusted that someone would do this. This hurts all of us who use coupons, because the stores will stop accepting them. My Walmart is already very choosy about which printables they will accept. Don’t be too hard on yourself–that is a very convincing fake.
When you check on the following website, it says the coupon is valid. Not sure why?
https://www.couponsinc.com/crc/index.asp
https://www.veri-fi.com
You entered Veri-FI code 0289205813243101
This code is VALID.
The coupons bearing this code
must read as follows:
Summary Save $2.00 on any Two (2) LISTERINE® Antiseptic Mouthwash;
Description: or STAYFREE® or CAREFREE® item (except 20ct and 22ct. sizes); or any ZYRTEC®; or any AVEENO®
UPC Code: 9 9411677319 3
EAN Code:
Exp. Date: No Later Than 4/30/2011
Timestamp: 4/17/2011 9:58:55 AM
this is the opinion of http://www.mashupmom.com
Color me skeptical. I can’t think of ANY way someone would counterfeit an original printable Bricks coupon, because they have to work out deals with Coupons.com to post them online in the first place. My guess is that some doofus made PDFs or photocopies out of it and has been passing them around. When the CIC puts out notices, they don’t distinguish if there was an original “good” coupon that someone copied. Remember when they put up a big COUNTERFEIT notice on the $1.00/1 Skippy peanut butter that came out of the Dominick’s/Safeway football booklet? The original, obviously not counterfeit, but some idiot had copied it and was passing it around online. From their posted version, there was no way to tell that the original was good. It seems likely that this is what happened here, so if you printed out a good coupon it would have a different dotscan code in the upper right than the posted one people are making copies of.
the fraud coupon was only the coupon in the pic with the exact same numbers jsut verifie before you use any!
J&J will not reimburse stores b/c of the fraud one circulating. It doesn’t matter that the one you printed is ‘veri-fyed’, just that any IPs turned in going forward are considered counterfeit.
It is my understanding the clearing houses will reject the coupons that have already been used. Since these are copied coupons, when they get to the clearing houses then they find out they are copies. If you printed yours from the bricks link, you would and should be fine.
They are not reimbursing for copied coupons, this does not include properly printed ones.
It is my understanding the clearing houses will reject the coupons that have already been used. Since these are copied coupons, when they get to the clearing houses then they find out they are copies. If you printed yours from the bricks link, you would and should be fine.
They are not reimbursing for copied coupons, this does not include properly printed ones.
Melissa said: “J&J will not reimburse stores”. For all of those that printed legit coupons from bricks, please post a legitimate source to back up that incredible statement.
https://bricks.coupons.com/TAF.asp?bt=vg&tqnm=ycwodcq99277344&o=84512&c=AS&p=bBmEPyVU&tqnm=ycwodcq99277344&cista=201
This is the legitimate coupon link, from Bricks.Coupons.com – now expired
Thanks Collin for spreading the word on this! I had this in my CVS deals too, yikes! If you ore readers are ever unsure about a coupon check for the Ver-Fi.com verbiage and input the numbers to see if it’s valid.
I’m still stumped as to what happened because the url appears to be a valid Bricks url. Were they hacked?
No wonder the lady at Walgreens was having problems scanning it. She still took it because I had her read the coupon. Well I guess I’ll have to throw away the other one I have. Crap. Good thing I didn’t use both of them yet!
Wow. I printed 2 of these. Thank goodness I have not used them yet!!!! However, I went on Coupon Resource Center (That you gave a link to on your last CWC episode) and it said that this was a valid coupon? :/
So, I looked at the coupon again. It’s not funny but I did sort of laughed at how I can’t believe how blind I was that I couldn’t spot the “We will pay for the face BALUE of this coupon…”. Sheesh, that should have been a dead giveaway that this coupon was going to have issues. Veri-fi.com said that this coupon is valid, but I’m just sticking with my guts and throwing it away. It’s not worth the hassle to have it beep at CVS or getting into some sort of legal trouble. I guess I always had some kind of “feeling” that this coupon wasn’t legit when I kept stalling buying things with it, even when Carefree items were on clearance at Target.
