Groupon leaves me swinging in the breeze

What happens when you buy a discount offer, only to have the retailer invent new, more restrictive Terms of Use that make it more difficult to redeem? (Spoiler alert: The retailer WINS and you LOSE!)

Last year, I bought a LivingSocial deal for Nihon Whiskey Lounge, but when I tried to use it, the waitress told me that they don't accept LivingSocial vouchers during Happy Hour. This was not stipulated in terms of the offer, but I didn't complain to LivingSocial because I figured I'd be back another time anyway. Long story short, I never did make it back, and I ended up eating the cost of the voucher.

UPDATE: Groupon saves the day with excellent customer service. Read all the way to the end...

Now, I find myself dealing with a similar situation, this time with a Groupon deal for a round of golf at Metropolitan in Oakland. I tried to use the voucher for a round on either Saturday or Sunday of the upcoming 4th of July weekend. (The holiday is actually Monday). But the reservation agent said that Metropolitan won't accept Groupons during holiday weekends. I responded that the Groupon offer doesn't say anything about holiday weekends. She assured me I was wrong (even though I wasn't). - see for yourself.), and refused to make the reservation.

See if YOU can spot the "no holiday weekends" restriction!

I contacted support@groupon.com and explained the situation. They responded within half an hour (impressive!) and said that they would "be happy to reach out to our merchant manager on your behalf to resolve this issue." Sounds great!

Time passes... Available tee times evaporate like morning dew on a hot fairway...

Two days later, after no further word from Groupon, I follow up with support@ and get a super-helpful response:

Hi Jim, 

I just got an email a couple hours ago from our rep saying that he was working on getting in touch with the business. If there's anything I can do to help in the meantime, please let me know! 

Regards,
support@groupon.com

This is one great big FAIL for Groupon. If a retailer invents Terms of Use that do NOT appear on the agreement, they should get spanked hard and fast by Groupon (or LivingSocial, or whatever). My sense is, they don't.

After all, if I never use the purchased deal, Groupon WINS BIG. Not only do they keep the revenue share that came from my purchase, they also get to go to other retailers with alluring statistics about some percentage of customers who don't even redeem their purchased deals! It's like free money!
Just one of the many ways that Daily Deals are not always the good deals they seem to be. :-/

Footnote: 

Turns out, you're not completely screwed when that voucher expires. From Groupon's blog:

"When a Groupon expires, customers can still redeem for the price they paid for the period of time defined by state law (5 years in Illinois). This is not new; it’s been in our terms of service and in every merchant contract since May of 2009 – when we were six months old and launched in two cities."

Check out the very last paragraph in Groupon's Terms of Service. And the same thing is true for vouchers from other providers like LivingSocial, Blissmo, Bloomspot, PopSugar, Active.com Schwaggle, etc.

Simply stated, once your voucher/coupon expires, you can still redeem the voucher for its purchase price. If the merchant refuses to do so, the service that sold you the voucher must refund your purchase price. See the links to Terms of Service at bottom for proof of this policy.

Follow-Up:

I received another email from Groupon Support on July 1:

I'm very sorry about our (lack of) resolution time. I completely agree that we were not able to come through for you, and you have every right to be disappointed in us.

I of course would be more than happy to issue a refund to you for this Groupon if you are uninterested in redeeming it in the future. I can issue the refund to your Groupon account or the credit card you used for purchase.

For the trouble, I have placed $15 credit in your account to use toward Groupon purchases.

The credit is available in your account immediately and does not expire...

Please let me know how you would like to proceed and if there's anything more that I can do to help.

Regards,
support@groupon.com

I would give pretty high marks to Groupon Support. They've been responsive, and have admitted when their response was inadequate. I think this whole experience just reveals some inherent weakness in the Groupon model, both for retailers and customers. (I don't know what to say about the $15 credit. Not enough money to make up for the lost opportunity, really. Just... odd.)

Related: Terms of Service

• Groupon
• LivingSocial
• Bloomspot
• Active.com Schwaggle
• Yelp Daily Deals
• Blissmo < THE ONLY ONE THAT DOES NOT EXPLICITLY STATE THIS POLICY IN THEIR TERMS.

U-Suck

An ode to the joy and sorrow of renting from U-Haul.

On June 12, I reserved a 10' truck via U-Haul.com, to be picked up at 11am from my local U-Haul store and returned within the standard four-hour rental period. Stated rate: $19.95 plus mileage.

Upon arrival, I was told that my truck was going out with "about a quarter tank" of gas, but if I returned it with at least a quarter tank, they would discount the rental charge from $19.95 to $9.95. (Sounded good, but in retrospect, not so. The truck actually had about one eighth of a tank of gas. This particular model of truck has a fuel capacity of 31 gallons. An eighth of that tank is 3.875 gallons, which at the current local price of $3.85/gallon comes to $14.92. So I lost a mere $4.92 in exchange for the minor inconvenience of partially refilling the tank. Meh.)

