Attention Group Buy Sites!

Just a suggestion to group buy sites. Before making deals with vendors, can you please tell them not to treat coupon customers any different to full-paying ones? Better yet, get them to sign an agreement.

Specifically when trying to make bookings, they SHOULD NOT be asking whether or not a coupon is going to be used. If the vendors can't agree to these conditions, don't deal with them! Saves you the pain of having to deal with unhappy customers and weeds out the scammers. You can even declare this on your site and I'm sure more people will be confident to use your services.

What do you think?

closed Comments

  • +2

    What do you think?

    I think its good, but i don't think it will happen

    • haha lol

  • While I agree voucher customers should be treated with the same level of service and quality as regular customers, I don't agree that bookings need to be made without reference to having a voucher.

    To help business manage an influx of customers I always suggest designating historically low traffic days (Mondays-Thursday) for vouchers customers to redeem and use the service. That way they can spread out group buying customers and not be overwhelmed customers. Its not realistic for everyone to expect to be able to redeem vouchers on Friday and Saturday nights. We have to make sacrifices too in order for business to provide us with discounts, its a two way street.

    So rather then remove conditions, I actually feel its better if MORE conditions are put in place to help business owners cope with the group buying campaign.

    • And i agree with you but these things such as day exclusions need to be mentioned in the details prior to booking.

  • +3

    Well, regarding bookings, the easiest solution is to limit the amount they sell but that will never happen. Perhaps the more they sell the better the conditions. E.G. 1000 sold = 1 year expiry, 2000 = 2 year expiry.

  • +2

    Another thing they should specify is the conditions that apply to the gift vouchers that are often thrown in to boost the value of the deal. For example if you get a $50 voucher, but it is only going to be applicable against services costing $150 0r $200 or more, then those conditions should be specified in the deal.

    Also, if there are samples or products to be provided with beauty services, what will be provided should be specificed. I have redeemed vouchers where I thought I would be getting some great swag only to get a tiny sachet which isn't even a full use. I just chuck those out.

    • Point very well made !!! I have experienced these discrimination a few times. Before booking the table, they ask whether you have voucher or not. After mentioning that you have a voucher, treatment and tone changes.

  • +1

    In so far as dining or drinking vouchers are concerned, I have not yet had a problem of any sort. I have a voucher that I bought for Freo and when I said I wanted 6 weeks out on a saturday night they were happy to accept my booking. I have had heaps of others where I book the same day or they say just come in. I realise that I may be an exception and I don;t mean to insult those who have had issues.

    Alaturka (Turkish) was fabulous the other night. Treated like royalty in my email enquiry, in the phone booking for the same night and upon redemption. I will recommend this place to my meat eating friends as the presentation of meat was fabulous.

    It is the beauty ones where I have an issue and that is particularly true when there is a long, labour intensive booking involved, such as a massage. Or places that have previously offered massage deals, such as Rejuva/Elegant Touch or Charisma. They are already booked out a lot.

    There have been a few standouts in the Perth beauty arena. They are Renaissance, Sothy's, House of Ernest and Bayview Day Spa.

    I recommend ALL of these to the mums at school at their full prices. They have all delivered top quality friendly service that is truly exceptional.

    The beauty ones really need a rethink, especially the ones with massages. I have almost always ended up with sub-par service delivery and I tell people about it. People are always asking me where tyo get a massage and I have a number of suggestions based on where they live and what they need, but a few crappy group buy ones have been dissed and believe me this really sticks in people's minds. Especially when you have fair reviews about other places.

    • Unfortunately I cannot comment on the beauty ones as I, myself, have not used the vouchers yet.

      However with restaurants, it has been a pleasant experience so far. The only thing I find my self doing is often forgot about it until I decided to clean up my desk then gasp an unused voucher then start panicking! Need a secretary =)

      About the Alaturka restaurant, I had a bad experience with it. Mainly the waiting time and the overcooked, read "burnt & dry", chicken kofte… quite disappointing really. The worst part is that they aren't even busy. Two tables in the whole night!


      On a related note, wouldn't it be better if they offer SMS reminders of your voucher is about to expire? =D

  • I think that is completely fair and reasonable.

    Of course a restaurant wants to even out their peaks and troughs, but using a group-buy coupon for that purpose is wrong. the RRP is based on peak, so as a coupon user, it should not matter up front if you are a coupon user, or not. the benefit is (and should be) in the pockets of the coupon buyer.

  • They all need some sort of system where you can mark when you have used a voucher, prefereably with used vouchers going on another page, like Jumponit does. I have probably bought over 100 scoopons and the used ones intermingle with the unused ones.

    It would also be helpful if you could sort your vouchers by expiry date.

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