Brooke S.

I've purchased and used 8 Groupons. Six went very well. GrouponNow is awesome and introduced me to a great new lunch spot. The two that didn't go perfectly were not Groupon's fault, one was with Full Circle Farm in Seattle (not a great company/merchant) and the other was the Old Navy Groupon (this was my fault - I didn't read the fine print before purchasing).

Reading the other reviews on this site inspired me to write this review... There seems to be a trend of people with only one review posting similar negative experiences, which makes me suspicious. For those of you posting negative reviews because you didn't read the fine print - please take this as a lesson learned, on the internet text is how merchants communicate important things to you. The policies of a coupon are important, so there is no one to blame but yourself if you chose to purchase before reading!

Groupon and almost every other daily deal site out there takes a size-able cut of revenue brought in from the offer (approx. 50%). If this is offensive to you as a buyer, then show your support by visiting the merchant and paying full price, daily deal sites are not for you. If you are a merchant and you cannot afford this offering, then don't offer a Groupon. It always blows my mind when merchants report after the fact how much money they lost... of course it cost you money to run a Groupon, it's a marketing expense. If you are a super small business owner that knows more about what you're selling than running a business, skip Groupon, skip Living Social, skip paid online marketing. You should never embark on any marketing venture that you haven't pumped the numbers for FIRST. Complaining about the numbers after the fact, is kind of like a student not studying for a test, failing, and then blaming his teacher for his/her failure. And you can't blame the sales person either. As a business owner, if you do not have the will to say no to a sales person when you know they are selling something that you don't need, then you are in big trouble.

Great new fitness tracking site. There are still some kinks being worked out, but it's free and awesome. You log different exercises for points, compete against others in challenges, etc.

Most importantly, I've been exercising more because of it.

Pinterest is like going to a fabulous restaurant, being presented with a beautiful meal, and then getting serious food poisoning afterwards. You want to let the restaurant know so they can fix the problem, but you can't get in contact with them.

I love the concept and the design of the site, but it is littered with bugs which makes the user experience frustrating.

As of now my account is not useable:

A. Boards have been created that are not visible in my account, but recreating the board results in an error saying a board already exists under that name
B. I logged in two days ago to find most of my pins had moved under a single board, but when I edit the pin to try to move it back it says it is still under the original board even though it is not
C. I get 400 and 500 errors about 25% of the time when trying to navigate the site and post new pins

I know it's a free service. And regardless if I agree with your decision to not offer support, the lack of it would not deter me from praising or using the service.

However -

A. If you are not going to offer support, you should make this clear. I wanted the service to work so badly that I wasted my own time attempting to find a way to get my account fixed. Only to have my emails not responded to and Facebook posts deleted. (mind you, my posts were super friendly and very appropriate, but they were deleted w/ no response.)
B. One has to question the integrity and future of a company when they do not have interest in understanding and fixing bugs customers are experiencing

I sincerely hope you turn this wonderful concept and beautiful design into a functioning product. Use that 27 mil to hire a customer service and QA team! Otherwise someone is just going to copy your idea and do it right.

I think they've got a bit of work to do in terms of organization and site flow, but I like the idea. It's like craigslist meets grouponnow, but the community is still restrictively small. With over 14 mil in funding and IMO a pretty large team for the current offering, maybe they are on track to release some amazing new features?

Have purchased and used four deals without issue. I always take a minute to research the company the deal is for, before buying. Have never purchased an escape or adventure, but a few co-workers just got back from a Seattle area excursion and loved it.

They send out an email before a deal is going to expire, you can easily review and print your purchased deals from their website, and every deal has its terms clearly outlined before purchase.

Stay away!

My domain was stolen and their customer service is all over the place, am having a very hard time. About a year ago I was worried my account had been compromised by some developers that used to have access to it, I wrote them with these concerns and they assured me everything was fine. At that point I was busy with work and did not have time to re-purpose the domain, recently I wanted to bring her back to life and attempted to access by domain via bluehost. I was unable to do so, my account had been stolen and the name had been changed. I am no longer the owner of the account.

