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

#221

Post by tbomb » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 9:26 PM UTC

deepanchor wrote: post #64

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.

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…

That seems like more of a pricing issue if the business can't break even. I have a good friend that uses Groupons for his business. What he has shared, is that customers that come in with a Groupon, often come with a sense of entitlement. I know this isn't the rule, and maybe it a defense mechanism from the customer who thinks the business is giving them a "second rate" experience. However, this ultimately led him to ending his Groupon deals.

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

#222

Post by vacri » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 9:46 PM UTC

coffeedrinker wrote: post #156

tedunangst wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on her likely experience with the previous ten groupon customers, you basically announced "I intend to tip you 25% of what you were expecting."

But rudeness in wait staff is a self-fulfilling prophecy. They treat you poorly so how can they expect a generous tip?

If you walk down a street and nine people punch you in the gut as they pass, it's a bit rich for the tenth person to complain that you flinched as they walked past. The wait staff are simply playing the odds.

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

#223

Post by ojbyrne » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 9:47 PM UTC

hnal943 wrote: post #41

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 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.

My understanding is that some of that (specific to employees) is because people tip on the basis of the discounted price, and I've gotten groupons where they explicitly say something about "please tip based on the non-discounted price."

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

#224

Post by FireBeyond » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 9:49 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #168

amatix wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Some of the big chains now have a "best rate guarantee" intended partly as marketing, and partly to pressure their franchisees to offer the cheapest rates through the official booking channel. If you book directly and then find a cheaper rate elsewhere within 24 hrs, they'll match + usually give you something extra. For example Holiday Inn matches plus makes the first night free; Hyatt matches plus an extra 20% disco…

"In practice whether this actually works is all over the map. Some chains will deny the claim if the cancellation terms are even slightly different, e.g. they'll say the rate on the official site was more expensive but doesn't violate the best-rate guarantee, because it allows cancellation until 6pm, instead of 5pm, which is a better set of terms. This then makes it easy to discount in third-party channels without technically violating the guarantee, by deliberately modifying the terms slightly. Other chains follow closer to the spirit of the "guarantee", but it's a bit of a lottery."

Best Buy is guilty of this too. Not their worst offense, but a lot of things that are harsh on price match, like hard drives, often have their own retailer-specific model number. The same drive might be identical, but the one on Amazon has a different model number to BBY to thwart price matching.

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

#225

Post by bsder » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 9:54 PM UTC

loco5niner wrote: post #63

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 got a groupon(or similar) for a straight-blade shave. The guy was using replaceable blades, was obviously using and old blade, and absolutely tore my face up. Nicks and blood everywhere. When I didn't give him a tip, I could tell he was upset.

Where did you even find a barber who does straight-blade shaves? Let alone a Groupon?

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

#226

Post by lelandbatey » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 10:07 PM UTC

Zombieball wrote: post #216

antsar wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In my experience I have also had mixed results buying non-keyboard related items on massdrop, but the keyboard things I've bought where excellent and at great prices.

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

#227

Post by SilasX » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 10:13 PM UTC

chavesn wrote: post #188

georgemcbay wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Bingo. I saw pre-internet confusion on this point from small businesses too. I remember being little and my mom got a coupon at the car wash for a pizza at some nearby place. When we went to use it, the manager turned us down saying, "nah, this is dine-in only, yeah, otherwise we don't make any money off it".

Even at that age, I was like, "wha? But, isn't that the purpose of a promotion? So someone tries your stuff and might come back?" It wasn't like a coupon in the back of a magazine, but something the car wash guy actively promoted.

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

#228

Post by larrys » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 10:34 PM UTC

Camillo wrote: post #218

larrys wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Was through a barter exchange.

So in other words the restaurant barters meals and gets "trade credits". The other participants barter either the products they are selling "plumbing supplies" or services "lawyer, accountant" and so on. They get trade credits. The barter exchange keeps track of how many credits a business has so they know what they can spend. Typically people who sell services or perishable products are big winners. Losers would be businesses with low margins. For example you wouldn't find any Plasma TV's typically on a barter exchange. You might find jewelry though because that has a big markup. I actually was able (and this was some time ago I have to add) barter an apartment for myself as well as apartments for some of my employees. Other big items are perishable products such as hotel rooms, travel and so on. Magazine or newspaper ad space are other examples.

Use it or lose it to the vendor. There is an active and most likely a separate channel of travel barter that operates independent of any barter exchange. (Billboards for radio time let's say. TV for travel expenses.).

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

#229

Post by TallGuyShort » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 10:40 PM UTC

hnal943 wrote: post #41

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 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've had businesses refuse to honour coupons they had sold for money because they weren't getting the return. If I feel resentment from a business because I'm exercising what is essentially a contract, my solution is to not patronize that business again.

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

#230

Post by hunter2_ » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 10:57 PM UTC

deepanchor wrote: post #64

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.

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…

There's quite an easy solution to using a Groupon without compromising your experience: don't disclose that you're using it until you're completely served. I strive to hand it to the server during the final bus, so that they don't have to print the bill twice. If I'm slipped the bill unexpectedly early, I put down the Groupon with my payment to similarly avoid an extra round trip (and I mention that it's there, not let the server discover it at the POS station).

Most, but not all, Groupon deals have fine print prohibiting this by stipulating that the Groupon be disclosed on arrival or while making a reservation. I disregard this because I would much rather give the restaurant the opportunity to not honor the discount (I will pay in full including tip, and use the Groupon properly on a return visit) in exchange for uncompromised service.

I have never had restaurant staff so much as hint any sort of disapproval when I slip them the Groupon late, let alone reject it. Not even close. I think it's because they get it - it makes sense to do this.

(The above applies only to full-menu fixed-discount deals such as "$50 to spend on food and drinks". Obviously I cannot and do not use this method when the deal involves anything along the lines of a prix fixe menu, because in those cases one must be treated differently upon arrival.)

I tip based on the pre-discounted bill and generally the service is great enough (thanks to this technique) to hit the 18-20% mark. If I disclosed the Groupon earlier and received subpar service as a result, I'd give an appropriately low tip.