Groupon praise

katerinasol

I'm always very mindful of the fact that people are quick to vent but not to praise, so I thought I would add my feedback. I ordered a voucher for a restaurant and although it was a little confusing (had to wait a day for the voucher, then once I'd printed it off, they emailed me almost a day later with the voucher again), I booked the restaurant with no problem and it turned out to be a really good place with great food and atmosphere.

So it's not always a letdown

melancholly

my groupon experience wasn't so great - not bad, just not really all that good. nice to see some good experiences though!

Falafely

I love Groupon! I am always buying stuff from them! I'm yet to have a bad experience, but I've probably jinxed it now, eek!

I'm always looking at the London deals and they used to have used to have 'London' and 'London Special', but now I'm excited to find out they have East, West, North and South too so each day I have more of a chance of finding something cool, lol! I'm contemplating whether to buy the West London deal today - I could do with a bit of pampering to be honest, hehe!

System

Groupon are great, any problems tend to be because of the provider not Groupon

Idiophreak

Their customer services are a joke - try getting a straight answer out of them, just doesn't work - and they refuse to take any interest in the content on their site and just say "we just write what people tell us to...nothing to do with us" - so if you have any queries, go straight to the provider, not Groupon.

That said, had some good bargains

Nirvana9

I've had mixed experiences.

What I have learnt is to never by cut-price tickets for a fixed, one day event. Total disaster!

dianetheartist

Im addicted to Groupon--so far its been all good

---

did you know that its in Quidco as well?10% Also KGB as well--had some great offers from them too---and they are also on Quidco--15%
had £12 back yesterday from a KGB break! cant be bad!

delta_charlie

Have to say in my experience Groupon has been really good.
It's made me experience new stuff like paintballing and go-karting that I would otherwise have just said "yeah its nice but bit expensive".
I think a lot of the time the problem is that the merchants don't realise how much custom they can get with Groupon so they get literally overwhelmed with orders and cant deal with it so they either turn Groupon voucher holders away or offer them budget quick service in order to get through all the customers.
The merchants should take responsibility and limit how many groupon offers they are willing to take, that's all

Falafely

Delta makes a good point. Yesterday I went to use my first Groupon deal which was an all you can eat buffet at a restaurant and I was worried that me and my mate would be squished somewhere and wouldn't even get anywhere near the food (I was considering being piggy and filling like 2 plates on my first trip to avoid this, hehe!). BUT to my surprise it wasn't at all like that. The buffet was always full, no-one was in the way and we had more than enough room to move our elbows as we ate. I would definitely buy another Groupon voucher for a restaurant :-)

Gavin83

I've bought about 20 different experiences on the site now, mostly restaurant based and haven't had any problems so far. My girlfriend bought a spa experience with a friend though and had loads of problems booking it so I think it depends on what you go for.

philwjones

I've had 2 issues with restaurants. The first was an Indian Restaurant where the groupon was so popular, you just couldn't book before the expiry date.

The second happened on Thursday - we had a '7 course taster menu with wine' and a night's accommodation worth £309 for £129 at The Old Post Office, St Fagans, Cardiff.

We were herded into 'Groupon Corner' - the food was totally unimaginative, cheap and in no way worth the £129 (after accommodation) let alone £309. The wine pairings were basic supermarket fare and not really anything special.

• Course 1 - Butternut Squash Soup - served in an Illy branded coffee cup (!) - which was fairly watery and worthy of a canteen.
• Course 2 - 4 Asparagus tips with a bit of melted parmesan and balsamic vinegar - that really takes a lot of effort to put together doesn't it ?
• Course 3 - Anchovies and Beetroot with some salad leaves - easy to open a jar of beetroot and tin of Anchovies!
• Course 4 - Crab and Mussell risotto - this was quite nice.
• Course 5 - Duck with Veg - the duck was overdone, but what was worse, was my wife is allergic to potato - she's told the chef this earlier in the evening who 'forgot' about this.
• Course 6 - Cheese - a blue cheese, and some Caerphilly cheese - with 3 oatmeal biscuits (3 between 2) and some honey.
• Course 7 - A strawberry cut in half and served with a pot of chocolate sauce - the wine pairing with this was Moscatel - probably the cheapest dessert wine you can get.

To further add insult, we'd booked a twin room (as we can't sleep in the same bed without waking each other) - they didn't know anything about this and so we had a double room! They said they'd sort it when we were having food. We thought that this would mean them going into our room and splitting the bed (it was one of those ones which could be reconfigured to 2 singles/ 1 double) - but, we were told that one of us had to move into another room they had spare or keep the double - which is pretty useless to us. So I moved into the other room - a palava and not exactly a nice night away with my wife.

We left in the morning without having our breakfast - couldn't deal with another minute there.

My wife has also had the reactions she usually gets with potato products (sickness, itching and generally drained) - so there may have been some sort of potato starch in one of the dishes (possibly the soup).

If companies want to take the Mickey with groupon deals and treat their customers like 2nd class citizens when they do this, they really are risking their long term reputations for a quick buck - we'll never go there again and will warn friends away too. I'll also never buy another restaurant deal from Groupon who I feel also risk their reputation by not vetting merchants properly.