I’m sure if you follow me on the Twitter that you know I don’t hold Groupon in high regard.
But, in general, I don’t hold the entire daily deal business in such high esteem.
Since I could write an entire book on what’s wrong with the business and why I would dissuade my clients and friends from selling their products through a daily deal site, I am going to give you just a few reasons that I am anti daily deal sites.
A. If you believe in my business basics, you won’t go with a daily deal site because you don’t control everything that your business does.
B. Most of the time, you aren’t getting great products when you are buying these things. A great example was last year, during the dog days of the NBA season, I saw the Nets run a Groupon deal. First, you could buy Courtside tickets on Stub Hub for $2 and service charges and for the games that the Groupon was for, the Nets and Timberwolves in mid-February isn’t going to get anyone out the door. So, that’s a garbage product.
C. Sometimes you aren’t getting a great deal. There have been numerous articles written about some of the underhanded marketing techniques that Groupon has used to try and sell their clients on how great the deal they are getting is. I think that if you are that willing to sell your client base down the river to try and make a sale, you don’t deserve the respect of your clients, but when you are willing to try and inflate the quoted retail price of something to sell a deal that comes out to be about what someone would pay direct, you aren’t giving any value and the client isn’t getting a great deal.
Those are just 3, but I was walking around thinking about them today….and its just something I wanted to share.