Abusing the employee discount? Companies cracking down

There's no telling how many companies are cracking down on abuse of employee discount policies, but one company that recently announced doing so is GM. The logic is simple: Passing the employee discount to a non-employee costs the company money. GM says that the employee purchase program can save a buyer from $1,000 to $9,000.

Imagine an employee buying a car for her uncle using the employee discount. There was clearly a significant savings (the reason why the employee and family member did this in the first place) and GM loses a sale of a car to a legitimate customer which might have been profitable. Multiply this situation by hundreds or thousands, and it's easy to see that GM has lost a lot of money.

Certainly GM is not the only company that struggles with this issue. I'd venture to guess that it has a firm policy about the discount, but hasn't strictly enforced it in the past, when the economics of the car business were better.