6 ms·

The coupon code is a slap in the face (2013)

80 points by amzans 5y ago

PaulHoule 5y ago
The way I was taught it is against your interest to distract people during the checkout process; if they see an ad or otherwise go on a wild goose chase they might fail to finish and it costs you $$$. Also shoppers like a bargain but discounting is the worst of all sales tactics because it comes straight off your bottom line.
- dazc 5y ago
  Since the inception of discount codes I've yet to see a retailer succeed with the strategy over the long term. Maybe it does increase conversion at the point of sale, since there is always an element of 'cart abondonment', but would a critical mass of those customers have come back to buy a few days later regardless - I supsect so? What does happen though is that your customers come to expect a code all the time and if there isn't one they'll wait until there is or go to your competitor who does have one. It's a race to the bottom you don't really want to win. Here in the UK, a few famous retailers have recently gone bust or are well on their way to doing so. They all blame Covid, of course, but they were all dying a slow death anyhow and, yes, every one of them were discount code enthusiasts.
- system16 5y ago
  Just anecdotal, but this has absolutely been the case for me. I can think of several times getting to a checkout, seeing the coupon code field, and then beginning the hunt for a code. Usually I'd end up on the usual ad-filled scam sites, or find a discussion of past codes or seasonal promotions and then decide to wait... and then forget about it and not end up buying.
coopreme 5y ago
After reading this article I clicked the “discuss on hacker news” link. It led me to this thread [0] with ample discussion. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6205540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6205540
- goertzen 5y ago
  Thanks for linking to the original thread. The top comment was a great reminder that the internet is filled with different types of people.
aaron695 5y ago
I wonder if CNN deciding to do coupons was at the same time they gave up on doing news. https://coupons.cnn.com/ https://coupons.cnn.com/
drstewart 5y ago
I've actually halted purchases because of this, where I'd run a search and see a retailer regularly has X% off sales and it would be stupid to continue buying the product I was happily going to purchase instead of waiting a few weeks.
chris_st 5y ago
I totally relate to this as an American, but I wonder about cultures where (as I understand it) price negotiation is the norm. Do they feel "cheated" if there is no way to negotiate?
savolai 5y ago
Oh. Apparently there is a way to implement this in woocommerce. https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/url-coupons/ https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/url-coupons/
- savolai 5y ago
  Also this freemium one seems to work eventually. https://wordpress.org/plugins/url-coupons-for-woocommerce-by-algoritmika/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/url-coupons-for-woocommerce-by...
dylan604 5y ago
It seems like it would be better to take a play from the brick&mortar retailers playbook. Just always have things on sale. People flock to sales tags. Even if the "sales" price is the normal price, as long as there is a higher prices slashed out and a new price matching the % on the sales tag, then most people just accept they are getting a deal.
- dazc 5y ago
  In the UK you are not allowed to do this, goods must have been on sale at the higher price for some period of time. Discount codes have been employed as a way around this since there are no rules to how these are used. So they have a 'sale' every so often and then everything is full price but with a discount code instead. I did actually do some work with one of these merchants for a time. As it turned out, their honesty regarding pricing was about the same as their business ethics in general. As a consequence, the relationship soon came to an end.
  - comprev 5y ago
    A certain furniture store in the UK was known for always having a discount and they got round it by having the products at full retail - for the minimum required time (60? 90 days?) - at a shop in the tail end of nowhere. This shop operated at a loss 100% of the time, but since it was part of the same company (which discounted everywhere else) the costs were written off. Technically speaking, the sofa on sale in a retail park was on sale because it had been available at retail.
  - Lammy 5y ago
    Is this why some stores are perpetually “going out of business” and “liquidating” their stock?
    - dylan604 5y ago
      I just assume those types of places are fronts.
  - dylan604 5y ago
dj_mc_merlin 5y ago
Uber Eats has been spamming my email with coupon codes for a while so I decided to try it. A one time half-off an order seems like a good enough deal for me to get past the annoying marketing. After filling in my order and trying the coupon code, I was rudely told that my account wasn't allowed to use coupon codes. Not that there was an unspecific error or anything, they must have specifically coded this path in. Afterwards, I tried the same thing with my girlfriend's coupon code (also rudely spammed) and another account, and no cigar. Why spam me with coupon codes that I can't use? Was their strategy really as crude as "maybe he'll be hungry enough to not care about the extra cash we are going to charge him after all"? I've sworn off Uber Eats completely now, pulling such a bait-and-switch is unacceptable.
- ta988 5y ago
  Uber has an history of using despicable approaches against competition, workers and users... You just experienced the last one.
  - xpe 5y ago
    another one (it won't be the last)
    - ta988 5y ago
      unfortunately true
  - ssharp 5y ago
    I had something like 4 out of 7 orders with UberEats go undelivered. They take the order, make the restaurant prepare the food, and then it sits there because the app took the order even though a driver wouldn't be available. This was quite the experience with hungry kids waiting for their food at least 2 of the times. One of the times, the online support told me they'd refund the order, then I accidentally hit the "cancel order" button a few seconds later and they charged me the full amount because they said I cancelled too late. I literally sent screenshots of the chat to email support and their support on Twitter and got the same canned response about canceling too late, with no acknowledgement of the screen shots. I ended up finding some U.S.-based higher-level support email and they finally refunded the order (and even called me to confirm). That was pretty much the end of my time with UberEats. DoorDash has never failed to deliver an order and seems fine to just limit selection to orders that can actually be connected with a driver.
rdtwo 5y ago
I had the opposite experience with chipotle the other day. I had a coupon code and nowhere to enter it. They clearly thought the same thing and hid it in the account settings screen
rchaud 5y ago
The coupon code box is probably only annoying to first-time internet shoppers. The rest of us know how utterly useless it is to try to hunt down a code via Google. All you'll get are links to codes that straight up don't work, or expired months ago. After the first few times that happens, we train ourselves to mentally accept that the sticker price is immutable. If I budgeted it in relation to the sticker price, it doesn't matter to me if it might be 10% off for someone somewhere else.
- TillE 5y ago
  FOMO is absolutely not an outdated concept, a conspicuous "coupon code" field will still make plenty of people wonder what they're missing out on. And those searches can still bear fruit! I've randomly found big discounts when I was buying eyeglasses in the past couple years.
- LadyCailin 5y ago
  Yeah. This article is from 2013, and online shopping has increased a ton since then, especially during the pandemic, so I be the learnings from this are outdated. Certainly the data is.
- fmajid 5y ago
  RetailMeNot.com has a decent hit rate for me (30-50%). And surely you mean DuckDuckGo, not Google…
MonaroVXR 5y ago
I ordered a new laptop and... I had already a "discount" (1) and I used a coupon code to get another one, but I'm pretty sure that I've paid the normal price of the product. (1) Student discount. (2 Just searched the Internet to another code and tried every code until I stumbled upon that worked.

