These “creative and diligent” people are like scalpers for tickets to sporting events or those pernicious people who sweep into the toy stores and buy up all that season’s “hot” toys to sell for twice the price online.
The publicity of having a televised competition is only going to spoil it for everybody when the coupon promotions are clamped down upon by the brand marketers who haven’t been paying very close attention to how their own promotions can be gamed. The notoriety will cause such opportunities to be greatly curtailed or killed altogether.
First of all, I think it's something like 2% of coupons are ever redeemed. They are more likely to stop coupons because of the lack of the rate of return.
Most coupons are put out by the manufactures. They actually want people to use them, and will reimburse the stores for these coupons. So, it's zero lost to the store.
Now, the stores will put out their own coupons, and offer their own sale items.
It is this overlap that allows you to pay pennies on the dollar.
It doesn't make someone a scammer, it makes them a good shopper.