3 ms·

Mismanagement can cause 1 as well.

• VonGuard 14y ago
  Frankly, I think ya'll hit the nail on the side, but not collectively on the head. Take a little from column A, little from column B, and we can see the real problems with Groupon. As one commenter said, they only work for certain merchants with high markup. This is why there's so many Chiropracters and massagers on these deal sites. Trouble is, all those services are once a year kinda things. Thus, you get one massage on Groupon or Amazon or whatever, and then next week they;re hawking another massage, are you gonna get it? Combine this with the fact that Groupon is reknowned for being slow to pay merchants. That's fine if yer paying back Wal-Mart, who has lots of money, but for small businesses that use these services, 3 months waiting for payment can be crippling. Read about Groupon's payment policies. They're assholes. Slow assholes. And finally, none of this was ever proprietary or complex. Groupon had no firewalls or sandbags against competitors, and frankly, the way it treats its client businesses, it was bound to be fucked eventually. My folks have a boutique ad firm in a small town. For the past year, they've gotten calls EVERY DAY from Groupon-like services, or even Groupon aggregators who act as middlemen for these services. It's a hugely growing market but never once has Groupon been at the table for one of these calls. They're being eaten alive.