Couponing to Disney just posted where the coupon itself is not counterfeit, BUT someone made copies of the same one and sold it online, so that coupon’s code is counterfeit. Stores probably won’t accept it anyway (I wouldn’t accept it either so I can’t blame them!). How can people be so dumb, inconsiderate, etc (those are the nice words coming to mind!!!! lol).
https://www.couponingtodisney.com/2011/04/17/counterfit-coupon-certain-copies-of-22-aveeno-listerine-band-aids/
According to Southern Savers, the coupon istelf IS valid, but someone made illegal copies and tried to sell them, and those are not valid.
I received the legit version of this $2/2 coupon in an e-mail dated 3/23 sent directly from Albertsons Corporate. I doubt Albertsons is sending mass emails out with counterfit coupons.
Full link to e-mail:
https://ebm.e.albertsons.com/c/tag/hBNidoEB8VzMtB8Z0tiAAEc5Bqj/doc.html?t_params=I_DISCLAIMER%3D0%26I_IMAGE%3D0%26I_OFFERIMAGE1%3D-2084426163%26I_OFFERIMAGE2%3D-2084425699%26I_OFFERIMAGE3%3D-2084426073%26I_OFFERIMAGE4%3D-2084426185%26I_OFFERPRICE1%3D-2084426163%26I_OFFERPRICE2%3D-2084425699%26I_OFFERPRICE3%3D-2084426073%26I_OFFERPRICE4%3D-2084426185%26I_OFFERTITLE1%3D-2084426163%26I_OFFERTITLE2%3D-2084425699%26I_OFFERTITLE3%3D-2084426073%26I_OFFERTITLE4%3D-2084426185%26EMAIL%3D%2540gmail.com%26FNAME%3DTamra%26LOYALTYCARDNUM%3D42555775708%26OFFER1%3D-2084426163%26OFFER2%3D-2084425699%26OFFER3%3D-2084426073%26OFFER4%3D-2084426185%26PASSWORD%3DB8VzMtAAEc5BBNidoEoW4l5SKqXiJg%26STORENUMBER%3D164
Maybe there is a counterfit edition of it, but this one is totally legit. Sounds like the Quaker “fake coupon” incedent a while ago…
Ok so I tried to use this today at Wags (before I saw this post 🙂 and the register beeped. She tried again and then tried to manually type in the UPC. She said the register said that this coupon was “not a valid code” so Im guessing it has been pulled from the Wags coupon database (if such a thing exists).
I TRIED to make things right.
I used 2 of these coupons around the 1st. of the month. The cashier keyed in the 4 band-aid prices (2 regular trial size & 2 Hello Kitty trial size). It still didn’t deduct the $4.00. I went to the service desk and they just gave me $4.00 in cash (no receipt was given to me for the $4.00 refund).
I really do feel terrible if they were fake coupons, so I went back to Target today and told them what I had heard about the coupons. I tried to give them $4.00, but she wouldn’t take it because she said there was no way for her to enter that into the computer.
At least I feel better. I can lay my head on my pillow tonight with a feeling that I was honest and tried to make things right. I think she thought I was nuts trying to give Target $4.00 back.
I did print mine online, so maybe mine were legit……I hope!!
Let’s step back a minute.
1). How could someone produce and spread a counterfeit coupon via the bricks system?
2). Why are the Veri-fi codes coming up as legitimate?
3). A coupon beeping, as we are all aware, is not a sign that it is counterfeit. Coupons beep all the time, especially ones that are for a wide range of products.
3). “We will pay for the face balue of this coupon”…I am constantly seeing typos on legitimate coupons, whatever part of the wording it is. That is the same as saying a store ad with a typo is not a legitimate ad.
I’m not convinced. This is likely a coupon *copy* that is being sold or spread, however it is probably best not to use it as you will be subject to scrutiny from your store now and going forward now that it is marked.
Very well said Sheila… couldn’t have said it better myself.
From what my CVS mgr said it was a valid coupon until someone decided to copy their coupon multiple times and use it at the store. Actions like that cause Coupons Inc to declare all copies void and counterfeit unfortunately.
