[deleted]
Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
211–220 of 256 posts
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#212I'll be honest, I know Groupon and its ilk are terrible business, but as a user of the service I've had lots of fun exploring activities and restaurants that I literally would never have bothered with or known about. In the last few weeks I've taken a Scuba lesson, a Horse Riding lesson, an intro to art class, found a couple new amazing sandwich shops. I took an amazing trip to Ireland for something like 50% off the…
I have never used Groupon, but I can definitely share the same feeling that using coupon can make some people feel like using food stamp. However, interestingly enough we don't have a problem using retail coupons. You would sign up for a Macy's card and use the coupons you get in the mail every time you shop. You would also have no problem walking into a local supermarket and use the deal coupons. I think the size of…
I'm not sure it's so much feeling like using a food stamp but, in a restaurant with a server, using a coupon is just an awkward transaction. You have to lay it out on the table before the meal to make sure the server knows you have a coupon, i.e. you have to sort of make a big deal about it. (Over and above any issues with the server now suspecting they might get a crappy tip.)
For a more conventional purchase situation, you just hand over the coupon with your credit card and things are taken care of in a very transactional way.
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sadly, a lot of tech companies would perform better if they threw their cash into index-driven mutual funds.
And they would risk losing investors. Why would someone put money into a company that invests in index-funds, when you can just invest in index-funds?
Right. That's why I suggested Groupon be wound down, not that they continue operating at a loss but invest their cash differently.
This does raise an interesting question, though. There seem to be a lot of corporations out there that have no obvious reason for existing: minimal to negative profitability on a sustained basis, uninspiring business with little potential, and a long track record that doesn't suggest a turnaround is likely. Groupon is just one of many. Presumably in many cases, equity in these corporations is held primarily or even entirely by index funds. Why should such a company remain in business? By definition, if all your shareholders are indexers, there is not a single person alive who considers you an above-average investment. In a rational market, such a company would be wound down or the price of its shares would fall so low that it would be taken over by someone who believes he can do better. But the index funds create a sort of circular reasoning, or perhaps an isolated reality separated from outside feedback, allowing these zombies to keep living. A variant of this was covered by http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-22/index-funds..., but this seems like a more extreme case. Of course, Groupon's "institutional ownership", which includes various active and passive funds, pensions, endowments, etc. is only 65% per Google Finance. There are corporations with 100% and even >100% institutional ownership (i.e., there are a lot of non-institutional shorts). Why do they continue to exist, and what can be done to kill them off?
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
Well, of course. The service the waiter provides does not change just because you're getting a discount on the food.
On the other hand, the service is also the same whether you order two expensive items or two cheap ones, so it shouldn't scale with menu price at all, but it does.
Of course, using a percentage of the price does have the advantage of scaling with inflation... but then the percentage itself has increased significantly over the last couple decades, for no discernible reason.
Basically, nothing about tipping makes sense, so you just have to learn the thoroughly arbitrary rules.
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nearly everyone tips based on the coupon value, not the market value. So that's maybe 50% less. They're also more "value minded" customers, who are likely to tip at the low end. Regular customers sometimes get the expensive bottle of wine; groupon users only ever get the cheapest bottle, if any. And then you get a subset of people who bring a $20 groupon and exactly $20 to the restaurant. It doesn't mean everyone usi…
I naively thought that it's fair game that because I'm buying a £20 Groupon I might pay exactly £20. I never did, but I felt that it should be implied that that's acceptable. I certainly wouldn't have expected to be treated worse for it.
I think the expectations are not always in alignment, hence the friction. A simple solution would be for the groupon to say "$20, fixed menu, all tax and tip included." But you don't see a lot of that, although a lot of the advertising probably sounds like it. Your expectations aren't unreasonable, just... wrong. :)
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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)
I think part of it may be price discrimination. The customer that comes to your site directly already has your hotel in mind, and is probably less price sensitive, so you fleece them. The customer that goes to the aggregator is more price-sensitive, so you ask for a lower price in order to get at least some money out of them.
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 b…
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…
Wait, bartering? At a restaurant? What did people exchange for the food?
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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.
Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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)
Telling an aggregator "I'm going to be selling this room for $180, why don't you guys sell it for $200" is a good way to end the talks right there. The middle ground is arranging some kind of "lowest published price" agreement, where neither party can go below the price, but can lure the customer via some other non-monetary methods (points, loyalty rewards, etc.)