What's a little bit hard to swallow is seeing a company get big by employing those tactics, and the penalty is "well, we had a few bad apples, and we're disciplining them now".
Whether right or wrong, all we heard about for a while from real users was the horror stories, giving the impression that most deals were bad for the small businesses using them. My gut reaction is "sure, I could make money hand over fist by lying (or misrepresenting things) to customers - making money by being honest is much harder".
In some ways it's a bit like the old MS stories. "They just did good business!". Well, no, they quickly established a monopoly then proceeded to abuse the hell out of it with several partners, which kept them entrenched and on top far longer than they would otherwise have been there.
"Hey they don't do that anymore!" That may be true, but the damage is done, and they get to reap the rewards for a long time with relatively minor punishments.
There'd be much more expense in doing long term education and one-on-one counseling with the small businesses that use groupon, and probably a MUCH higher satisfaction rate with them from a merchant standpoint, but they wouldn't have nearly the marketshare they do by going that route.
Whether right or wrong, all we heard about for a while from real users was the horror stories, giving the impression that most deals were bad for the small businesses using them. My gut reaction is "sure, I could make money hand over fist by lying (or misrepresenting things) to customers - making money by being honest is much harder".
In some ways it's a bit like the old MS stories. "They just did good business!". Well, no, they quickly established a monopoly then proceeded to abuse the hell out of it with several partners, which kept them entrenched and on top far longer than they would otherwise have been there.
"Hey they don't do that anymore!" That may be true, but the damage is done, and they get to reap the rewards for a long time with relatively minor punishments.
There'd be much more expense in doing long term education and one-on-one counseling with the small businesses that use groupon, and probably a MUCH higher satisfaction rate with them from a merchant standpoint, but they wouldn't have nearly the marketshare they do by going that route.