10 ms·

My experiences with Groupon mirror your own. Whenever my friends and I would show up to a business with a Groupon, we would be treated with bad attitudes, worse

My experiences with Groupon mirror your own. Whenever my friends and I would show up to a business with a Groupon, we would be treated with bad attitudes, worse service and just general reluctance when the exact opposite should have been true. I mean, that is the entire point of Groupon right? To promote a business -to spread the word on the street about how great your restaurant/bowling alley/pub is. Sadly, it has been my experience that a lot of the businesses that sign up for Groupon don't know what they are getting themselves into and as a result, take out their frustrations on customers when they can't break even for the month... which is, I think, a fatal flaw in the human psychology aspect of the business model. I'd rather just pay the sticker price and enjoy better service than have to deal with all that.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
I thought that before even trying Groupon. I can't imagine how coming in as a 2nd-class customer will improve my experience. Rather pay well, tip big and enjoy the best service they have to offer. Also, as an Engineer with a 1st-world salary, its socially responsible for me to spread it around.
- zck 11y ago
  But shouldn't Groupon just be a marketing expense? I'm not saying that the company should be ok losing money all the time, but it's common for companies to spend money to acquire customers. Do you avoid all "new customer" deals? It seems like companies on Groupon, for whatever reason, often offer way more of a discount than they're comfortable with. I wonder why that is.
  - RyanZAG 11y ago
    It's not always the company. In the case of the USA and their insane tipping customs, a customer coming in with groupon specials is going to end up tipping less. Since the whole service at USA restaurants is based around tipping, the employees know they won't really get tipped well so they're very customer hostile.
    - BashiBazouk 11y ago
      Maybe that's an upside. If the wait staff loses it's professionalism that easily, it tells me something about the restaurant...
    - imgabe 11y ago
      I'm sure a lot of people do that, but the appropriate etiquette when using a coupon at a restaurant is to tip on the full price. Most adults who frequent restaurants should know that.
      - RyanZAG 11y ago
        You know that most of the world's population doesn't tip at all? Given that, it seems kind of strange to assume everyone just knows the appropriate tipping etiquette without being told when getting the coupon or sitting down. Plus the most active users of groupon are probably doing it to save as much money as possible with coupons. They're unlikely to willingly throw away those savings on massive tips... and from what you hear about frequent groupon users they really don't tip the price pre-coupon.
        camdenre 11y ago
        I would guess that he meant to say most "American" adults should know better.
        imgabe 11y ago
        I was replying to your comment specifically about tipping customs in the US. If you grow up in the US and go to restaurants it's not unreasonable to absorb tipping etiquette along the way. You still save money with a coupon, you're not paying full price for the meal. That's no reason to screw over the server who depends on tips for a living. If someone is seriously strapped for cash and needs to save money, they should be cooking at home, not going to restaurants. Don't get me wrong, I'd happily do away with the whole tipping culture and just have the entire price printed on the menu. But, as long as we have tips, take the time to learn how to do it right.
  - jacalata 11y ago
    I think there were a bunch of stories implying that it was because of pressure and misleading reassurances from the Groupon sales people signing them up combined with poor business sense from the small-time owners, in most cases.
    - georgemcbay 11y ago
      I've heard the same, but the company treating Groupon customers badly is still irrational behavior. The money being lost on the Groupon is a sunk cost, so you've got: Option A: Lose money on the customer, treat them like second class citizens, probably lose the customer forever, possibly have the customer tell all of his or her friends how bad they think the business is. Option B: Lose money on the customer, still treat them just as well as any other customer or even better and try to convert them into a repeat customer and/or organic spokesperson for your business, recoup the lost groupon money over time through repeat business. I can't speak for everyone but I know that if I'm an option B customer, I'm going to be an enthusiastic spokesperson for the business. Getting a great deal and good service early on is a good way to convert me to be a customer of yours for life (early impressions really stick with you, sort of the reasoning behind buying the first round of drinks, you probably don't need to buy another drink all night because you're the cool guy who bought the first round). So all-in-all, I don't think all the blame of having Groupon customers treated badly (if this even exists as a real thing and isn't a perceived occurrence that isn't statistically a real thing) can be placed with Groupon. I suspect at least part of it is likely just the fact that a lot of businesses have terrible customer service these days (probably due to a number of factors including low wages, races to the bottom on margins, etc) and as a customer you would have been treated pretty poorly anyway but the groupon thing gives you something to latch onto as far as reasoning it out.
