Groupon ready to crater?
 

Its been forced to restate earnings. The culprit? Higher refund rates. Why the refund rates? For one, it doesn't force buyers to lock in travel schedules.

Anyone here bought this stock long?

They are in all sorts of trouble with the authorities here in the UK....

There was a big story on the BBC about a week ago.

Overselling so that it was impossible to book what you had bought seemed to be a big issue.

It would not be entirely surprising if the shares take a nice dump once the lock period on insider shares expires.

Well, for starters, it?s not a coupon company nor a marketing company. At its core, Groupon?s U.S. business is a receivables factoring business, as I wrote last year. They give loans to small businesses at a very steep rate (the price of the discount plus Groupon?s commission). They get the money to fund these loans from credit card companies such as Chase Paymentech. Groupon is essentially a sub-prime lender that does zero risk assessment. And as word continues to spread about what a terrible deal running a Groupon is for many categories of businesses, the ones that will choose to run Groupons are the ones that are the most desperate. For U.S. based businesses, the only time I can definitely recommend running a Groupon is if it is otherwise going to go out of business.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/31/wh...-for-collapse/

Interesting post. Thanks.

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I am involved in a cupcake shop venture that has done Groupon three times in the past year, with success...and I was always the skeptical one in the group.

The coupon has never included our core product, but instead a small meal that would end with them buying a few pricey cupcakes.

Not going out of business. Just opened a second location and delivery business.

They can crater for all I care. There are a number of local ones, one we tested got the same results.

It's hard to say, it's a great idea and website but ran by dumb asses.

they are a horrible managed company, the sales department is totally fuckedup, im speaking form someone who has dealt with them directly, nothing but a nightmare.

bullshit i know companies that have done groupon and groupon types of deals that are not scams and did make $$$ in the end.

I concur with Candyflip. Here in Asia, businesses have gotten smart.

1. groupons are extremely time-limited. no more 6months to a year. It's a month or two at most
2. groupons are no longer for discount amounts like $100 worth of food for $50. It's $50 for specific things with an arbitrary MSRP tacked on, so a customer is less able to accurately weigh value. For example, a hamburger joint does a special burger that isn't available on the regular menu, with a stated value of "$10", even though the burger could be a $4 burger any other time. As Candyflip said, it's not their signature burger / core product
3. customers may need to jump through hoops to claim the groupon, such as the redemption center for products in farther away places.

living social is a better option for businesses

We did the same deal with Living Social and did no even come close to the same number of sales. But...they did give us a better deal on their % of commission. I will give them that much.

Would groupon's business model be better served it was a strictly localized affair instead of being overseen by a national company? Some business models are just way better off purely localized

Where I am the local radio stations are all under one corporate umbrella and they have their own that they push and promote.

A few of the local TV stations that are own by the same company do the same thing.

All of these have turned out to be viable options as well.

Did you find a lot of people that came in to redeem Groupon's only stuck to the item they bought or did they actually upsell to your core product as well? Did those customers recur or were they one timers who came in for the groupon (if you can track that)?
WG