Yes, the fact that #3 is listed twice was done purposely and ironically to demonstrate a typo in action 😉 lol
I agree completely with you. I printed off two of these when they were offered. They went through Bricks. There is no way someone could have duplicated that process. I had not used them yet so I will throw them out. However, this cannot be the first time someone has illegally copied a Bricks coupon. I think if they were pulling them due to copies, then we wouldn’t be able to use any of our Bricks coupons.
As for those who thought they were bogus due to “being too good to be true” well that may be the case many times, but I’ve found there are actually legitimate AWESOME coupons out there, such as the $3 Nivea coupon.
And Collin, you don’t need to take any responsibility for the distribution of this coupon. Because after all, you are not the person who acted illegally.
I used to be a manger at a very polpular grocery chain based out of western NY – from what I understand similar to Krogers. This company prides itself on customer service and high standars. In all of my experience, I have never had a customer so honest to come back and return something becuase they didn’t pay for it or in this case used counterfit coupon.
I commend the reader who took the time to try to pay back the store for the $4 she recieved as a restult of this coupon!
As a manager – I wouldn’t take the money back from the customer. The fact that one of our patrons was honest enough to make a trip to correct their error would have been reason enough for me to decline. I’m not sure all the manager’s would have this mind set, but since this company empowers their employees to make decisions I would have.
I used one of these coupons at CVS and had no problems. The other 3 I used at Wegmand ( buffalo area) and they all beeped. They still worked it out for me to use them. I now feel like I need to take them back. I got band aids for free cause they were on sale for .99 each. 6 packs for free. I will think of this everytime I use a band aid. YIKES
Wegmans, sorry about the d.
Odds are that there are legit coupons out there, but there are also the fraudulant ones. Most retailers that know of this are going to refuse all of these coupons so as to not take a risk. They can’t jump onto the site and verify that your particular coupons are legit or not, and if all they got was the CIC info, they don’t know any better so don’t beat up on any associates at the stores. I also applaud anyone who returns their items or offers to pay for the coupon. I don’t know particulars about the coupons, but I do know that on a few different occasions the coupons do charge $2 instead of taking off $2. I work retail and I’ve seen it do it.
I printed a one off one a two off two and a three off three baby items from the Johnson and Johnson site
It’s bad enough that my local CVS employees are soooooo unhelpful when you have a question. I’m at the point that I hate goin in there. I antisipate rudeness from the employees. I tried to use these coupons this morning BEFORE seeing this post…..register beeped and then they told me they would not be taking the coupon because it was counterfit. Well, I got defensive because I printed it from a reputable site.
Alas, I have to go back up there because they overcharged me on 3 toothbrushes.
Perhaps you should shop at another store then. You should understand that they’re just doing their job by not taking a possibly fake coupon.
Didn’t mean for that to sound rude, but if you’re so unhappy with the store you shop at, you could switch stores or switch companies.
Yeah,
Ummmmmm, the nearest CVS besides the one I go to is 20 miles away. Since I go on Sunday morning before church it isn’t possible for me to use another store.
I wasn’t upset that they refused a counterfit coupon. I never would have presented it had I known it wasn’t legit.
I simply find it unpleasant to deal with employees who don’t want to help customers and who clearly hate their job.
Thanks for you comment.
Yeah,
Ummmmmm, the nearest CVS besides the one I go to is 20 miles away. Since I go on Sunday morning before church it isn’t possible for me to use another store.
I wasn’t upset that they refused a counterfit coupon. I never would have presented it had I known it wasn’t legit.
I simply find it unpleasant to deal with employees who don’t want to help customers and who clearly hate their job.
Thanks for you comment.
Sorry, didn’t know there wasn’t another store nearby.
so sorry you have this problem. I get it a lot too, but I just learned something. They can go right in the office at cvs, rite aid, or walgreens and run the code to see if it is legit. I go right to the office door and ask for the manager now to do it, I will not have any cashier accusing me of any act of fraud. Not because I want to be rude but I like an apology when the cashier pretends to know all. I think calling corporate and explaing being accused of being a thief helps too, give them the numbers to run, and then explain you may not shop there anymore. They may be willing to send a gift card to keep you. They know how much you shop there if you give your card info. Hope it improves.