      - chavesn 11y ago
        This is great advice. The thing many businesses probably fail to realize is that, generally speaking, where [A] is the baseline customer base, the audience with Groupon is not "[A] with some subset of [A] paying cheaper prices" but instead, "[A] + [B], where [B] is an audience they never would have found." To increase your audience, you almost always have to pay. In contrast to big business, America especially likes to celebrate and idealize the small business owner as the one who truly knows the value of treating the customer right. But if these stories are frequent, it probably just exposes the sad truth that it's not as common, even in small business, as we like to believe or hope.
  - steveklabnik 11y ago
    The business might consider it a marketing expense, but the employee might also take a hit through things like reduced tips.
    - commandar 11y ago
      Yeah, for things like restaurant deals, theoretical tipping etiquette is that you should tip based on the pre-discount total. The vast majority of people don't/don't realize that's the case, though, which makes huge half-off type deals pretty miserable for wait staff.
    - xiaoma 11y ago
      Especially if they preemptively treat the customer horribly!
  - kkhire 11y ago
    I like to compare it to the research done on olympics and their economic impact. Big investment in hopes of a strong injection in the economy. The opposite happens, once the event is done, the facilities/stadiums/everything goes unused -- novelty and interest lost. Same thing happens to these business when they worked with Groupon: make some money (oftentimes they don't even break even) during their promotions/deals, but as soon as it was over hardly any bothered to return.
  - kaonashi 11y ago
    Groupon makes money the more transactions take place, but for the business there is a limit to how many transactions you can successfully carry out with optimal service. Sounds like this tension hasn't been managed very well.
- Plough_Jogger 11y ago
  "Also, as an Engineer with a 1st-world salary, its socially responsible for me to spread it around." ...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - newobj 11y ago
    ""Also, as an Engineer with a 1st-world salary, its socially responsible for me to spread it around." ..." ...
- mgkimsal 11y ago
  Perhaps the 'group' aspect should have been played up more, and sold to restaurants as "pre book a group of 10 or more and save 20%". Getting a group of folks to book ahead of time will let them know when to schedule, they'll have a deposit, and they can accomodate the group accordingly. Don't treat them as 2nd class, but they're booking ahead so they get better treatment... ?
sirtastic 11y ago
My experience has been different. I used a Cheesecake Factory Groupon once and was given a special meal that reflected the "value" of my Groupon. It felt like a complete rip-off on top of a restaurant that was already overpriced. $30 for Cheese, bread, and a few grapes and strawberries? I stopped using Groupon after that. It reminds me of Massdrop. You expect to get a deal by purchasing something in "mass" with others but it turns out you are paying at best Amazon retail price but most likely MORE than you would pay buying from Amazon not to mention shipping costs.
- kentt 11y ago
  I guess we're a bit off topic, but I look at Massdrop as a curated list of competitively priced items. I agree they're pricing isn't rock bottom, though they imply it, however, I still think it's a great service because it's always a good price and generally a good product.
  - antsar 11y ago
    How does this set it aside from Amazon, aside from "generally a good product"? Massdrop marketing seems to be all about the pricing when in reality its just a curated list of (ostensibly) good products.
    - Zombieball 11y ago
      Massdrop's keyboard section typically sets it apart from Amazon. Not sure about other categories on the website. Mass drop sells DIY kits to build ergodox keyboards which you typically can't buy anywhere else. Additionally they just arranged a production (with a lot of help from a Redditor) of custom key caps (Triumph GMK Adler https://www.massdrop.com/buy/triumph-adler-gmk-keyset https://www.massdrop.com/buy/triumph-adler-gmk-keyset). Edit: just remembered I looked at buying headphones from Massdrop once. The starting price for the group buy was MSRP and the final unlocked price was the same as on Amazon. This definitely mirrors what others are saying.
      - 11y ago
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