So I did my U-Hauling, no problems, driving 28.2 miles in total, and returned the truck (with a quarter tank of gas) well within the 4-hour time limit. The lot was chaos, and the place seemed severely understaffed. Once I found an attendant, she told me to just leave the keys in the vehicle, and I could be on my way. Done and done.

A few days later, I checked recent activities on my credit card, and discovered that U-Haul had charged me $68 instead of the anticipated $35 ($9.95 rental fee plus about $25 for mileage, at .89/mile). I called U-Haul and eventually found my way to the store manager in Concord. He said they had recorded the mileage from the WRONG truck, and over-charged me. Oops. He calculated the correct charge based on 29 miles, and said he would refund the difference to my credit card ASAP.

(Interestingly, he never apologized. He seemed vaguely interested, "Oh, I see what happened. Yeah… OK. We can fix that." - but never said he was sorry. I ended the call with, "Thanks for your help," to which he replied "No problem." Whatever…)

A couple of days later, I checked my credit card statement again, and lo and behold, not only was the refund NOT posted, but there was now a NEW charge of $21.79, in addition to the previous charge of $66.41! WTF!!!

I called U-Haul again, and after waiting over 10 minutes on hold, I spoke to a not-very-helpful CSR who offered some truly vague and incomprehensible reasoning behind the additional charge. She said a partial refund would be applied, but that it would take a few more days to post to my credit card account.

So I waited five more days, then checked my credit card statement again. This time, I saw a refund of $37.92 from U-Haul.

Hm, let's see: $66.41 + $21.79 = $88.20 - $37.92 = $50.28. I'm no math wiz, but I don't think $50.28 is the same as $35.

So I called U-Haul again. I got a first line phone rep, who listened to my tale of woe and then forwarded me to Customer Service. I waited on hold for 10 minutes, and then the call was dropped. WTF?

I called again, and explained to another first line rep what had just happend ("Call dropped, please get me to someone who can help.") She apologized, then forwarded me to Customer Service again. This time I only had to wait 7 minutes before the call was dropped. I guess that's an improvement.

At this point, I've invested about 45 minutes of my time, between calling, researching, and just plain pacing/fuming. So I'm out about $20 ($5 for the cost of extra gas and $15 for the what-have-you charges on my credit card) and nearly an hour of my life. I think I'll cut my losses and move on.

Wait... Let me first post this to Yelp and Twitter. There. OK, now I'm done.

Thanksgiving Fairytale

About a month ago, I became the proud owner of a Musque De Provence pumpkin, also known as a Fairytale pumpkin. I bought it because it's so damn beautiful, and I planned to use it as an ornamental centerpiece for our family's Thanksgiving table. This will be a special Thanksgiving, and it seemed appropriate to have a special centerpiece.

But then I learned that this rare variety of pumpkin is "especially prized by cooks for its fine textured flesh and robust flavors." So now I can't be content just looking at it. I have to cook the thing. 

My first thought, of course, was to make a pie. And I'll certainly do that. I've been baking a lot of pies this year, partly because I love pie and partly because it's the kind of home-spun cooking my mother would approve of. (I'm less certain she would approve of my ending that sentence with a preposition, but that's a mystery with which I'll have to abide.) The Musque De Provence supposedly makes for a great pie.

But this is an 18 pound pumpkin, enough to make 10 pies. We're a big family, but we don't need 10 pies. So I thought back on my days as a kitchen monkey (prep chef, dishwasher, waiter, barista, you name it) at the wonderful Cafe Beaujolais in Mendocino. We made a simple but delicious carrot side-dish by combining cooked carrots, chicken stock, cream, butter, salt and pepper (and some mystery spice I can't recall - suggestions welcome!) in a food processor. The result was a vibrant orange and delicious puree with the consistency of melting gelato. So good. I'm going to make that again, but with an even mixture of carrots and my special French pumpkin.

I also have to make creamed spinach. My grandfather, George Burker, always made creamed spinach, and so naturally his daughter, my mother, always made creamed spinach for our special dinners. I can't remember a Thanksgiving without it. 

Last year, on Thanksgiving morning, my mom was getting ready to head over to my sister Dorothy's house for the day. She had been cooking vegetables for much of the previous day, and I sat at her kitchen counter for a couple of hours, talking to her while she cooked. (I'm not lazy; I would have helped if she'd asked. But it was a very small kitchen, and she didn't really want my help anyway. She wanted to do everything for her children, not the other way around. She liked it when I helped with her computer or when I brought her a new CD to listen to. But she wanted complete ownership over her cooking, and especially, I think, the creamed spinach.) 

