I mentioned last July about being excited about the Groupon I bought for a lawn care service. I called last July to redeem it, but they were completely booked through the end of August. (Wow, that was fast!) Then I called in September, gave my name, and the guy asked me where I lived. I told him my city name, and he said, “Okay we’ll be there on Thursday.” And hung up. I was confused, and as I suspected no one showed up on Thursday. Then a few weeks later, he called back and left a message. I was out of town and didn’t particularly feel like dealing with it at that moment (and it was already October, which is about when our grass went dormant for the winter), so I never called back.
This past weekend, we tried to mow our grass weeds, but our mower wouldn’t work. So I figured it would be a great time to redeem that Groupon! Since I’m in the process of doing other things to my yard, I thought I’d also see how much they charged for those other things as well. I finally got a chance to call them today.
When I mentioned wanting to redeem the Groupon, the guy told me they are no longer accepting Groupons, and that I needed to contact Groupon for a refund. Crushed! I was so looking forward to something like this, and I’m really bummed about this whole situation. This was the first Groupon I’ve ever purchased, and it makes me wary about buying more in the future. Does this kind of thing happen a lot?
Reading the discussion page for this deal on Groupon’s website, it sounds like everyone has had trouble. Not a good advertisement for their business, in my opinion! I’m still bummed, though. I hope Groupon refunds my money soon.
Aw man! I’ve redeemed maybe 5-6 Groupons without problem. Sounds like you found a company who got overwhelmed with Groupon and didn’t put a proper limit on their coupon.
This is a problem with Groupon. It has been somewhat common for small businesses not to be able to keep up with the onslaught of new, non-paying, non-repeat customers that come once a Groupon is released. I’ve even seen signs posted at restaurants saying they’ve stopped accepting a Restaurant.com coupon! This New York Times article explains the math behind it- why more customers doesn’t mean more revenue. In the case of the lawn service, I bet they were unable to book full-paying customers with all the Groupon customers, and they just couldn’t make ends meet.
All that said, we’ve had good luck with the very limited number of Groupons we’ve bought, and my sister buys them all the time for Chicago. So, this doesn’t happen every time.
That was a really interesting article, Joanna. Reading the discussion of the deal on the page, it sounds like this was one bad egg among many good ones. I’m glad Groupon refunds the money. Unfortunately, the card I used to buy the deal has since expired so I’m trying to figure out what to do.
I’ve never had a problem with Groupon. That’s obviously a business problem. Sorry it worked out badly for you!