At Groupon merchants get paid for unredeemed vouchers (not all at once but staggered). For the human psychology of a business owner of say a restaurant that's terribly, as this means every time someone walks in, that's $25 of revenue and say $5 of profit walking in for your business and its employees to extract, but a guy walking in with a voucher is just $20 of costs. Even if the voucher was bought for $25, that feels like money 'earned' weeks ago, and anyone who actually makes use of the voucher feels like it's costing you $20 even though it'd constitute the same $5 profit as a normal customer. Combine that with the fact the vouchers in this hypothetical example wouldn't actually be priced $25, but rather discounted to $15 or $19 which has to be shared with Groupon, and the fact those who're use Groupon (discount seekers) not always but on average tip less, really kills the mood for typical Groupon's merchants: struggling business owners who don't sit in an office and look at customers on a purely rational level and see them as just numbers. So I agree, it's a human psychology flaw in the business model. It's not unsurmountable, if Groupon runs a solid Merchant Centre full of 3 minute videos for merchants on Groupon's research that shows how their service affects the success of a Groupon deal generating repeat business, how instructing your employees to say x y z words when a Groupon member comes in etc, you could go a long way to mitigating this. Google for example runs a clever incentive structure where the quality/relevancy of the ad plays a role in your ranking vs other merchants, and so the better & more relevant your ad, the less you have to pay for your add to be more visible. This means some merchants who build relevant ads actually pay less to be on the nr 1 spot in the search ad rankings, than companies who pay more but offer shittier ads. And they run a whole merchant centre with tons of videos to explain this whole process and what you can do to improve it. [0] This improves the experience for users by rewarding merchant's quality control, which benefits them, too. Groupon should run something similar which they probably already do in some way but I'm not very familiar. Another solution is more controversial and hard to sell to merchants, which is to not pay merchants for vouchers that go unused and expire. This way a merchant can't be 'hopeful' that a Groupon user doesn't come in, because he doesn't earn any money when a person buys a voucher and doesn't use it before it expires (like I've had happen myself a few times.) Every groupon user who comes in is one he'd otherwise not get paid for, and so it flips the story around, every time a person comes in he gets paid by redeeming the voucher. Right now he gets paid regardless and people coming in are just costs, so obviously a merchant isn't thrilled to see groupon users come in today. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjOHTFRaBWA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjOHTFRaBWA
tedunangst 11y ago
Remember that the manager/owner who decides to sign up for groupon isn't always the worker on the floor who gets to deal with the people offer brings in. They get to work harder for less tips. How likely is it the restaurant manager told all the servers that they'd be getting a bonus for each groupon table they serve?
larrys 11y ago
This mirrors somewhat my experience many years ago with bartering. The places that were bartering were doing so because it was some low hanging fruit way to increase business and it was easy to to. And they were places that weren't particularly popular on their own (restaurants let's say) so they would do bartering to bring in customers on Monday nights but not allow it for obvious reasons on Saturday or Friday night. There is always a feeling on the part of small business owners that barter dollars are not real dollars (even though there is value in many cases) and barter business is not real business. A place that isn't doing that well to begin with (and once again I realize this is a generalization that is not true in many cases) is not going to have the best employees or the best attitudes because they are running short on cash and can't pay the best wages or have the best working conditions. So it's an entire ecosystem of mediocrity that you (in your case or me in my case) might end up experiencing. So I guess in theory someone taking groupon (or barter dollars) should just be a regular business that is doing well wanting to increase business. But in actual cases it might more often (from my experience at least) be a marginal business that is trying to fix a situation with marketing that isn't exactly going to work as planned by bringing in groupon dollars or barter dollars (that will end up being used by the owner to go out to dinner with his wife (and yes that is what happened)). Valuable things (in the case of barter dollars) that a business needs are not typically available with barter dollars. What you get is a bunch of things like dining, travel or accountants or attorneys (and how many of those do you need).
- Camillo 11y ago
  Wait, bartering? At a restaurant? What did people exchange for the food?
  - larrys 11y ago
