Aldi $10 off $40 Coupon: Did you print the Non-Restricted version? You CAN Use It!

 

First off, for those that will be looking for this $10 off $40 Aldi coupon to print, it is NO LONGER AVAILABLE, the unrestricted coupon has been removed.

Last weekend there were a lot of sites posting about a $10 off $40 coupon at Aldi and that is could be used at all Aldi store locations. They weren’t lying, but Aldi’s official statement on Facebook and via their customer service quickly denounced the “all” location coupon as a fake.

Aldi spent the weekend keeping quiet aside from their original statement and REMOVING any posts or mentions of the coupon from their Facebook page. However, some stores outside of the “official” five states on the “official” coupon were accepting the coupons.

People were getting very upset about the removal of posts without any statement because the coupon without the restrictions was appearing as hosted ON the Aldi website. A lot of questions started getting asked:

• Were they hacked?
• Was it a clever fake that appeared to be on the Aldi site, but actually wasn’t?
• Was it made but never intended for release?

It appears that the last question is what the answer was – however Aldi hasn’t actually made that statement, they have made this one – over and over and over on their Facebook page:

“Thank you for contacting us. The recent digital coupon featuring $10 off a $40 purchase at our stores was available for download for a limited time. The coupon can be used through November 15 in all ALDI locations. If you would like further information, please feel free to contact ALDI customer service from a computer by clicking the blue “Customer Service” image (underneath our cover photo). If you are on a mobile device or tablet app, please send us a direct message with your email, phone number and store location & we will be happy to get in touch with you.”

That statement first appeared on this post from Sarah on their page where she laid it out for them and took them to task for their deletion of comments and refusal to comment.

So how does this happen?

It’s not uncommon for companies to upload multiple promotions while in the proposal stage of a campaign. It has also happened before this that a company has either forgotten to remove the non final versions or incorrectly assumed people wouldn’t find the other versions if they didn’t link to, promote or officially release them.

Aldi’s official release included a link with a coupon restricted to 5 states for a Kansas City Chiefs promotion and the URL ended in “coupon_4.jpg” – and some savvy internet reader(s) probably wondered about coupons 1, 2, and 3. And they found gold in version 2 – an unrestricted version available for print live on the Aldi website and it was shared.

Does that mean those people are in the wrong?

No. The coupon appears to have not intended for release, but it was left live either by ignorance or accident. But the people wondering about the other versions would have wondered about promotions in other areas that maybe they had missed.

It’s not at all uncommon for stores to release say a $10 off $40 in 5 states and a $5 off $15 in 5 others and a $20 off $80 somewhere else.

Does that mean Aldi lied?

Again, no. But it does mean that they didn’t look deep enough into the issue early in the debacle. The people fielding the calls and posts were probably only aware of the official release and had no idea at first that the other version was hosted on their website.

However, when people started bringing the other link to their attention you would think a better course of action would have been to call the website administrator and people higher up in the marketing department rather than deleting customer posts and trying to pretend like it wasn’t happening all weekend long.

This was BIG. In the end Aldi took their lumps, learned a lesson and ended up making good on a major glitch on their part.

It is important to note that they didn’t have to make good on it. A full release of the events and an apology may not have made everyone happy, but it would have been honest and that’s really what we want from these companies. So even though they have removed the coupon, they are honoring it and we appreciate that.