After cooking all day, she stayed up late cleaning the kitchen. She must have exhausted herself beyond belief, because the next morning, on Thanksgiving day, she got up, headed to the shower, and just… died. Instantly, and without warning or explanation.

Back at my sister's house, we waited until well past the late morning hour we expected her to arrive. Then Kathleen drove over to her house to help get her and my disabled brother John out the door. Instead, she found John inside the house, alone and very confused. My mom had died hours ago.

Fast forward to the late afternoon, and all of us sitting down to the strangest and saddest Thanksgiving dinner any of us is ever likely to experience. Not surprisingly, we had all lost our appetites, and yet we were confronted by this mountain of delicious food. In particular, my mom's vegetables, which she had literally worked herself to death to prepare, stared up at us and insisted on being eaten.

So we ate. I can't quite explain the taste of the creamed spinach on that day. Sufficed to say, taste and smell got  themselves inextricably tangled up with emotions in a way that couldn't be overcome. That spinach tasted like a combination of love and sadness and a lifetime of my mother's hugs. And butter and onions.

So here we are, one year later, and my sister has asked her brothers to make the vegetables for Thanksgiving. It's entirely practical; she and her husband Paul are preparing both a turkey and a ham, and she will be making her usual assortment of fantastic fruit pies. So it only stands to reason that we take on the task of the vegetables.

So now I have this very special pumpkin, for this very special Thanksgiving. And of course there will be creamed spinach, which undoubtedly we'll make with love and sadness and a lifetime of my mother's hugs. And lots of butter and onions. I sure hope we don't mess it up.

What to wear when flying Ryanair? Depends...

Ryanair recently announced plans to remove most of the bathrooms on their shorter flights and replace them with additional seats, and then to charge passengers to use the remaining lavatory.  

What could possibly go wrong!?

Here's how I think this plan might have been rolled out to the Ryanair executive team:

Listen up everybody... OK, so as you know, we're all here to brainstorm ways we can make air travel MORE profitable and LESS pleasant for our, uh... guests.

OK, settle down... Tammy here has come up with a peach: First, we remove two out of three lavs on every plane (nods of approval) and then add six seats in their place (murmurs of assent). With 10% more seats and 66% fewer lavs, demand will skyrocket (applause). Now, here's the genius part...

We install coin-operated locks on the lav doors, and charge a quid per use. Everybody flies with a pocket-full of coins, right? Noooo? Well, then, we'll offer to make change, for a fee of course. And just imagine all those toads hopping around with their knees crossed, waiting to make change so they can get in line for the toilet!

And if some poor bastard doesn't make it, and shits himself, well, that's just a compelling object lesson to the rest of the bastards that they'd better bring their own coins and get to the front of the line.

Tammy, I love it. How'd you like to be our new VP of Customer Service?

Update 17 November 2010: Ryanair is in the news again...

More than 100 angry Ryanair passengers sat in a dark cabin without food or water for four hours Wednesday, refusing to leave their plane after it was diverted to Belgium, authorities and passengers said." [Read]

Little things make all the difference

Some businesses do unremarkable things remarkably well. Specialty's Cafe & Bakery is one. Specialtys makes great sandwiches, on their own great bread. They also make other stuff, like salads, cookies, pastries and coffee drinks. But I only get sandwiches. My personal favorite is the Peanut Butter and Stuff -- how do they make a peanut butter sandwich so satisfying? -- but every sandwich I've ever had, at any of their numerous locations, has been great.

Today, I ordered and paid for my sandwich on their web site for fast pick-up. (Specialtys has a great on-line ordering system. Very easy to use. You should check it out.) Only problem is, I ordered it for pick-up at the wrong store. I used to go to the Sansome store, so that's where I placed my order. But now I work much closer to the Pine store, so that's where I went. When I got there, my sandwich wasn't ready. Duh.

I asked for assistance, and the guy at the counter took down my name and disappeared into the back. A few minutes later a young woman appeared and said that my sandwich had been ordered at the Sansome store, which is a few blocks away. There wasn't even a hint of "You didn't order your sandwich from us, dumb-ass" snarkiness in her voice. She could not have been more polite about my stupid mistake. Then she said, "We can make you one here if you like."

That's it. That simple gesture embodies good customer service. She offered to erase my mistake (my mistake) in a way that would eliminate their profit margin on this one order but would ensure a loyal customer for the future.

Moral of the story: It's so much cheaper and easier to keep the customers you have than it is to market to and win new customers. I simply don't understand why more companies don't get that. (Are you listening, every single airline except Southwest?)