Live data from Hacker News

Groupon is an unregulated check cashing company

blog.womply.com

21–26 of 26 posts

Re: Groupon is an unregulated check cashing company

#21
post #11

Given Groupon's published payment terms, this article is a little odd: http://www.groupon.com/pages/merchant-terms-of-service-1 (see 4.3). It seems they're paying merchants only after coupons have been redeemed. So in reality, merchants get their cash later than for regular purchases. Of course these default payment terms can be overridden in a custom agreement, but I wonder how often this really happens?

^^^This is an accurate and very important rebuttal. Groupon has taken flack precisely because its cash flow depends on delayed payments to vendors. The vendors emphatically do not get paid up front.

If they did, Groupon would actually not be in business right now. The amount it owes vendors exceeds its cash, but by the time it has to pay it has sold more Groupons. In other words, Groupon pays old liabilities with new ones (this is, obviously, a point of intense controversy).

http://www.businessinsider.com/groupon-low-on-cash-2011-8?op...

"...it collects cash from Groupons the moment it sells them and doesn't have to pay some of the cash to merchants until 60 days later..."

Re: Groupon is an unregulated check cashing company

#23
post #14

GroupOn pays merchants 90 days net. The customers have long come and gone before GroupOn sends you a check. The rest of this post is thus redundant.

Not according to their S-1: "Our current merchant arrangements are structured such that we collect cash up front when our customers purchase Groupons and make payments to most of our merchants at a subsequent date. Under our traditional merchant payment model, we pay our merchants in installments over a period of generally sixty days for all Groupons purchased."

According to their current merchant terms it's a payment after 30, plus every two weeks after that on any balance.

Re: Groupon is an unregulated check cashing company

#24
post #2

If you're using Groupon deals as a quick way to get some cash in order to float your business then you're doing it wrong. Considering the way Groupon's payment terms this whole premise of "using a groupon deal" to make payroll doesn't even make sense. I'm tempted to call bullshit on this whole article. There's a lot of hate out there for Groupon, some of it deserved, but this one is a bit of a stretch.

If you've subscribed to Groupon long enough, you'll see some businesses re-appear on their rotation. While some businesses have been burnt by over-selling, it's hard to imagine completely suicidal business owners coming back to keep losing money.

Re: Groupon is an unregulated check cashing company

#25
This is a little bit like, oh... Opera writing a blog post about how you shouldn't use Firefox because it won't display any Google page.

...ie, it would be very important and interesting if true, but it's 1) not true, and 2) trivially verifiable as not true.

Groupon works in the precise opposite way of how Womply claims they do; they provide payment to the vendors well AFTER the voucher is used, not BEFORE the voucher is used. Every single point and conclusion made by Womply is not just wrong, but describes a world precisely opposite to the one we actually inhabit.

I have never heard of Womply before, but apparently they're run by fools. At best they have no clue how their competition does business. More likely they do know, but assume that their customers don't, and feel no compunction about lying. Either way...

Re: Groupon is an unregulated check cashing company

#26
We've surveyed over 1600 Groupon merchants, and 75% say they would like to use Groupon again. In general, it seems they are pretty satisfied.

We did a text analysis of over 150,000 words of open-ended responses:

* Fewer than 2% of all these merchants even mentioned "cash upfront" as a benefit of running a deal. Not a single one mentioned it as a primary benefit/drawback.

* A few merchants did in fact complain that Groupon sometimes held on to the cash a little TOO long before funding their accounts

* FYI, the top stated benefits were "New Customers" and "Advertising Effect".

Groupon is in no way perfect, but its characterization as a check casher is pretty silly. I'm sure if you hunt hard enough, you can find an unhappy Groupon merchant and put words in their mouth.

Post reply on HN