    Was through a barter exchange. So in other words the restaurant barters meals and gets "trade credits". The other participants barter either the products they are selling "plumbing supplies" or services "lawyer, accountant" and so on. They get trade credits. The barter exchange keeps track of how many credits a business has so they know what they can spend. Typically people who sell services or perishable products are big winners. Losers would be businesses with low margins. For example you wouldn't find any Plasma TV's typically on a barter exchange. You might find jewelry though because that has a big markup. I actually was able (and this was some time ago I have to add) barter an apartment for myself as well as apartments for some of my employees. Other big items are perishable products such as hotel rooms, travel and so on. Magazine or newspaper ad space are other examples. Use it or lose it to the vendor. There is an active and most likely a separate channel of travel barter that operates independent of any barter exchange. (Billboards for radio time let's say. TV for travel expenses.).
tcdent 11y ago
This is the same reason why I'm careful which site I book hotel rooms on. Years ago I thought hotels.com was great and convenient, now I realize your experience is tainted from the moment you book with a third party. Now I make every attempt to book direct.
- justhw 11y ago
  For hotels the majority of bookings come from third party sites. Why would hotels use third party sites regularly if they hate serving customers that book with them?
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Some revenue is better than no revenue.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - monksy 11y ago
    Hilton does this by offering Free Wifi if you book directly. Also, delta has been known to hide the lowest prices from search engines.
- amatix 11y ago
  though, hotels often do themselves no favours here. If an aggregator has rooms for $200 a night and the hotel gets 80% of that, you'd think the hotel would take 100% of $200 from a direct booking, but often it'll be $300+... Conceptually, booking direct should be cheaper since the hotel sees all of the money (and users of an aggregator pay for the convenience/discovery/ease factor)
  - briHass 11y ago
    Haggle. I find saying something like: "I'm confused, because I can find a better price online for this room of $XX.XX" works every time that I've used it. I've never even had to apply the additional pressure of: "It seems unnecessary, but if you can't match that, then I guess I'll have to book online."
GCA10 11y ago
I think businesses hope that these discount customers will enter cheaply ... but linger to enjoy more of the services and eventually convert into long-term, loyal customers willing to pay full price. That just doesn't happen. People show up for one quick, cheap engagement, and then they're gone. Once front-line sales people realize this, the desire to welcome Groupon customers evaporates. There are two culprits in this. One is the Groupon field sales force, for over-promising the business value of getting a flurry of cheap visitors. The other is the target company's senior management, for agreeing to a dumb deal and not working better with the front-line sales/service folks to make a better go of things.
tbomb 11y ago
That seems like more of a pricing issue if the business can't break even. I have a good friend that uses Groupons for his business. What he has shared, is that customers that come in with a Groupon, often come with a sense of entitlement. I know this isn't the rule, and maybe it a defense mechanism from the customer who thinks the business is giving them a "second rate" experience. However, this ultimately led him to ending his Groupon deals.
hunter2_ 11y ago
There's quite an easy solution to using a Groupon without compromising your experience: don't disclose that you're using it until you're completely served. I strive to hand it to the server during the final bus, so that they don't have to print the bill twice. If I'm slipped the bill unexpectedly early, I put down the Groupon with my payment to similarly avoid an extra round trip (and I mention that it's there, not let the server discover it at the POS station). Most, but not all, Groupon deals have fine print prohibiting this by stipulating that the Groupon be disclosed on arrival or while making a reservation. I disregard this because I would much rather give the restaurant the opportunity to not honor the discount (I will pay in full including tip, and use the Groupon properly on a return visit) in exchange for uncompromised service. I have never had restaurant staff so much as hint any sort of disapproval when I slip them the Groupon late, let alone reject it. Not even close. I think it's because they get it - it makes sense to do this. (The above applies only to full-menu fixed-discount deals such as "$50 to spend on food and drinks". Obviously I cannot and do not use this method when the deal involves anything along the lines of a prix fixe menu, because in those cases one must be treated differently upon arrival.) I tip based on the pre-discounted bill and generally the service is great enough (thanks to this technique) to hit the 18-20% mark. If I disclosed the Groupon earlier and received subpar service as a result, I'd give an appropriately low tip.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

