Groupon is Bad for Everyone

Yoga should be peaceful…

Yoga. It’s more popular than ever, with studios popping up on nearly every corner. Everyone does it. Hell, Troy Polamalu does it.

So does my wife.

My wife also used to buy Groupons (I’ve since convinced her to stop). And, unlike most Grouponers, who buy them for the awesome deal, my wife tends to go back to those places. She is the ideal situation for the small businesses who choose to do the daily deal dance.

Unfortunately, her recent experience with Groupon — and a business that didn’t understand what it was getting into when it chose to offer one — is a classic case study for why it’s easy for everyone to lose in the pursuit of new customers or a great deal.

The story goes as follows — my wife bought a Groupon for the yoga studio near our home (Yoga on Fremont) for $65 that gave her 20 classes. Unfortunately, due to a crazy schedule (she’s a physician) and lost password, she didn’t redeem any of the classes before the March 19th, 2013 expiration date.

In the early days of Groupon, having it expire meant that the entire value of the deal had been lost (i.e. she had paid $65 to get nothing in return). However, with lawsuits, the threat of lost customers, and any number of other factors, Groupon changed its terms of service such that the paid value never expires. This gave the business a way to limit some of the cost damages of offering a Groupon while insuring the customer against losing their money. Win-win.

When my wife went to the studio, she brought her Groupon with her, expecting to apply it to individual classes ($14 each) until she ran out of value. The owner, however, stated that the company policy for the expired Groupon is to honor what the value the owner received ($31.50), not the entire paid value. Despite a couple of emails between my wife and the owner, including my wife sending the actual Groupon that includes the text “The amount paid for this voucher ($65.00) with Yoga on Fremont NEVER EXPIRES” at the very top, the owner would only honor the $31.50 earned from the sale.

I don’t blame the owner of Yoga on Fremont for not wanting to lose any more money on her daily deal. Groupons are a horrible financial decision for small businesses. However, like most deals with the devil, you don’t get to change the rules when things get uncomfortable.

The net result is this — my wife is upset and won’t ever return to a yoga studio within walking distance to our home. She’ll get a refund, but does that really matter? And for the business, they’ve chosen to alienate a customer that could have not only become a loyal one, but a customer who works at a hospital that serves the community and regularly recommends yoga (and yoga studios) to her patients.

So, if you’re a small business thinking about doing a daily deal, just don’t do it. The implementation is difficult, you make 20%-25% of the revenue you normally would on a sale, and the Groupons tend to create more problems than new customers. And, if you’re someone thinking about buying a daily deal, please reconsider. It might be a great short-term buy, but it hurts the local small businesses you’re hoping to frequent for years to come. It’s a bad long-term deal for everyone.