Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries • Hacker News Board

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#181

Post by davnicwil » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 7:17 PM UTC

sirtastic wrote: post #85

deepanchor wrote: post #64

Earlier 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…

My experience has been different. I used a Cheesecake Factory Groupon once and was given a special meal that reflected the "value" of my Groupon. It felt like a complete rip-off on top of a restaurant that was already overpriced. $30 for Cheese, bread, and a few grapes and strawberries? I stopped using Groupon after that. It reminds me of Massdrop. You expect to get a deal by purchasing something in "mass" with other…

Off topic, but this reminds me very much of being put up in a hotel by the airline Avianca when they oversold a flight I was checking in for, meaning I had to take a different flight the next morning.

We were told that dinner would be provided, and given a coupon for the hotel's restaurant. Upon presenting said coupon prior to being seated, we were greeted with a look that I can only describe as 'oh, I see' - promptly seated at the absolutely worst table in the place, and given a 'special menu' with one or two very plain options (think, chicken with vegetables and a plain sauce) in an otherwise very nice-looking restaurant. We were summarily ignored for a very long time before our order was collected, and when the food was served it was sort of plonked down with no ceremony or pleasantries.

It's an awful experience to be treated this way, as a second class customer. As though you've broken a social contract by being allowed in through some hack, and the staff will 'serve' you to the absolute letter of the definition and no further. Almost pointedly so as though to emphasise how unhappy they are with your presence.

I never used groupon for a restaurant, but I can completely see that something like this might happen and understand why you never went back!

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#182

Post by homulilly » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 7:19 PM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #167

RyanZAG wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that most of the world's population doesn't tip at all? Given that, it seems kind of strange to assume everyone just knows the appropriate tipping etiquette without being told when getting the coupon or sitting down. Plus the most active users of groupon are probably doing it to save as much money as possible with coupons. They're unlikely to willingly throw away those savings on massive tips... and from wha…

I was replying to your comment specifically about tipping customs in the US. If you grow up in the US and go to restaurants it's not unreasonable to absorb tipping etiquette along the way. You still save money with a coupon, you're not paying full price for the meal. That's no reason to screw over the server who depends on tips for a living. If someone is seriously strapped for cash and needs to save money, they shou…

I've grown up in america and is the first time I've ever heard this and I imagine I'm not alone. It's also kind of difficult since people factor the tip at the end of the meal when they get the receipt, not when they have a menu in front of them.

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#183

Post by mindcrime » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 7:20 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #61

hnal943 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped using groupon because of the near-universal resentment I felt from the employees of the stores selling the groupons. Clearly, these businesses weren't getting the value they thought they would get, but I wonder how much of that was the way they treated the new customers that the groupon generated.

I think it was a feedback loop. More often then not, Groupon's provided no return business, so you'd continue to lower you expectations about the people who were buying them. I'd compare it to how hotels will sometimes give you the worst rooms if you booked through an online site that gets heavily discounted inventory.

I think it was a feedback loop. More often then not, Groupon's provided no return business, so you'd continue to lower you expectations about the people who were buying them.

How much of that is because the business owner made no attempt to establish a direct relationship with the customer while they were present? If you use a groupon to get me in your restaurant, great. But even better if you do some "permission marketing" and get me to add my name to your newsletter list, or "like" your Facebook page, or something that lets you keep in contact with me.

It's amazing how few restaurants and hotels and what-not seem to even try to do this kind of customer relationship / one-to-one marketing stuff, in 2015. I get regular emails from Petterino's in Chicago, letting me know about specials on Mother's Day, Father's Day, etc., or other special events. I don't live in Chicago so I don't visit their restaurant very often, but they keep themselves on my mind, and you can bet that next time I'm in Chicago, I'm more predisposed to visit them than most of the other restaurants I vaguely remember from my last time there. OK, to be fair, it helps that the product is really good as well. Their "Midwest Corn Chowder" is to die for. But still, it boggles the mind that none of the other places even seem to try.

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#184

Post by yeukhon » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 7:20 PM UTC

bane wrote: post #16

I'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 business is definitely a factor, but also this needs to be a culture change. You have to get used to it, people have to get used to it.

Food, in general, seems more precious than the rest of the things we do in our life with money.

Maybe in the future when you pay everything electronically, you never have to let people know you are a groupon user, you just swipe and discount at the end. BTW, why do people need to disclose that they are groupon users when they walk in? That's my impression of stories below.

