Couponers love Coupons.com because it provides plenty of coupons for their favorite brands. It is a safe, legitimate, source of coupons. What would you do without Coupons.com? One woman is finding that out after being banned for life from the popular coupon website.

Coupons in the News reported about a lawsuit that was filed by Quotient Technology (owner of Coupons.com) against a “Coupon Fairy” who was not using Coupons.com in the way it was intended. That lawsuit has come to a settlement. The name of the “Coupon Fairy” has not been fully released, but Quotient Technology has that information.

A “Coupon Fairy” is a person who engages in coupon fraud. The person prints out more coupons than they are allowed to and attempts to sell them to other couponers. In short, the “Coupon Fairies” are making money off of coupons that people are generally able to get for free.

This particular “Coupon Fairy” got caught because of a post she made on Facebook. She used her Facebook account, with her real name on it, to post about where people could find her on Instagram. She was using her Instagram account to sell coupons. It appears that this is how Quotient Technology was able to put a name with the IP address that was using Coupons.com incorrectly.

The settlement between Quotient Technology requires the “Coupon Fairy” to destroy all Coupons.com coupons that were still in her possession. She also has to “perpetually cease and desist from selling, giving away, or otherwise transferring coupons obtained through any site in the Quotient Promotions Network for her own commercial purposes and/or personal gain.”

The “Coupon Fairy” provided Quotient Technology with a copy of the computer program that she used to get around Coupon.com’s print limits. She also had to tell Quotient Technology where she got that computer program from.

A little over a year ago, Coupons.com disabled the zip code changing function on their website. This change irritated some couponers who liked to put in different zip codes in order to obtain coupons that were not for the area that they lived in.

It is impossible to say if that change was what caused the “Coupon Fairy” to use Coupons.com in a way that it was not intended to be used. Sadly, her actions, (and those of other “Coupon Fairies) are going to cause coupons to become more scarce. A manufacturer stops accepting coupons after the print limit has been hit. This means people who legitimately obtained the coupons might not be able to use them because the scammers brought multiple copies of the coupon to the grocery store first!

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