80 points by amzans 5y ago

The way I was taught it is against your interest to distract people during the checkout process; if they see an ad or otherwise go on a wild goose chase they might fail to finish and it costs you $$$. Also shoppers like a bargain but discounting is the worst of all sales tactics because it comes straight off your bottom line.

dazc 5y ago
Since the inception of discount codes I've yet to see a retailer succeed with the strategy over the long term. Maybe it does increase conversion at the point of sale, since there is always an element of 'cart abondonment', but would a critical mass of those customers have come back to buy a few days later regardless - I supsect so? What does happen though is that your customers come to expect a code all the time and if there isn't one they'll wait until there is or go to your competitor who does have one. It's a race to the bottom you don't really want to win. Here in the UK, a few famous retailers have recently gone bust or are well on their way to doing so. They all blame Covid, of course, but they were all dying a slow death anyhow and, yes, every one of them were discount code enthusiasts.
system16 5y ago
Just anecdotal, but this has absolutely been the case for me. I can think of several times getting to a checkout, seeing the coupon code field, and then beginning the hunt for a code. Usually I'd end up on the usual ad-filled scam sites, or find a discussion of past codes or seasonal promotions and then decide to wait... and then forget about it and not end up buying.

coopreme 5y ago

After reading this article I clicked the “discuss on hacker news” link. It led me to this thread [0] with ample discussion. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6205540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6205540

goertzen 5y ago
Thanks for linking to the original thread. The top comment was a great reminder that the internet is filled with different types of people.

aaron695 5y ago

I wonder if CNN deciding to do coupons was at the same time they gave up on doing news. https://coupons.cnn.com/ https://coupons.cnn.com/

drstewart 5y ago

I've actually halted purchases because of this, where I'd run a search and see a retailer regularly has X% off sales and it would be stupid to continue buying the product I was happily going to purchase instead of waiting a few weeks.

chris_st 5y ago

I totally relate to this as an American, but I wonder about cultures where (as I understand it) price negotiation is the norm. Do they feel "cheated" if there is no way to negotiate?

savolai 5y ago

Oh. Apparently there is a way to implement this in woocommerce. https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/url-coupons/ https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/url-coupons/

savolai 5y ago
Also this freemium one seems to work eventually. https://wordpress.org/plugins/url-coupons-for-woocommerce-by-algoritmika/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/url-coupons-for-woocommerce-by...

