The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals® (ASPCA®) has announced that it’s teaming up with TLC’s Extreme Couponing for the new season of the show, which premieres May 28th. Today, I received an email Olivia Melikhov, Social Media Manager of the ASPCA announcing it has teamed up with Extreme Couponing, and asking me if I would share this information with my readers. Viewers are encouraged to participate in their Extreme Couponing challenge on Facebook, donating pet care supplies to local animal shelters.
“As a writer who educates your readers on how to get the best deals, we thought you may be interested in learning how you can use your bargain-shopping prowess to help make a difference. We at the ASPCA have teamed up with TLC’s “Extreme Couponing” and are encouraging shoppers to use coupons to help their local animal shelters. “
The email from the ASPCA ended with “Thanks so much for helping to educate your readers on how they can use coupons for a good cause. Please let me know if you have any questions.”
Any questions?
- Why would an upstanding organization such as the ASPCA partner with a television show that promotes counterfeit coupon usage, coupon fraud, and coupon misredemption? Major news outlets, including MSNBC, Time.com, and The Wall Street Journal’s SmartMoney.com reported months ago that shoppers were using counterfeit coupons on the show.
- Why didn’t the ASPCA’s social media department do a quick Google search about the show before agreeing to partner with them? Googling “extreme couponing fraud” returns over 258,000 results — more than 50 pages worth! — from the media and coupon blogs vilifying the continued, flagrant misuse of coupons and fraud on “Extreme Couponing.”
- Has the ASPCA read the statements issued by the Coupon Information Corporation, the coupon industry’s watchdog group, regarding the counterfeit coupon use on the show, as well as their urging retailers to use extreme caution before participating with the show?
I emailed Olivia and asked some of these questions. She replied:
“I’m very sorry that you’re concerned about our news – our intent behind sending out this call-to-action was just to find a creative way to encourage people to do a good deed and make a generous donation to their local animal shelter. We would never encourage committing coupon fraud of any kind. We also do not have a formal partnership with Extreme Couponing, we are just working with them to get the message out about how people can make a difference in their communities.”
olivia.melikhov@aspca.org
If you wish to donate to the ASPCA, or to your local animal shelter, I strongly encourage you to — but there are ways to do that without involving yourself in the “Extreme Couponing” challenge. Visit the ASPCA online at www.aspca.org.
hwendt12 says
While I understand that organizations like the ASPCA have been hit especially hard in recent times, I completely agree that they dropped-the-ball in doing their homework regarding potential partners. You would think they would RUN SCREAMING from the table due to the bad press about the misrepresentation and fraud that are portrayed on that show. It makes me sad! :(
Flag1 says
Very sad they did not do their homework OR they want the donations so badly as to look the other way.
ashwore says
Did you return the e-mail asking those questions? I grew up with my parents supporting EVERYTHING ASPCA or animal related and this just doesn’t seem right to me. I’d love to hear what the answers are if you did in fact email those questions back. It’s such a shame, we donate $10 monthly but it’s possible we’ll be ending that. I hate the show and everything it stands for. It took what could have been a positive and great show on learning to coupon into something that’s turned the coupon community upside down.
Anyway, if you hear back from them I’d love to see a post on their reply. If they do stay partners we’ll be donating else where. As you said, the ends do not justify the means.
Alice says
With everyone here. Think of the animals and the donations everyone here can make. What difference does it make if they did their research, their main focus is the animals. Why does everyone take Jill’s word as God. Think of the abused animals that need your support.