Couponing to Disney has already discussed this. It is not the original Bricks coupons that are fraud, it is the ones being sold online. I think it is horrible to be scaring people who use and have used this coupon. Someone made copies and sold online. I got mine through a true Bricks online site.
It’s not the bricks coupons that was fraudulent — somebody made copies of it and was selling (hundreds?) of them somewhere. I guess it comes down to the fact that if you didn’t print it yourself, you probably don’t want to use it… or at any rate go ahead and do the veri-fi check to make sure your q’s are valid.
Please be aware that it is NOT the actual printable coupon that is fraudulent but that ONE copy of it.
Yes, the coupon WAS legit at one time, but b/c some moron made hundreds, if not thousands of copies with the same pin #, J&J won’t reimburse stores for ANY of the IPs b/c it is now considered counterfeit.
Soooo glad I didn’t use the coupon!!! I only printed one and did not use it!!! I just destroyed it!! I hate this!! Thank you Collin for bringing this to our attention. I would have felt terrible!
The link to print it is still working. Definitely would have been pulled if it was a fake. I don’t like how the CIC does nothing to explain when they list a fraudulent coupon. Sometime in the past year or two they listed a coupon for HP Paper as fraudulent but it was definitely not. People were using it on the wrong product, but the q itself was legit. However, CIC eventually listed it as fraudulent and made a lot of people look like they were criminals.
I had gotten 12 travel packs of band aids free except for the tax. I have a friend that prints coupons for me and we share. I gave 6 packs of them to her. When I read this I was terribly upset. I wrote her an email telling her I intended to return them. After reading these posts, I will not. I believe the coupons I used were valid and legitimate. They were all printed through “bricks.” As one other comment said, how could someone make a countereit coupon that is printed through “bricks?” They are one of the strictest providers of printed coupons, never allowing more than 2 prints, etc. I understand more now that the counterfeit ones were printed by photocopy or some other fraudulent method. This infuriates me. It really does make valid couponers look bad. I was told the other day that some people don’t know that making photocopies is illegal but it seems this person knew exactly what they were doing and tried selling the counterfeit ones. I do have a problem with the “CIC”? not being specific about the fact that all coupons that appear to be like these are not counterfeit but that retailers will no longer accept them due to what has happened. It really lays a guilt trip on the ones of us that have already used ours legitimately. My 2 cents for what it’s worth. Thanks for the other comments.
OK..wait before you panic! If you printed the coupon out from the coupons.com site, YOUR COUPON IS FINE!! The reason this made the counterfeit list was someone copied the coupon multiple times and was selling them. THOSE are the counterfeit ones. If you printed it from coupons.com, yours will have a unique number and it is fine. You can double check it by going here: https://www.couponsinc.com/crc/index.asp and typing in the code on your coupon. If you printed it, it should come up fine. Unfortunately, some individual decided to commit coupon fraud and then the story got bent out of shape and spread on the Internet and now everyone thinks they are using counterfeit coupons! That is not the case (unless you copied yours or bought one that was copied). Hopefully that helps clear up the confusion. Remember with anything you see on the Internet, VERIFY before your freak out!
If you go to that site and enter the code of the counterfeit coupon it shows that it is valid. I really want to use the coupon, but I see that people are on both sides of the fence on if the store gets reimbursed…etc.
Everyone should know if they printed the coupon out themselves or not. If they did, it is not counterfeit. If you purchased one or copied it, it is. This can happen with ANY Internet coupon if someone decided to copy it 1000 times and it would end up on the list. Everyone should still use common sense. If you printed it yourself, it is not counterfeit.
I do have the original that I printed directly from the bricks link last month – and it does have the typo on it. Thought it was interesting that it was not just their counterfeit copy that had the typo, but the original coupon that was loaded. I did try using it when it came out, but it beeped, so was unable to do so; kept it in my file for April.
