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From the opposite perspective, I have found that owners of business treat me as a second class customer when I use a Groupon voucher with them. There is either

From the opposite perspective, I have found that owners of business treat me as a second class customer when I use a Groupon voucher with them. There is either an automatic assumption that I'm cheap and a less worthy customer, or they have overbooked their services and provide a poor experience. Maybe the problem is your friends became resentful because they were incapable of handling the promotion, so they blamed the customers to protect their own egos? Not all of my Groupon experiences have been bad. I did a scuba diving experience, which lead to me doing additional scuba qualifications and experiences with the same group, at full price.

JohnTHaller 15y ago
Most of my friends who use Groupon have automatically defended Groupon users and blamed the businesses without knowing any of the story. Most of my friends who use Groupon regularly are, honestly, kind of cheap (you know the ones... who always cause an issue at the end of eating out with a group of people when it's time to split the check and leave a tip). One business I know of had no predisposed opinion of Groupon users (they aren't tech savvy and never heard of it before doing it at the suggestion of a friend) and regularly does discounts for seniors and students as well as deep "first visit" discounts for Yelp users where they ran a promotion. They even did a similar promotion for NYC businesses with a similar deep discount to Groupon. They said that the Groupon users were, without fail, the most demanding of any group of promotion-using customers and some even made it obnoxiously clear that they would never use my friend's services without a similar discount in the future. Of all the Groupon users, not one became a repeat customer. In every other promotion they have run, they have gotten numerous repeat customers, including the similarly deep discount program for NYC businesses. So, they never plan to use Groupon again and have warned their fellow local businesses away from it.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  Probably an important difference would be that while Yelp users are almost by definition looking for new experiences, Groupon users are likely to be either people looking for cheap new experiences, or people looking for any cheap experiences. I mean, be honest, if price wasn't regularly a big deal to you, would you spend much time on Groupon, where the options are drastically more limited? That is to say, the difference between running a promotional discount in a regular magazine, and running a promotional discount in a coupon magazine.
  - drumdance 15y ago
    I use Groupon for experience discovery. I could spend time combing Yelp for new restaurants (and sometimes I do), but it's nice to hear about a new one through Groupon.
    - bunderbunder 15y ago
      Perhaps, but it also means that the pool of potential new experiences is being limited to businesses that just did a Groupon. I'm sure results vary widely, but in the aggregate that probably has implications for what can be expected of both the seeker and the provider of said new experience.
  - JohnTHaller 15y ago
    That is a very good point. In the one case (Yelp) they were advertising a good 'first visit' deal to folks who were already looking for their services. In the other case (Groupon) they were advertising to a group of people looking for cheap deals, not even people who were looking for their services. It is odd that the NYC business list (can't recall the name at the moment) is also a 'deals list' type of service and a similar discount to Groupon was offered but it had much better results. Checking them out myself at the time, the NYC business list seemed to be much more centered around getting a customer in once and keeping them as a customer and seemed to cater to a different demographic than Groupon.

JohnTHaller 15y ago

Most of my friends who use Groupon have automatically defended Groupon users and blamed the businesses without knowing any of the story. Most of my friends who use Groupon regularly are, honestly, kind of cheap (you know the ones... who always cause an issue at the end of eating out with a group of people when it's time to split the check and leave a tip). One business I know of had no predisposed opinion of Groupon users (they aren't tech savvy and never heard of it before doing it at the suggestion of a friend) and regularly does discounts for seniors and students as well as deep "first visit" discounts for Yelp users where they ran a promotion. They even did a similar promotion for NYC businesses with a similar deep discount to Groupon. They said that the Groupon users were, without fail, the most demanding of any group of promotion-using customers and some even made it obnoxiously clear that they would never use my friend's services without a similar discount in the future. Of all the Groupon users, not one became a repeat customer. In every other promotion they have run, they have gotten numerous repeat customers, including the similarly deep discount program for NYC businesses. So, they never plan to use Groupon again and have warned their fellow local businesses away from it.

sliverstorm 15y ago
Probably an important difference would be that while Yelp users are almost by definition looking for new experiences, Groupon users are likely to be either people looking for cheap new experiences, or people looking for any cheap experiences. I mean, be honest, if price wasn't regularly a big deal to you, would you spend much time on Groupon, where the options are drastically more limited? That is to say, the difference between running a promotional discount in a regular magazine, and running a promotional discount in a coupon magazine.
- drumdance 15y ago
  I use Groupon for experience discovery. I could spend time combing Yelp for new restaurants (and sometimes I do), but it's nice to hear about a new one through Groupon.
  - bunderbunder 15y ago
    Perhaps, but it also means that the pool of potential new experiences is being limited to businesses that just did a Groupon. I'm sure results vary widely, but in the aggregate that probably has implications for what can be expected of both the seeker and the provider of said new experience.
- JohnTHaller 15y ago
  That is a very good point. In the one case (Yelp) they were advertising a good 'first visit' deal to folks who were already looking for their services. In the other case (Groupon) they were advertising to a group of people looking for cheap deals, not even people who were looking for their services. It is odd that the NYC business list (can't recall the name at the moment) is also a 'deals list' type of service and a similar discount to Groupon was offered but it had much better results. Checking them out myself at the time, the NYC business list seemed to be much more centered around getting a customer in once and keeping them as a customer and seemed to cater to a different demographic than Groupon.