Small businesses and All businesses BEWARE of Scoutmob.com. On the surface, they seem like a very generous company. But dig a little deeper and read the fine print, and you'll discover these guys are tricksters in disguise. I've reviewed several of the half off deal websites already, but from my experiences as well as fellow colleagues who have used scoutmob.com, these guys rank #1 or #2 in terms of RIP OFF for businesses.

In this review, I'd like to outline a few of their claims and my attempt to decode what they really mean.

Scoutmob Claim / Myth: "Scout mob will only charge. 25 to. 50 per customer! Rather than 50/50 as most of the other guys (ie. halfoffdepot.com groupon.com, etc.)

Fact: Scoutmob.com charged me. 50 per scoutmob user on their mailing list who showed interest in the deal. Why is that so bad and misleading? Let me explain. Scoutmob brags they have a mailing list of over 30,000 users. The day our deal was fun, over 2000 users showed interest (NOT ACTUAL CUSTOMERS!). We were sent a bill for $1000 for being on a mailing list that didn't even come close to actually getting actual customers from the mailing list. Out of the over 2000 scoutmobber "I'm in" ticks, 170 actually came in to our store. Don't forget, we also had to give them 50% off which cost us an additional $1700.
Additional Note: Who has only 1 email these days? I may be speculating here, but I'm sure many scoutmob.com users have more than 1 email so they can get multiple discounts and coupons for the same deal. This is an additional burden on the small business owner who has to keep track of scavenging scoutmobbers! Our business alone had to turn away over a dozen customers who tried to use multiple coupons though we clearly specified "one use per customer/person. No exceptions!" To our dismay, a few of these same customers wrote bad reviews for our establishment because we enforced a store policy on online websites such as yelp.com! We were speechless.
Scoutmob is a Lose/Lose scenario for businesses!

Scout mob Claim / Myth: "You have to only pay $1 to $2 per customer who comes in and uses their iphone or android or other smart phone device!"

Fact: For 3 grueling months, scout mobbers have the ability to redeem their additional scoutmob coupons via their smart phone by coming into your store. This means, regardless if this customer had already used a coupon via their computer or email, you now have to give 50% off for every scoutmob customer who shows you the coupon they have via the scoutmob app on their phone! This misleading sales pitch to us by overly aggressive scoutmob sales representative led to an additional total profit loss of over $12,000.

Scoutmob.com claim #3 / Myth: "Scout mob will only run your deal for a day! Consider the deal as a 1-day sale to get a whole bus of customers coming to your door!"

Fact: What a misleading claim! Scoutmob.com runs your business on their site for 1 day. After this, businesses are locked in via contract (which sales people aggressively get you (pretty much force you) to sign quickly and don't really explain all the fine print. My business was locked in to the scoutmob scam for 3 months! Our small business lost over $******* in profit.

Scoutmob claim #4 / myth: "You will receive a good opportunity for lots of new customers! (ie. Repeat customers!)"

Fact: Bull cr*p. Most scoutmob customers are coupon cutters and not really customers you want as a hard working small business anyway. Scoutmob.com coupon users are pretty much deal seekers and the majority if not all will not be back at your establishment unless you as a small business owner give away another ridiculous discount.
Additional Fact: You probably will lose some of your regular customers due to an onslaught of coupon cutting scout mobbers who will pack your store leaving regular customers to wait in line. Many of our regular customers left after waiting for 10 minutes. Additional regular customers were angry that we rewarded coupon cutting customers rather than our loyal full paying customers. What a complete mistake on my part to run a scoutmob.com deal.
Additional Fact: You will lose regular business because of Scoutmob users. Because scoutmob is an app on smart phones such as iphone and androids, some of your regular customers who may be behind a scout mob app user will brag to all the customers in your store. Several of our regular customers who were willing to pay full price, were encouraged to download the app right then and there and use the 50% off coupon while in the store! I didn't know whether to scream or faint out of exasperation. 3 months of this I had to go through this kind of nonsense! Not only money and profit was lost, but additional opportunity cost was lost as well! I hate and despise scoutmob.com!

Moral of the story: Scoutmob.com is a rip off for small businesses! Stay away from Scout Mob fellow business/retail owners!

I can't believe I am the first reviewer of scoutmob.com. Fellow business owners and hard working individuals, I say it again, "BEWARE OF SCOUTMOB.COM!"