Fraudulent $100 Publix Coupon

Publix shoppers – by now you may have seen the $100 off $120+ Publix coupon floating around on Facebook. If you haven’t seen this coupon, let me start off by telling you it is fraudulent. Last night Publix released a statement confirming that the coupon is in fact fraudulent and that the coupon is not valid at any of their locations. I would go so far as to recommend you not click on the coupon and especially do not give your email address (as pictured below) because I promise you that if you supply your info, you will begin getting lots and lots of junk email.

Fox 13 came over today to talk to me about the coupon. It’s tough for me because when I saw all of the Facebook statuses showing the coupon yesterday, I wasn’t tempted to click on it. I knew right away that it was bogus. But that said, many of my honest friends were innocently posting it thinking that it was legitimate.

If you were someone who thought the coupon was legitimate, I wanted to give you a few tips as to how to differentiate bogus coupons from legitimate coupons.

First – if a coupon looks too good to be true, it probably is. If you find a printable coupon for a free product or a high value dollar off coupon (example: $10.00 off diapers, $100 off groceries, etc), it most likely is too good to be true. Before clicking on the coupon, go directly to the brand or store’s webpage and see if the offer is there. If it is, then it may in fact be real. But 99 times out of 100, you will find that the coupon is bogus.

Second – a reliable place to find coupons is the coupon inserts in the Sunday paper. If you prefer to print out your coupons, reliable sources are Coupons.com, Smartsource.com, Target.com and Redplum.com.

Thirdly – don’t buy coupons online. If you go on ebay, you can find coupons for free products like Free Doritos, Free Huggies Diapers, Free Coca-Cola 12 packs, etc. The coupons will be pictured on ebay and may look real. But 99 times out of 100 they are not real. And when you go to the store to use them, the store will not accept your coupons. Or, the store will lose money if they do accept your coupons.

For me, couponing is a tangible way for me to help financially support my family by saving money at grocery and drugstores each week. I save hundreds of dollars each month using coupons and we can use that money towards bills/savings/etc. I am able to save hundreds of dollars and I don’t use bogus coupons. So I want to encourage you! If you focus on use legitimate coupons, you too can save hundreds of dollars.

If you have any questions about the legitimacy of coupons, leave a comment! I would love to answer your questions!