If you look at the SCHICK intuition coupon for $3 from face book, says exact same thing “We will pay you the face value” instead of “we will reimburse the face value”. So the wording doesn’t matter. Just my thought.
very interesting for me these coupons did not beep. We only have 1 store near us rite aid the next pharmacy is over 2 hrs away yeah the boonies. So I am buddies with our store manager at rite aid. He usually informs me of anything not right I used these well over a month ago. 🙁 So sad that people are making up fake couopns when they could just save so much not need to do the fake thing by cutting and watching sales. :(.
I looked into this and it turns out that the counterfeit ones were ones that somebody was making photocopies of and selling them on ebay. According to several sites this is and was a legitimate coupon and you can check that site that you had in your video not too long ago to verify this. (sorry I don’t have the link right off hand — but I am sure you know which one I am referring to)
They did say if you purchased any additionals there is a good chance that those were counterfeit.
They also stated that because of this going out a lot of stores may be leary to accept this coupon at all even though there are some that are legitimate
I remember using this coupon when CVS had the tiny bottles of Listerine on sale for $1. It ADDED $2 to my total and the cashier had to manually change it. I wonder if this is why? I will destroy my 2nd one that I have not used yet. Bummer b/c my husband LOVES Listerine so this was a coupon I was looking forward to using!
It doesn’t matter at this point if the coupon you have, in your possession, is legitimate or not. The fact is that the CIC has basically “red flagged” this coupon as “Counterfeit;” therefore, no store is going to accept this, because they will NOT be reimbursed.
“The fact is that the CIC has basically “red flagged” this coupon as “Counterfeit;” therefore, no store is going to accept this, because they will NOT be reimbursed.” First of all I believe the CIC is a ‘trade’ organization of which coupons.com (and others) are members. I have not seen evidence that CIC can void reimbursment to retailers. Second, it seem many stores ARE accepting it. Third, CIC is a joke.
I’m so glad this has been presented. I just went into my binder and destroyed the 2 printables I had. My coupons also misspelled value, as balue.
Thanks for keeping us up and your integrity in couponing!
hi, just wanted to let you know this my first time on your website and i love it !! about the fake coupon issue, i used 2 of them at CVS got 4 bottles of listerine for free. i am sure i printed my coupons from coupons.com so i am sure they are good. i cannot imagine going back into my CVS and telling the manager i want to return something (anything) i live in a small town in IL. the manager at my store is so mean ! customers and store employees are scared of her.
I called the phone number listed on the coupon and the woman I spoke to said I had a valid coupon. I printed my coupons off the values for health site…I didn’t see the coupon there when I checked today, but maybe that’s because I printed it a few weeks back. I also checked the CIC site and did not see it listed…I am so confused.
When I called the number on the coupon yesterday(Monday) the rep said that she had not heard anything about a counterfeit coupon. She asked a supervisor and said that he had not heard anything about it either. She asked what the coupon was for and said that she didn’t know anything about it and then just referred me to the valuesforhealth.com site if I wanted current J&J coupons. She also said that she was going to contact someone else at J&J and let them know or ask about it…
Though I did still see the counterfeit one listed on the CIC site a few minutes ago its the second one on the list as of right now.
I checked my coupon, and it’s say’s my coupon is VALID. So confused..
You entered Veri-FI code 0469406337813201
This code is VALID.
The coupons bearing this code
must read as follows:
Summary Save $2.00 on any Two (2) LISTERINE® Antiseptic Mouthwash;
Description: or STAYFREE® or CAREFREE® item (except 20ct and 22ct. sizes); or any ZYRTEC®; or any AVEENO®
UPC Code: 9 9411677319 3
EAN Code:
Exp. Date: No Later Than 4/30/2011
Timestamp: 3/24/2011 11:55:06 AM
here’s the website I used :
https://www.couponsinc.com/crc/retailers-fraud.asp
This is all crazy. I just checked the CIC website and it is no longer listed on there. Hmmmm.
As I’ve stated, the CIC is a joke. I wonder how many people, after reading this post, destroyed their perfectly good coupon (other than a typo which happens sometimes). Where are the folks that are always upset about wasted paper and ink?
CIC is a joke. They HAVE removed this from being listed after I contacted them with the link and the Veri-fi that it IS a good coupon. May want to notify your readers!