I thought that before even trying Groupon. I can't imagine how coming in as a 2nd-class customer will improve my experience. Rather pay well, tip big and enjoy the best service they have to offer. Also, as an Engineer with a 1st-world salary, its socially responsible for me to spread it around.

zck 11y ago
But shouldn't Groupon just be a marketing expense? I'm not saying that the company should be ok losing money all the time, but it's common for companies to spend money to acquire customers. Do you avoid all "new customer" deals? It seems like companies on Groupon, for whatever reason, often offer way more of a discount than they're comfortable with. I wonder why that is.
- RyanZAG 11y ago
  It's not always the company. In the case of the USA and their insane tipping customs, a customer coming in with groupon specials is going to end up tipping less. Since the whole service at USA restaurants is based around tipping, the employees know they won't really get tipped well so they're very customer hostile.
  - BashiBazouk 11y ago
    Maybe that's an upside. If the wait staff loses it's professionalism that easily, it tells me something about the restaurant...
  - imgabe 11y ago
    I'm sure a lot of people do that, but the appropriate etiquette when using a coupon at a restaurant is to tip on the full price. Most adults who frequent restaurants should know that.
    - RyanZAG 11y ago
      You know that most of the world's population doesn't tip at all? Given that, it seems kind of strange to assume everyone just knows the appropriate tipping etiquette without being told when getting the coupon or sitting down. Plus the most active users of groupon are probably doing it to save as much money as possible with coupons. They're unlikely to willingly throw away those savings on massive tips... and from what you hear about frequent groupon users they really don't tip the price pre-coupon.
      - camdenre 11y ago
        I would guess that he meant to say most "American" adults should know better.
      - imgabe 11y ago
        I was replying to your comment specifically about tipping customs in the US. If you grow up in the US and go to restaurants it's not unreasonable to absorb tipping etiquette along the way. You still save money with a coupon, you're not paying full price for the meal. That's no reason to screw over the server who depends on tips for a living. If someone is seriously strapped for cash and needs to save money, they should be cooking at home, not going to restaurants. Don't get me wrong, I'd happily do away with the whole tipping culture and just have the entire price printed on the menu. But, as long as we have tips, take the time to learn how to do it right.
- jacalata 11y ago
  I think there were a bunch of stories implying that it was because of pressure and misleading reassurances from the Groupon sales people signing them up combined with poor business sense from the small-time owners, in most cases.
  - georgemcbay 11y ago
    I've heard the same, but the company treating Groupon customers badly is still irrational behavior. The money being lost on the Groupon is a sunk cost, so you've got: Option A: Lose money on the customer, treat them like second class citizens, probably lose the customer forever, possibly have the customer tell all of his or her friends how bad they think the business is. Option B: Lose money on the customer, still treat them just as well as any other customer or even better and try to convert them into a repeat customer and/or organic spokesperson for your business, recoup the lost groupon money over time through repeat business. I can't speak for everyone but I know that if I'm an option B customer, I'm going to be an enthusiastic spokesperson for the business. Getting a great deal and good service early on is a good way to convert me to be a customer of yours for life (early impressions really stick with you, sort of the reasoning behind buying the first round of drinks, you probably don't need to buy another drink all night because you're the cool guy who bought the first round). So all-in-all, I don't think all the blame of having Groupon customers treated badly (if this even exists as a real thing and isn't a perceived occurrence that isn't statistically a real thing) can be placed with Groupon. I suspect at least part of it is likely just the fact that a lot of businesses have terrible customer service these days (probably due to a number of factors including low wages, races to the bottom on margins, etc) and as a customer you would have been treated pretty poorly anyway but the groupon thing gives you something to latch onto as far as reasoning it out.
    - chavesn 11y ago
      This is great advice. The thing many businesses probably fail to realize is that, generally speaking, where [A] is the baseline customer base, the audience with Groupon is not "[A] with some subset of [A] paying cheaper prices" but instead, "[A] + [B], where [B] is an audience they never would have found." To increase your audience, you almost always have to pay. In contrast to big business, America especially likes to celebrate and idealize the small business owner as the one who truly knows the value of treating the customer right. But if these stories are frequent, it probably just exposes the sad truth that it's not as common, even in small business, as we like to believe or hope.
- steveklabnik 11y ago
  The business might consider it a marketing expense, but the employee might also take a hit through things like reduced tips.
  - commandar 11y ago
    Yeah, for things like restaurant deals, theoretical tipping etiquette is that you should tip based on the pre-discount total. The vast majority of people don't/don't realize that's the case, though, which makes huge half-off type deals pretty miserable for wait staff.
  - xiaoma 11y ago
    Especially if they preemptively treat the customer horribly!
- kkhire 11y ago
  I like to compare it to the research done on olympics and their economic impact. Big investment in hopes of a strong injection in the economy. The opposite happens, once the event is done, the facilities/stadiums/everything goes unused -- novelty and interest lost. Same thing happens to these business when they worked with Groupon: make some money (oftentimes they don't even break even) during their promotions/deals, but as soon as it was over hardly any bothered to return.
- kaonashi 11y ago
  Groupon makes money the more transactions take place, but for the business there is a limit to how many transactions you can successfully carry out with optimal service. Sounds like this tension hasn't been managed very well.
Plough_Jogger 11y ago
"Also, as an Engineer with a 1st-world salary, its socially responsible for me to spread it around." ...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- newobj 11y ago
  ""Also, as an Engineer with a 1st-world salary, its socially responsible for me to spread it around." ..." ...
mgkimsal 11y ago
Perhaps the 'group' aspect should have been played up more, and sold to restaurants as "pre book a group of 10 or more and save 20%". Getting a group of folks to book ahead of time will let them know when to schedule, they'll have a deposit, and they can accomodate the group accordingly. Don't treat them as 2nd class, but they're booking ahead so they get better treatment... ?