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#185

Post by anthonybsd » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 7:24 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #99

nate wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting this comment. I think you raise what most of us should really think hard about when we see the struggles Groupon is going through. We like to throw them into a big, bulk, category and dismiss the entire thing as "bad business". But just like you pointed out, you really enjoyed it as a consumer. And I know businesses that have been running groupons for years, because they also get a lot out of it in…

> Now we have instacart, postmates, Amazon Prime Now, Peapod, and more making this model work of fast, local, delivery. We also have smartphones now. I was a big fan of Kozmo (and its NYC competitor UrbanFetch) but it was an entirely different kind of experience shopping on an EGA monitor with a dialup connection and I understand why it wasn't as easy to make it work.

EGA monitor in mid-late 2000? Nonsense :) Not to mention both websties were a breeze to use at the time when Amazon was meh-ish.

I did miss urbanfetch and kozmo when they went out of business though. They had the most massive DVD sale ever.

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#186

Post by TheGrassyKnoll » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 7:24 PM UTC

nasalgoat wrote: post #115

rprospero wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember, back during their heyday, listening to pundits discuss how Groupon was going to run Google out of business if Google couldn't find a better way to offer daily deals. I regularly saw people mentioning Groupon in the same breath as Amazon and Apple when speaking of tech giants.

All I remember what thinking that they were insane to not take the buyout. Seems I was right.

Couldn't agree more. Creation of a Google-Groupon axis would've been powerful.

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#187

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 7:24 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #183

toomuchtodo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was a feedback loop. More often then not, Groupon's provided no return business, so you'd continue to lower you expectations about the people who were buying them. I'd compare it to how hotels will sometimes give you the worst rooms if you booked through an online site that gets heavily discounted inventory.

I think it was a feedback loop. More often then not, Groupon's provided no return business, so you'd continue to lower you expectations about the people who were buying them. How much of that is because the business owner made no attempt to establish a direct relationship with the customer while they were present? If you use a groupon to get me in your restaurant, great. But even better if you do some "permission mar…

Anecdotally, the people I've talked to who bought and used a Groupon have no intention of a continuing business relationship. They got a steal, they know it, and they'll move on to the next Groupon, whatever it is.

There's something to be said for the type of audience you cater to. (TL;DR Market to those who know what the idea of "value" is compared to "cheap".)

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#188

Post by chavesn » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 7:24 PM UTC

georgemcbay wrote: post #174

jacalata wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there were a bunch of stories implying that it was because of pressure and misleading reassurances from the Groupon sales people signing them up combined with poor business sense from the small-time owners, in most cases.

I've heard the same, but the company treating Groupon customers badly is still irrational behavior. The money being lost on the Groupon is a sunk cost, so you've got: Option A: Lose money on the customer, treat them like second class citizens, probably lose the customer forever, possibly have the customer tell all of his or her friends how bad they think the business is. Option B: Lose money on the customer, still tr…

This is great advice. The thing many businesses probably fail to realize is that, generally speaking, where [A] is the baseline customer base, the audience with Groupon is not "[A] with some subset of [A] paying cheaper prices" but instead, "[A] + [B], where [B] is an audience they never would have found."

To increase your audience, you almost always have to pay.

In contrast to big business, America especially likes to celebrate and idealize the small business owner as the one who truly knows the value of treating the customer right. But if these stories are frequent, it probably just exposes the sad truth that it's not as common, even in small business, as we like to believe or hope.

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#189

Post by taevis » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 7:26 PM UTC

violentvinyl wrote: post #23

ceejayoz wrote: post #7

Anyone getting their emails has known it was coming for a long time. They used up all the good places pretty quickly - they got the return customers and didn't need to re-run coupons. Now it's all weight loss scams, online courses "worth" $2k but sold for $20, and even sex toys lately.

Exactly this. It stopped being a good way to discover local places you may not have heard of and instead became a way to shove cheaply mass produced junk or freely mass produced digital junk in to eveyone's mailbox.

With that in mind, what services are good at finding local places? I figure services like Yelp and Groupon had this in mind, but generally attract the people who have negative experiences or opinions to share them.

Re: Groupon Is Laying Off 1,100, Shutters Operations in 7 Countries

#190

Post by Klinky » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 7:27 PM UTC

amatix wrote: post #148

tcdent wrote: post #136

Earlier 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)

Having some experience in this area, some hotels were only getting 1/3rd even 1/4th of the sticker price on the aggregator website.

Part of this was on the hotel though, for not managing their rates through the aggregator properly. Often hotel management would call up angry about the rate they received, but they could barely use a computer, much less manage using multiple aggregator's backend websites.

The hospitality industry is kind of a mess.