In the past few months, I’ve stopped caring about Groupon, Living Social, Google Deals, Facebook deals, and every other daily deal site that blew up in 2010.
Let’s just say I’ve got better ways to spend my $10.
But apparently a few of you out there love daily deals. Enough so that even though Groupon is screwing itself royally, it still makes $800 million dollars in revenue.
I wish I could mess up hard and still bring home $800 million. That would make Chibi and her need to destroy expensive furniture very happy.
The only thing I’ve ever bought from Groupon is ice cream. The fat kid inside of me in the only one I allow to pay for such indulgences. 60% off hot naked yoga just doesn’t sound that appealing to me. Neither does 50% off my first visit at a new dentist, because I choose my dentist not on quality of care, but who can discount my vanity whitening until it’s an unsustainable business model.
Ugh, I just don’t get it.
Do you use Groupon or one of it’s clones? Is it worth it? Or is it just another gimmick to get us to spend money on crap we don’t need? Leave a comment and tell me what you think of all these discounts.
Also, while we’re talking about cheap stuff - Congrats to Phil H for winning a free pass to BlogWorld Expo. Don’t stalk me too much Phil.
Agree. I waste a few minutes every morning deleting the many daily deals emails that I wake up to. But I’m not ready to unsub because of the chance that something might appeal to me, that I will miss something I’d really want. But overall, yeah, the appeal from when this was a new thing is long done.
Fear of missing out is a powerful thing. I hate it.
They mark up the price of the deals before they discount them anyway, most of the time. Amongst all the other shady practices these sites are up to.
That makes total sense why I still feel like a broke chump.
Mark my word -Groupon will be this generations Pets.com. My purchasing of Daily Deals has slowed considerably partially because:
1. They just aren’t enticing as they used to be. Spending $5 for $10 of goods just insn’t worth the aggravation
2. Maybe its me but I always get the condescending “oh, you’re one of those Groupon customers” vibe whenever I use the offer.
3. For service related Groupons I have found it too much trouble chasing down vendors who’ve realized they made a huge mistake by taking on too many clients and so run away and hide hoping you’ll go away. I’ve had to get two refunds in the last month because of this.
4. As mentioned, for service related offers, I get the sneakin’ suspicion that artificial price inflation is pretty common.
5. How many manicures, massages, Bikram yoga classes does one person really need?
Much of this frustration led to my Open Letter to Group Vendors: http://deanjshaw.com/2011/09/24/an-open-letter-to-current-and-future-groupon-vendors/
Clearly, we just don’t understand how many bikini waxes the world really needs.
Dean, thank you for speaking up for consumers and service providers alike. Reading your letter was like a quick business lesson. I do have friends that love Groupon but they are veteran coupon-clippers who have always let their social and retail experiences revolve around discounts.
I love clipping coupons. I’m a wannabe coupon queen.
Not that I’m a massive fan of Groupon or anything, far from it, but I am curious as to why specifically you think Groupon is ‘screwing itself royally’?
Just read the link Jay has to see why “Groupon is screwing itself royally”. This isn’t his opinion - it’s fact, and he linked to one of MANY articles pinpointing their flawed business plan.
Check the link. Or just google Groupon sucks.
I won? Wait, I never win anything! Woohoo!
Now the world will be at your fingertips. I’ll email you tonight with the code.
I hate you Phil H. Now I have to stay at home with my cats and a pile of bacon.
Can I come to your place?
I have always been against Daily Deal sites from a business perspective, primarily because of how I use them as a consumer. I simply watch the emails and then if a product/company comes along that I am already using, I will buy their deal. That is horrible for business, as I am not a new customer (the selling point that Groupon pitches), I am already a loyal patron, but instead of getting me to pay full price, you just earned 25% of my income.
That’s my take on it as well. If it’s something I use already and know it’s a good deal, I’ll buy it. Or if it’s something I want to try, for example a restaurant, I might buy it. But there have been only 4 in the last year I’ve been using Groupon that fell into that category so that’s all I bought. It does seem like the number of daily deal sites and offers is growing daily and that’s getting old. They’re everywhere.
It’s so easy to copy. I could make anti-social media deals if I wanted too.
Hmm… maybe that’s how you make money blogging.
That’s pretty much why I’ve only bought ice cream on Groupon.
Yeah, I used to find those deals interesting for a few weeks. Then they turned into spam. Unsubscribed from them all. I have much more important things to do with my time, like watching cat videos on youtube.
You are obviously a very smart consumer because YouTube is free. For a while longer, at least. What if they started offering daily deals? What types of YouTube videos would you pay for? This is an interesting question I am not going to answer.
I like how you think, Claire. To answer your question, if YouTube started charging me for cat videos, I’d probably leave the capitalist pigs and would seek my cat videos elsewhere. I’d ask Jay for some from his collection, I guess.
If they start charging for YouTube, I’m going to cry. I already have to deal with ads in the sidebars, in the videos, and the commercials before the video plays.
I only pay attention now if someone cares enough to Tweet it or post it on Facebook. There’s just so many that blow.
Re. Discounts it might be redundant when deals like restaurant and hotels deals are available via facebook friendship or like pages or website coupons.
Talking about a way to have your plumber forced to release a receipt, that’s a great way to obtain it in advance
I kinda feel like it is just a way to get people to spend money on something that they don’t need. The real problem I have is that these companies are taking money out of cities that could really use it for their local economy.
I found a great youtube video and daily deals and it appears as even hitler doesn’t like daily deals anymore.
http://youtu.be/vR6VN1oXXgs