Walshy Groupon..

[tut]

I have been talking to Groupon about offering my services (they will at some point in the future be starting a business to business deals site), but I'm very wary of what I may gain from it.

Not sure that they are into the Male Escort business yet Dom, and at best it would be a sore bum.

tut

[Dominic]

I have been talking to Groupon about offering my services (they will at some point in the future be starting a business to business deals site), but I'm very wary of what I may gain from it.

Not sure that they are into the Male Escort business yet Dom, and at best it would be a sore bum.

tut

[scottishselise]

Long may they flourish though as far as us punters are concerned. Lost count of the number of times the family has now used the offers, Hotels, Restaurants, Paintball, hair, nails, massages, MOT's, photos(Clare's graduation), Alton Towers etc.

Verian and I are off to a Highland Hotel on Loch Ness for two nights for our Anniversary, breakfast, dinner, bottle of wine, £89 all in. Ian just paid that for one night's bedbugs and cockroaches at the Pikey Lodge in Edinburgh.

tut

I got a similar deal:
Inch Country House Hotel
Fort Augustus, Inverness-
shire PH32 4BL
http://www.inchhotel.com
For £130 quid, including wine.
Sounds like your deal is a wee bit better. Which hotel is it?

[tut]

Polmaily House Hotel.

tut

[scottishselise]

Missed that
Good deal nonetheless.
Annoyed I didn't call the hotel first.

[xtreme]

Totally agree on the comments re Groupon long term, can't see the logic in businesses doing a deal unless there are obvious "upsell" opportunities on arrival, or they are looking for a quick marketing opportunity / cash flow injection (without worying about the consequences later..... surely not a good sign?)

Also get p!ssed off at the obvious attempts to blatently create an artificially high pre-offer price then claim a massive discount, when you arent really saving anything......

tell me how http://www.groupon.co.uk/deals/edinburg ... ign=Varies is worth £850?

http://www.exhilaratescotland.com/super ... tland.html Where is the £850?

Indeed, same package? http://www.giftexperiencescotland.com/d ... il-EXP494/

I think its a great deal, just the way its advertised that annoys me!

Anyway, rant over!!!!

[Dominic]

The other point to consider as a business is to cap the number of 'places' on offer, so that you don't end up over whelmed with work, at a non existent profit margin.

[robin]

Today's Groupon is a deal for a TV - 42" LED LG model. Google shows it retails for 480 from Amazon and maybe a wee bit cheaper in some other places. Groupon price is 399, so not bad, but is advertised as a 50% off saving. Go to merchant site, they are listing that TV at 820. Meanwhile on the same site you can buy the 47" version of the same TV for 650, so clearly the 820 price is made up. Once the groupon offer expires I expect the price will drop to 450-500 range again.

Says nothing about Crouton either way but does show that merchants are willing to hike prices and then offer artificial discounts.

You have to wonder what's in it for the merchant, though. This TV is a commodity - anybody who is internet savvy and is about to buy a flat screen TV is surely going to do a small amount of research on price/availability. If the merchant is willing to sell the TV at 399 then if they just listed that as the price on their site they would be overwhelmed with orders I think. If they run a capped deal for just a handful of units, what's the point? If they run a higher volume deal at 399 they're losing on each TV sold. I would be surprised if the retailer margin on such a product was as high as 30%, so assuming that 480 retail -> 144 margin to the merchant -> 336 cost of goods. I don't know what percentage groupon take from each voucher, but even if it's "only" 25% of the voucher price the retailer selling the TVs is clearly losing money on each TV sold.

So either they're stupid or cash starved or about to commit some type of fraud or the retailer margins on consumer electronics are much higher than I thought.

Cheers,
Robin

P.S. Put another way, if there was 30-50% margin available for discounting then people would just be offering the product more cheaply anyway; and if there isn't then this is a loss leader; why would an online consumer electronics company run a loss leader?

[tut]

All of the bookings that I have made Robin, Groupon have taken 50% of the deal, which I believe is the norm.

However I can not see how that could possibly apply to a TV as opposed to a Hotel deal.

tut

[jen]

The Alton towers one was a bit of a scam too.....

The offer was 50% off a one day ticket price, which was apparently £40.80. This is the price of a one day ticket 'on the day'. If you go onto the Alton towers website to pre-book your tickets, it is under £30 iirc, but you can't do Alton towers in one day so you'd have to buy two from Groupon, which would come to £40.80. If you buy a two day pass on the Alton towers site it is less than £40. So it doesn't make sense to buy your 2 x day tickets from Groupon for more than you would from Alton Towers themselves.

I'm surprised anyone bought that offer, unless they were going for one day.......

[Sanjøy]

They turned down £6b, seriously they turned it down as it was not enough.

[Andy G]

Groupon have put a few "special" comapnies out of business, as the companies involved didnt do the sums correctly.

It can work very well, if you make the system work for you though

Consumers - like ebay, there are bargains to be had, but you have to shift through the sh*te first!!

[jen]

[KevD]

As a consumer it's got some bargains but I can see it being difficult for businesses if they dont do their sums right.

Used it for meals - definitely revisit some so the business has got the repeat customer benefit. hotels - would revisit the inn at lathones ( either to stay or for food) so they've got a chance of repeat business. A few places I wouldnt visit again but for some it'll work. For a lot it won't.

[robin]

Well, looks like the writing is on the wall. Lost 77% of share price, CEO fired, surely they're going to have to change their business model to remain in business at all.

I have no idea how the company collapsing will impact in-flight groupon deals - say you've bought the voucher but not used it yet - clearly no chance of a refund, but I wonder if you'll get to use the voucher - the merchant might not honour the deal as they might not get paid - but if I were about to spend more than £100 on a Groupon deal I would be wanting to know the answer to that question!

Cheers,
Robin