sirtastic 11y ago

My experience has been different. I used a Cheesecake Factory Groupon once and was given a special meal that reflected the "value" of my Groupon. It felt like a complete rip-off on top of a restaurant that was already overpriced. $30 for Cheese, bread, and a few grapes and strawberries? I stopped using Groupon after that. It reminds me of Massdrop. You expect to get a deal by purchasing something in "mass" with others but it turns out you are paying at best Amazon retail price but most likely MORE than you would pay buying from Amazon not to mention shipping costs.

kentt 11y ago
I guess we're a bit off topic, but I look at Massdrop as a curated list of competitively priced items. I agree they're pricing isn't rock bottom, though they imply it, however, I still think it's a great service because it's always a good price and generally a good product.
- antsar 11y ago
  How does this set it aside from Amazon, aside from "generally a good product"? Massdrop marketing seems to be all about the pricing when in reality its just a curated list of (ostensibly) good products.
  - Zombieball 11y ago
    Massdrop's keyboard section typically sets it apart from Amazon. Not sure about other categories on the website. Mass drop sells DIY kits to build ergodox keyboards which you typically can't buy anywhere else. Additionally they just arranged a production (with a lot of help from a Redditor) of custom key caps (Triumph GMK Adler https://www.massdrop.com/buy/triumph-adler-gmk-keyset https://www.massdrop.com/buy/triumph-adler-gmk-keyset). Edit: just remembered I looked at buying headphones from Massdrop once. The starting price for the group buy was MSRP and the final unlocked price was the same as on Amazon. This definitely mirrors what others are saying.
    - 11y ago

