Many of you have asked me about the new Walmart Coupon Policy, a new policy that many of the stores are hearing about for the first time in the last 2 weeks.

The New Walmart Coupon Policy is really a register update.  I initially told you about all of these changes back in 2012, YES! Crazy it takes this long. Yes, many or most of the managers are hearing about this for the first time this week. The new system so far is almost a total disaster. I understand why they had to make changes, fraud is so rampant, I just wish that the system worked better.

I write this hoping that my friends at Walmart can take some constructive criticism. The systems are rejecting many valid coupons and the even bigger problem is that the cashiers and CSM’s are so poorly trained that they cause a lot more problems. People leave feeling cheated and in some cases being treated like criminals.

The new system has a lot of prompts for different reasons and right now it seems that if a coupon beeps everyone is rejecting it, by everyone I mean cashiers, CSM’s and even managers. I don’t blame the cashiers, they fear for their jobs and don’t want to make any mistakes.

The entire purpose of the changes to the system is to take the decision out of the cashiers hands, the problem is that the systems is broken. Not as bad as Healthcare.gov but it isn’t pretty. Walmart needs to make some major adjustments or they are going to push away a lot of good customers. WALMART!!!! Please don’t let a small percentage of bad apples ruin it for the rest of us.

Below is a copy of a management memo of frequently asked questions that is very helpful in explaining the update to the registers. Click to See Walmart Coupon Policy & Walmart Price Match Policy.

The Q& A’s that I find most valuable are questions 5,6 & 8.

I have made some changes to my initial impressions based on the full memo. 

Walmart Coupon Policy Changes:

1. All Walmart Register systems were updated to accept the GS1 Date bar Codes that most coupons have switched to and all eventually will go to. According to the memo it will take until Oct for All registers to be updated.

2. All coupons are supposed to be scanned on the flatbed scanners, the handheld scanners are not updated and therefore it is “recommended” that there use is discontinued. This means that a store manager can allow the handheld scanners to be used but I wouldn’t expect it for sure.

3. The coupon must scan (not a new change) . Cashiers/CSM’s or Managers should not override or manually enter coupons.(YMMV)

4. If a coupon does not scan they are instructed to return the coupon to you. This applies to Printable Coupons and newspaper insert coupons.

Here are a few major reasons for these changes:

1. Coupon Fraud- My local Walmart took a hit of over $6,000.00 in August 2102 of fraudulent/counterfeit coupon. The highest month they had exceeded over $20,000 and are consistently over $10,000. The average dollar amount of coupon fraud per Walmart location has been as high as $10,00 per month. This number doesn’t seem like a huge number for a store that does millions of dollars in sales, but this number comes right off of the profit margin. There are nearly 4,000 Walmart Stores in the US, if you take the number of stores by the average amount of fraud the numbers get as high as $40,000,000 per month.

2.Employee Coupon Fraud- There have been several stories about massive scale coupon fraud being perpetrated on Walmart stores by there own employees.

3. Coupon Bar Decoding- Yes, another form of coupon fraud. The old bar codes had a lot of info that could be deciphered and used on products that they were not intended for. The new GS1 bar codes will eliminate that.