What is Groupon? How does it work?
Hi everyone! Corbin from Techboomers here, with another website for you to look into. It’s called Groupon, and it’s a deal-of-the-day operation that lets you buy vouchers to exchange for products and services at discounted prices. How does that work, you ask? We’ll tell you!
Groupon is a website that allows businesses in major urban areas around the world to offer mass discount promotions. You get to be the one to take advantage of these deals by using Groupon: just find a deal that you like, purchase a voucher from Groupon at a discounted price, print the voucher out, and then trade it in at the establishment offering the deal for goods or services! Groupon is one of the largest online deal-of-the-day operations out there, and it’s intuitively organized, so finding something you want close to home is a snap! Groupon makes it even easier by recommending other deals that it’s hosting from businesses that are similar or in the general area of where you like to shop. You can even use Groupon to save on things that you buy every day, and you can get those coupons for free!
What are some tips for using Groupon to its fullest?
1. Being proactive is the best policy for avoiding problems.
The “group” in “Groupon” comes from the fact that businesses only offer their deals on Groupon as long as enough people buy into them. That means a business may cancel the deal if they don’t sell enough vouchers, or they may sell too many and not have enough product to cover the demand. Also, most vouchers have expiry dates and other conditions on when and for what they are eligible.
There are ways to cancel your Groupon vouchers and get refunds for them (we’ll cover that later), but the best way to make sure that you can redeem your deal without a hitch is to be proactive. Before you buy a voucher, read the fine print for it, and make sure you know when it expires and what other special conditions dictate how you can or cannot use it. Call the business ahead of time and make sure that they are still offering the deal, and will otherwise be able to fulfill it for you. And try to cash your voucher as soon as you can after purchasing it, to avoid having your situation change and the business deciding to cancel or reject the deal from it being undersold or oversold (respectively).
2. Get the deals that are right for you by adjusting your preferences.
You can change your taste preferences in Groupon to have it recommend local deals that are more relevant to you. For example, depending on if you’re a man or a woman, you can have Groupon show you deals that are geared more towards your gender. Or you can also ask Groupon to orient your recommendations towards things that you like to do. “Adrenaline” will show you more sports-related deals, “Good for Kids” will show you more discounts on things you can enjoy with your children or grandchildren, and “Pet Lover” will allow you to receive promotions geared towards pampering your non-human companion(s).
3. Save even more money by using on-site credit to pay for vouchers.
Groupon has an on-site credit system called “Groupon Bucks”. The most straightforward way to earn Groupon Bucks is to send referrals to your friends and family, and have them sign up for Groupon and purchase vouchers. This has the double benefit of having more users on Groupon to fulfill voucher quotas, so the more people you refer to Groupon, the more deals you can get! Groupon also occasionally has promotions where you can earn Groupon Bucks by purchasing vouchers that you wanted anyway. By building up enough store credit, you may be able to pay for a good chunk of a voucher, or even the entire thing!
4. Know that you have options if you change your mind or something goes wrong.
In most circumstances, if you decide that you actually don’t want something that you purchased a Groupon voucher for, you can cancel the voucher within three days of purchasing it for a full refund. In addition, you can get in touch with Groupon to let them know if you are not satisfied with your voucher purchase. For example, the product that you exchanged your voucher for was broken or defective, the business refused to honor the deal despite your voucher not being expired yet, or a vacation or event that you booked got cancelled or rescheduled. In all of these situations, get in touch with Groupon’s customer service department, and they’ll work with you to make things right. They may even offer you a full refund. For more information on Groupon’s refund policies (and how to get a refund from Groupon), or how to contact Groupon customer service, see these tutorials for Groupon Refunds and Groupon Customer Service.
If you’d like some more information on what Groupon is and how to use it before you actually try it out, visit this Groupon course on Techboomers.com. Otherwise, why not head over to www.groupon.com and see what deals you can dig up?