I hate Groupon. There I said it, I had a couple bad experiences, and yes I will agree it was probably partly my fault for both cases. However, I’m sure I’m not the only person who has done the same stupid things I’ve done.
I’m writing this for myself so I can consider whether I’ll record it as a message for a new podcast called Grumpycast. I’m not even sure if after I finish writing this whether it’s worthy or not.
Okay, so my first bad experience with Groupon involves Canada and Starbucks. I’ll explain, I live in Grand Forks, North Dakota which for all practical purposes it’s so close to Canada that half of the cars at any local store have Canadian license plates. That’s the part of the problem and the reason Groupon.com thought I was Canadian when I tried to purchase a $10 for the price of $5 coupon for Starbucks a year ago or so. I ended up with a Canadian version of a Starbucks gift card. I put the code on my iPhone and it took me over a year to redeem it. I don’t frequent Starbucks at all, actually it was my wife who asked me to buy the gift card from Groupon in the first place. Each time I looked at the Starbucks app on my iPhone I saw the $10 which was at first more than $10 because of the exchange rate slowly plummet to less than $10 because the dollar became worth more than the Canadian money.
So Groupon, I’m not from freaking Canada and I don’t want Canadian Starbucks money, I hardly even want any from the US for Starbucks.
Ok, my second problem…
I thought I would be a nice guy and buy my wife a sampler box of gluten free items from Taste Guru via Groupon (she has issues with gluten, she’s not a hipster). This turned into a six month process. I purchased the Groupon code in January thinking I would be able to get it sent to my wife in time for Valentines Day. I was wrong. After Valentines day had came and went, my wife asked where her box of gluten free stuff was and why she never got it. I checked into things, turns out I missed a few steps in the process and that’s why she didn’t get anything. So I followed the steps and then waited again. Nothing for about a month or two. Then I got angry and I contacted Groupon and Taste Guru and supposedly everything was fixed and my wife would soon be happy. Nope! So, again I got angry and e-mailed Taste Guru, sent out a couple nasty twitter messages and finally got the problem resolved. I’m not going into all the details, since it’s pretty boring and partly my fault for not following all the detailed instructions that were cleverly hidden from me (not really, but they might as well had been). In the end my wife received her gluten free box months after I told her about it and all is good.
The moral of this long and boring story, I’m not using Groupon again, not even if they’re giving out free money or kittens (especially kittens, I don’t need anymore cats we’re over our quota). I’m sure they’re a great company and I’m sure Taste Guru is as well but I just don’t like going through all these processes to get stuff. I’m more of a pay for things and get them quickly kind of guy without any complicated rules kind of guy.