I have had 2 agents over the phone confirm that they can see a lengthy support history with me. We also found that in the bluehost TOS it states that one must give written consent to transfer ownership of a domain or a court order must be issued (section 4, A). Neither of these happened, but they transferred ownership anyways, breaking their own TOS. The last agent over the phone said that if I sent in my bank statements showing the original hosting charges and a copy of my photo ID via email they would restore the account to me. Then via email they told me I needed to get a court order. WTF? Upon realizing I was being told different things by different people, I called back to get the name of the last person I spoke with. The agent was extremely rude and said that they had no record of me calling. Seriously guys... this is unnerving and you have a very mixed bag of agents and answers.

Good stuff. It takes time to find the perfect blend of tools to manage your social media marketing and customer service campaigns, but oneforty makes it much easier by putting them all in once place with reviews from knowledgeable people. They also have a great blog that is active and very much worth reading.

I did have one issue with their website, but their response to it blew me away. I am almost glad I had the problem because it showed me that there's an awesome team behind this cool site. I wrote in and reported the bug I found, got a very professional response within a few hours, and then a response later on in the day confirming that they were able to reproduce the issue. I was warned that it might take awhile to fix, but within a few business days I had an email from their VP of Engineering confirming that the fix had gone out. That's great customer service and an efficient dev team. Sounds like another company I know of... ;)

Loving it from Sea-town.

Idealnetwork is one of many daily deal sites that have come out of the woodwork recently, its unique hook is that it donates 20-25% of the purchase price to charity. In Seattle there are 20 different charities you can choose to donate to ranging from large and global to small and local organizations.

I've purchased and successfully used two deals from them, one for Theo's Chocolate and one for Essential Baking Company. Was very happy with my experience at both establishments. Keep up the good work!

Stay away!

Interface is meh, took multiple attempts to get one fax through.

But the real nightmare begins when you want to cancel.

1. Don't email them. I made the mistake of not reading their FAQ and instead sent them a friendly email requesting my account be terminated. They did not respond, account was not canceled.

2. Cancellation path online is a total time sink and does not result in your account being canceled.

I read their FAQ and went to the link as instructed. I felt stupid for a moment, I should have just gone to this link previously instead of sending an email... haha silly me, assuming it would be that simple. After you click the link and login, you are taken to a page where you have to initiate a Live Chat session to cancel.
This was during normal business hours (US time) on a Wednesday, no indication that no one was actually manning the live chat. Just sat on, "please wait for the next representative to help you..." Left the Live Chat session open for 1 hour while working on other stuff, never received a response.

3. Finally, I called. Clicked through the menu, selected the option to cancel my account. It told me to go to the same URL I had already sat on for 1 hour and hung up on me.

4. Called back, took a different path through the automated menu, was on hold for about 15 minutes, finally got someone. By this time I was extremely angry and expressed this in a respectful manner to the CS rep. She couldn't care less. I requested a refund for my last charge based on the poor experience and 2 previous attempts to cancel, the rep told me that was impossible and she could not issue refunds for past charges. She then proceeded to read an up-sell script to me, you've got to be kidding, right? Finally, I was on hold for an additional 7 minutes while she deactivated my account. The entire call took over 30 minutes.

Great experience so far - wonderful local deals (they are a bit limited in the locations they offer for their local deals, but should get better with time), good customer service, and credit awarded from invites as expected. Haven't had any problems using the local deals I have purchased on Ruelala and they pick fabulous restaurants, Inns, etc. Also know a local business owner that participated with them and had a fabulous experience. Keep up the good work!

A. You can find some good deals on Newegg, especially on refurbished stuff

B. Users leave reviews with useful information about the product.

I always know what to expect, have spent thousands of dollars on Newegg over the last few years, and have never been dissatisfied.