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

At Groupon merchants get paid for unredeemed vouchers (not all at once but staggered). For the human psychology of a business owner of say a restaurant that's terribly, as this means every time someone walks in, that's $25 of revenue and say $5 of profit walking in for your business and its employees to extract, but a guy walking in with a voucher is just $20 of costs. Even if the voucher was bought for $25, that feels like money 'earned' weeks ago, and anyone who actually makes use of the voucher feels like it's costing you $20 even though it'd constitute the same $5 profit as a normal customer. Combine that with the fact the vouchers in this hypothetical example wouldn't actually be priced $25, but rather discounted to $15 or $19 which has to be shared with Groupon, and the fact those who're use Groupon (discount seekers) not always but on average tip less, really kills the mood for typical Groupon's merchants: struggling business owners who don't sit in an office and look at customers on a purely rational level and see them as just numbers. So I agree, it's a human psychology flaw in the business model. It's not unsurmountable, if Groupon runs a solid Merchant Centre full of 3 minute videos for merchants on Groupon's research that shows how their service affects the success of a Groupon deal generating repeat business, how instructing your employees to say x y z words when a Groupon member comes in etc, you could go a long way to mitigating this. Google for example runs a clever incentive structure where the quality/relevancy of the ad plays a role in your ranking vs other merchants, and so the better & more relevant your ad, the less you have to pay for your add to be more visible. This means some merchants who build relevant ads actually pay less to be on the nr 1 spot in the search ad rankings, than companies who pay more but offer shittier ads. And they run a whole merchant centre with tons of videos to explain this whole process and what you can do to improve it. [0] This improves the experience for users by rewarding merchant's quality control, which benefits them, too. Groupon should run something similar which they probably already do in some way but I'm not very familiar. Another solution is more controversial and hard to sell to merchants, which is to not pay merchants for vouchers that go unused and expire. This way a merchant can't be 'hopeful' that a Groupon user doesn't come in, because he doesn't earn any money when a person buys a voucher and doesn't use it before it expires (like I've had happen myself a few times.) Every groupon user who comes in is one he'd otherwise not get paid for, and so it flips the story around, every time a person comes in he gets paid by redeeming the voucher. Right now he gets paid regardless and people coming in are just costs, so obviously a merchant isn't thrilled to see groupon users come in today. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjOHTFRaBWA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjOHTFRaBWA

tedunangst 11y ago

Remember that the manager/owner who decides to sign up for groupon isn't always the worker on the floor who gets to deal with the people offer brings in. They get to work harder for less tips. How likely is it the restaurant manager told all the servers that they'd be getting a bonus for each groupon table they serve?

larrys 11y ago

This mirrors somewhat my experience many years ago with bartering. The places that were bartering were doing so because it was some low hanging fruit way to increase business and it was easy to to. And they were places that weren't particularly popular on their own (restaurants let's say) so they would do bartering to bring in customers on Monday nights but not allow it for obvious reasons on Saturday or Friday night. There is always a feeling on the part of small business owners that barter dollars are not real dollars (even though there is value in many cases) and barter business is not real business. A place that isn't doing that well to begin with (and once again I realize this is a generalization that is not true in many cases) is not going to have the best employees or the best attitudes because they are running short on cash and can't pay the best wages or have the best working conditions. So it's an entire ecosystem of mediocrity that you (in your case or me in my case) might end up experiencing. So I guess in theory someone taking groupon (or barter dollars) should just be a regular business that is doing well wanting to increase business. But in actual cases it might more often (from my experience at least) be a marginal business that is trying to fix a situation with marketing that isn't exactly going to work as planned by bringing in groupon dollars or barter dollars (that will end up being used by the owner to go out to dinner with his wife (and yes that is what happened)). Valuable things (in the case of barter dollars) that a business needs are not typically available with barter dollars. What you get is a bunch of things like dining, travel or accountants or attorneys (and how many of those do you need).

