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Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

blog.agrawals.org

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Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#51

Post by rockya »

pg wrote: post #45
rockya wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publishing results in: - Loopt getting subscribers to its list. That seems like a benefit to me. - Merchant getting perceived as a discount brand. For many merchants, that's a negative. - Merchant having to deal with customer inquiries about a deal they know nothing about. That's a negative. It should also be noted that Loopt picked really high profile businesses like Bi-Rite and Ritual Coffee. These places usually h…

Loopt getting subscribers to its list. That seems like a benefit to me. But not a net benefit. Unless this is sustainable, it will have been a very expensive way to collect email addresses.

This whole model is going to collapse for a lot of reasons. I wrote about that here:

http://redesignmobile.com/2011/06/22/loopts-u-deals-offer-an...

Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#52

Post by netcan »

There are a few things that seam clearly, though not necessarily badly, wrong here. For, example: They use a a Groupon like appearance as many deal-a-day sites use. This sends a strong-ish message that something Groupon-like is going on. A lot of people will have bought these coupons recently and will make quick assumptions. This is the kind of things brands do, usually, to send a message to the buyer/user. It's like when generic coffee comes in a nescafe-like jar. There's also potential for non-savy small businesses owners to feel coerced. I'm not sure trademark is the issue though, at least not a terrible one.

Anyway, I think judgement should maybe be postponed. This could easily be an awkward mistake. The overall intent doesn't seem nasty. The execution, particularly clear messaging, has just (perhaps) been done absentmindedly. It shouldn't be too late to clean this up. Let's see if they do.

Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#53

Post by netcan »

rockya wrote: post #25
sama wrote: post #14

We're trying something new and innovative, and of course we'll have to iterate on it. We're moving as quickly as we can to fix this and make it work for consumers and businesses--obviously, it doesn't work for us unless it works for both of those groups. We have a chance to really improve local commerce, and I hope we do. As soon as a business wants to opt out, we block them permanently in the system and remove any p…

Sam- There's no way this should be an opt out. Loopt is trading on the business's good name and offering a "deal" that doesn't exist. It's inconveniencing the business and potentially damaging their relationships with customers to the benefit of Loopt. It's just plain wrong and indefensible. (Author of the original post.)

Do you think clearer messaging would fix this? Seems to me like a problem only if it seems to people that this business is offering the deal. If its clear that isn't the case, would you still have issues with this?

Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#54

Post by sama »

potatolicious wrote: post #44
pg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel it's evil for a company giving away, say, a car as a prize to disclose the brand of the car?

These aren't the same thing. When "Bob's Plumbing and Heat" run a promotion and say "Win a Toyota Camry!", no reasonable person would presume that Toyota endorses or is otherwise affiliated with Bob. Now let's look at what the Loopt UI looked like: 1 - It's presented in a way that's extremely similar to what all of the other group-buying websites look like. Which is to say, a reasonable person can easily confuse this…

3 was a major bug. We've pulled down all deals until we fix that--it should say "pending merchant approval", with an explanation, not a tip counter.

Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#55

Post by byrneseyeview »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #47
chailatte wrote: post #13

First airbnb, now loopt. Something evil has infiltrated the house of ycombinator.

I had a very visceral reaction to reading that YC had dirty money from spammers, but to be fair there's a much longer list of startups they've funded who are not airbnb-type scum (at least that we know of).

At least according to them, AirBNB didn't do this directly--it was done by a firm they hired to get leads, and that they didn't continue working with.

Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#57

Post by rockya »

netcan wrote: post #53
rockya wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam- There's no way this should be an opt out. Loopt is trading on the business's good name and offering a "deal" that doesn't exist. It's inconveniencing the business and potentially damaging their relationships with customers to the benefit of Loopt. It's just plain wrong and indefensible. (Author of the original post.)

Do you think clearer messaging would fix this? Seems to me like a problem only if it seems to people that this business is offering the deal. If its clear that isn't the case, would you still have issues with this?

Associating discounts with businesses who haven't agreed to them is problematic for me.

Many manufacturers have MAP guidelines so that they don't get to be perceived as bargain basement providers. Some (e.g. Bose) also require that their products be excluded from all storewide discounts.

They have high affinity and a premium value and want to protect that.

Sam claimed that they posted what they think is a reasonable discount. That's not for him to decide. If I'm as popular as Bi-Rite, I don't consider 33% a reasonable discount for my product.

Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#58

Post by zem »

hammock wrote: post #18
zem wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nope, mtkd nailed it when he cited the "passing off" laws. they're not just banding people together to get bulk discounts, they're implying that the businesses in question already support their model, and are using those businesses' brand recognition to add legitimacy to loopt.

It's more than banding together to get bulk discounts. Loopt is facilitating group buying - that's the "democratized" part of it.

yes, but they're going about it dishonestly.

Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#59

Post by Roop13 »

potatolicious wrote: post #28
repos wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can companies really opt out of Get Satisfaction, or will they always be presented with the "Company X has not yet committed to open conversations about its products or services." If Loopt explicitly allows companies to opt out (and prevent the creation of deals for that company) then perhaps the service might be beneficial (companies that opt in to stay may get valuable feedback of what the consumer wants/would be w…

I'm not quite so confident about this idea. To me, all you will get are people voting for discounts at places they already frequent. This is not a good measure of what customers want, nor the prices they're willing to bear for these goods and services. I may be willing to pay $3 for a latte from my favourite coffee shop... but you're damn right I'm going to vote yes on $1 coffee. Why wouldn't I? This is going to resu…

I've spoken to a couple of business owners who have done Groupons - they see it as a marketing expense that seems to have greater returns than many traditional methods (coupons books, junk mail, etc). But Groupon works in a way that this idea does not: it gets new customers (whether or not they're good new customers is besides the point).

So true. Thank you whomever you are. Tell Rockya this.

Back to loopt suggested deals. We have thought of this but how does this possibly work? When the only people that are going to really work hard for discounts they already want are full price paying advocates already. I can't see any benefit to this type of promotion at all. Absolute cannibalization of their current full-price paying customers. It's not sustainable and much worse than daily-deals.

Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#60

Post by netcan »

rockya wrote: post #57
netcan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think clearer messaging would fix this? Seems to me like a problem only if it seems to people that this business is offering the deal. If its clear that isn't the case, would you still have issues with this?

Associating discounts with businesses who haven't agreed to them is problematic for me. Many manufacturers have MAP guidelines so that they don't get to be perceived as bargain basement providers. Some (e.g. Bose) also require that their products be excluded from all storewide discounts. They have high affinity and a premium value and want to protect that. Sam claimed that they posted what they think is a reasonable…

Again, I think it may be about messaging. The problem comes from the association with daily deal sites. If you think about it (and communicate it clearly) as an offer/demand/bargaining attempt and less like an existing discount/offer, which it is not, I'm not sure there would be a problem.

Imagine the business had started this way: You have lots of friends who like to do the kind of stuff they're promoting. You have some guy in the group who is willing to call around and bargain. We'll fill 10 tables @ 4pm tomorrow if you give us the free appetizers & desert. Then he decides to create a scalable process for this kind of bargaining to happen. That might look similar to the business they're building here.

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