Ecommerce company Groupon is an internet coupon company boasting up to 95% discounted offers on experiences, products and getaways in over 50 cities in the UK and in over 40 countries. The web voucher sensation sweeping the nation has been subjected to much scrutiny in recent months due to allegations of misleading advertisements, such as, a recent teeth whitening voucher with a 94% discount, only for consumers to later realise further payments were hidden in the fine print tying purchasers into shelling out thousands more.
Well this week I decided to see what all the hype was about and downloaded the popular Smartphone application. I purchased a hair appointment for my hometown of York. The deal was for a full head of colour or half a head of highlights, an optional cut, a Moroccan hair treatment and a finish, all for £29, a discount of 58%.
Having not heard of the hairdressers before I wasn’t surprised to find it was a small family run business, and slightly dated. However the hairdresser was lovely enough and chatty as ever, in fact she informed me the discount service was a useful tool to build her client base being a junior stylist. After confirming what I wanted she went to mix the colours and then quickly applied it as her next appointment had arrived.
Thirty minutes later I discovered the Moroccan hair ‘treatment’ was actually serum applied before blow-drying my hair. Albeit feeling slightly cheated, I was still happy with the outcome of the colour and excited to get a fringe cut in, however after trimming my locks, the hairdresser proceeded to dry my hair and then fetched the mirror to show me the back…she was finished! No fringe, no ‘finish’, trying to remain polite and positive I asked if she could cut in a fringe and use the curling irons to style my hair much to her annoyance.
I finally achieved my desired outcome so she walked me to the till and then demanded more money for the extra dye she had to use for the thickness of my hair, safe to say I won’t be returning anytime soon!!
Despite the somewhat shoddy service and suspicious additional cost, I still saved over £100 but I couldn’t help feeling misled, however this experience is incomparable with those who find themselves tricked into paying much larger extra fees as part of Groupon’s ‘deal of the day’ fine print.
These cases aside, Groupon has over six million members in Britain alone and their subscription figures have doubled since declining Google’s $6 billion takeover offer six months ago. Yet The Telegraph, FT and The Drum suggest trouble is brewing for the discounts provider due to increasing numbers of disgruntled customers foreboding the company’s reputation combined with the fierce competition from Living Social, Vouchercloud and Google alike what will become of this ‘deals’ market?
Watch this space.
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