Camillo 11y ago
Wait, bartering? At a restaurant? What did people exchange for the food?
- larrys 11y ago
  Was through a barter exchange. So in other words the restaurant barters meals and gets "trade credits". The other participants barter either the products they are selling "plumbing supplies" or services "lawyer, accountant" and so on. They get trade credits. The barter exchange keeps track of how many credits a business has so they know what they can spend. Typically people who sell services or perishable products are big winners. Losers would be businesses with low margins. For example you wouldn't find any Plasma TV's typically on a barter exchange. You might find jewelry though because that has a big markup. I actually was able (and this was some time ago I have to add) barter an apartment for myself as well as apartments for some of my employees. Other big items are perishable products such as hotel rooms, travel and so on. Magazine or newspaper ad space are other examples. Use it or lose it to the vendor. There is an active and most likely a separate channel of travel barter that operates independent of any barter exchange. (Billboards for radio time let's say. TV for travel expenses.).

tcdent 11y ago

This is the same reason why I'm careful which site I book hotel rooms on. Years ago I thought hotels.com was great and convenient, now I realize your experience is tainted from the moment you book with a third party. Now I make every attempt to book direct.

justhw 11y ago
For hotels the majority of bookings come from third party sites. Why would hotels use third party sites regularly if they hate serving customers that book with them?
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Some revenue is better than no revenue.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- monksy 11y ago
  Hilton does this by offering Free Wifi if you book directly. Also, delta has been known to hide the lowest prices from search engines.
amatix 11y ago
though, hotels often do themselves no favours here. If an aggregator has rooms for $200 a night and the hotel gets 80% of that, you'd think the hotel would take 100% of $200 from a direct booking, but often it'll be $300+... Conceptually, booking direct should be cheaper since the hotel sees all of the money (and users of an aggregator pay for the convenience/discovery/ease factor)
- briHass 11y ago
  Haggle. I find saying something like: "I'm confused, because I can find a better price online for this room of $XX.XX" works every time that I've used it. I've never even had to apply the additional pressure of: "It seems unnecessary, but if you can't match that, then I guess I'll have to book online."

GCA10 11y ago

I think businesses hope that these discount customers will enter cheaply ... but linger to enjoy more of the services and eventually convert into long-term, loyal customers willing to pay full price. That just doesn't happen. People show up for one quick, cheap engagement, and then they're gone. Once front-line sales people realize this, the desire to welcome Groupon customers evaporates. There are two culprits in this. One is the Groupon field sales force, for over-promising the business value of getting a flurry of cheap visitors. The other is the target company's senior management, for agreeing to a dumb deal and not working better with the front-line sales/service folks to make a better go of things.

tbomb 11y ago

That seems like more of a pricing issue if the business can't break even. I have a good friend that uses Groupons for his business. What he has shared, is that customers that come in with a Groupon, often come with a sense of entitlement. I know this isn't the rule, and maybe it a defense mechanism from the customer who thinks the business is giving them a "second rate" experience. However, this ultimately led him to ending his Groupon deals.

hunter2_ 11y ago

There's quite an easy solution to using a Groupon without compromising your experience: don't disclose that you're using it until you're completely served. I strive to hand it to the server during the final bus, so that they don't have to print the bill twice. If I'm slipped the bill unexpectedly early, I put down the Groupon with my payment to similarly avoid an extra round trip (and I mention that it's there, not let the server discover it at the POS station). Most, but not all, Groupon deals have fine print prohibiting this by stipulating that the Groupon be disclosed on arrival or while making a reservation. I disregard this because I would much rather give the restaurant the opportunity to not honor the discount (I will pay in full including tip, and use the Groupon properly on a return visit) in exchange for uncompromised service. I have never had restaurant staff so much as hint any sort of disapproval when I slip them the Groupon late, let alone reject it. Not even close. I think it's because they get it - it makes sense to do this. (The above applies only to full-menu fixed-discount deals such as "$50 to spend on food and drinks". Obviously I cannot and do not use this method when the deal involves anything along the lines of a prix fixe menu, because in those cases one must be treated differently upon arrival.) I tip based on the pre-discounted bill and generally the service is great enough (thanks to this technique) to hit the 18-20% mark. If I disclosed the Groupon earlier and received subpar service as a result, I'd give an appropriately low tip.