dylan604 5y ago

It seems like it would be better to take a play from the brick&mortar retailers playbook. Just always have things on sale. People flock to sales tags. Even if the "sales" price is the normal price, as long as there is a higher prices slashed out and a new price matching the % on the sales tag, then most people just accept they are getting a deal.

dazc 5y ago
In the UK you are not allowed to do this, goods must have been on sale at the higher price for some period of time. Discount codes have been employed as a way around this since there are no rules to how these are used. So they have a 'sale' every so often and then everything is full price but with a discount code instead. I did actually do some work with one of these merchants for a time. As it turned out, their honesty regarding pricing was about the same as their business ethics in general. As a consequence, the relationship soon came to an end.
- comprev 5y ago
  A certain furniture store in the UK was known for always having a discount and they got round it by having the products at full retail - for the minimum required time (60? 90 days?) - at a shop in the tail end of nowhere. This shop operated at a loss 100% of the time, but since it was part of the same company (which discounted everywhere else) the costs were written off. Technically speaking, the sofa on sale in a retail park was on sale because it had been available at retail.
- Lammy 5y ago
  Is this why some stores are perpetually “going out of business” and “liquidating” their stock?
  - dylan604 5y ago
    I just assume those types of places are fronts.
- dylan604 5y ago

dj_mc_merlin 5y ago

Uber Eats has been spamming my email with coupon codes for a while so I decided to try it. A one time half-off an order seems like a good enough deal for me to get past the annoying marketing. After filling in my order and trying the coupon code, I was rudely told that my account wasn't allowed to use coupon codes. Not that there was an unspecific error or anything, they must have specifically coded this path in. Afterwards, I tried the same thing with my girlfriend's coupon code (also rudely spammed) and another account, and no cigar. Why spam me with coupon codes that I can't use? Was their strategy really as crude as "maybe he'll be hungry enough to not care about the extra cash we are going to charge him after all"? I've sworn off Uber Eats completely now, pulling such a bait-and-switch is unacceptable.

ta988 5y ago
Uber has an history of using despicable approaches against competition, workers and users... You just experienced the last one.
- xpe 5y ago
  another one (it won't be the last)
  - ta988 5y ago
    unfortunately true
- ssharp 5y ago
  I had something like 4 out of 7 orders with UberEats go undelivered. They take the order, make the restaurant prepare the food, and then it sits there because the app took the order even though a driver wouldn't be available. This was quite the experience with hungry kids waiting for their food at least 2 of the times. One of the times, the online support told me they'd refund the order, then I accidentally hit the "cancel order" button a few seconds later and they charged me the full amount because they said I cancelled too late. I literally sent screenshots of the chat to email support and their support on Twitter and got the same canned response about canceling too late, with no acknowledgement of the screen shots. I ended up finding some U.S.-based higher-level support email and they finally refunded the order (and even called me to confirm). That was pretty much the end of my time with UberEats. DoorDash has never failed to deliver an order and seems fine to just limit selection to orders that can actually be connected with a driver.

rdtwo 5y ago

I had the opposite experience with chipotle the other day. I had a coupon code and nowhere to enter it. They clearly thought the same thing and hid it in the account settings screen

rchaud 5y ago

The coupon code box is probably only annoying to first-time internet shoppers. The rest of us know how utterly useless it is to try to hunt down a code via Google. All you'll get are links to codes that straight up don't work, or expired months ago. After the first few times that happens, we train ourselves to mentally accept that the sticker price is immutable. If I budgeted it in relation to the sticker price, it doesn't matter to me if it might be 10% off for someone somewhere else.

TillE 5y ago
FOMO is absolutely not an outdated concept, a conspicuous "coupon code" field will still make plenty of people wonder what they're missing out on. And those searches can still bear fruit! I've randomly found big discounts when I was buying eyeglasses in the past couple years.
LadyCailin 5y ago
Yeah. This article is from 2013, and online shopping has increased a ton since then, especially during the pandemic, so I be the learnings from this are outdated. Certainly the data is.
fmajid 5y ago
RetailMeNot.com has a decent hit rate for me (30-50%). And surely you mean DuckDuckGo, not Google…

MonaroVXR 5y ago

I ordered a new laptop and... I had already a "discount" (1) and I used a coupon code to get another one, but I'm pretty sure that I've paid the normal price of the product. (1) Student discount. (2 Just searched the Internet to another code and tried every code until I stumbled upon that worked.