Groupons, the good, the bad and the ugly

[bigaboy]

So is the general consensus that Groupon allows disreputable shops to prey on unsuspecting new customers and those shops that use them as intended can provide a good service with them?

I think that may be a bit general. Groupons are a marketing tool. Used correctly they are a tool to cull a group of prospective clients. The breakdown comes when it is not used as designed. It is NOT a revenue generator in and of itself. If a dive shop thinks they can make money from them by scaling down service they are wrong. They get disgruntled clients who are less likely to sign up, defeating the purpose of the Groupon. If however they lay out the red carpet and use the opportunity to impress the clients they will likely cull a few of them to go on.

If a disreputable shop uses Groupons as a revenue generator, well then it is just another example of how they rip people off (I suspect their business practices already promote this type of behavious in other transactions). If a reputable shop uses Groupons as a revenue generator, they are employing a bad business model and are likely just unschooled in marketing. Unfortunately this will tarnish their rep.

Simply put, Groupons are another form of advertising. It costs money to advertise. They create opportunity.

 

[Griffo]

It's not just dive offers - it seems the whole Groupon thing is in a bad state across all industries at the moment

For brands, Groupons can mean bad reviews | ZDNet

Apologies if this has been posted already.

 

[nimoh]

in diving, most OW students are first time students (I say most, because a few may be retrying after not getting through). Because of this they are not in a position to judge the quality of the class. If they get into a class where some of the standards are left out, or whatever, and they pass, they are very likely to say it was a good class.

In other industries, such as the restaurant industry, people can tell good service from bad, and good food from bad.

disclaimer: the above is just a theory and not based on factual evidence

 

[scubadiver888]

in diving, most OW students are first time students (I say most, because a few may be retrying after not getting through). Because of this they are not in a position to judge the quality of the class. If they get into a class where some of the standards are left out, or whatever, and they pass, they are very likely to say it was a good class.

In other industries, such as the restaurant industry, people can tell good service from bad, and good food from bad.

disclaimer: the above is just a theory and not based on factual evidence

Heck, even experienced divers might not know good from bad. During my divemaster training there was a guy who did everything else at a different shop. We were talking about Rescue Diver training and find out this guy practiced with cinder blocks. He never actually had a real person to rescue. I asked him about how they taught keeping the air passage open and holding the regulator in the victim's mouth. He had no idea what I was talking about.

I've met people from the boards and we get talking about good and bad shops. I ask them if the are familiar with shop X or Y. They say no but they are all the same. Took one guy up to dive with a group of Open Water Diver students and the instructor. After the dive he admitted that the instructor was a LOT better than anything he had seen before. That shop taught what was required. They didn't go above and beyond.

I had a OW diver come to my shop for a refresher because he hadn't been diving for a few years. We get in the pool and he is having some real problems. He had a number of panic attacks. When it came time to flood his mask he was hesitant. He finally did it and bolted for the surface. I slowed his ascent and he dragged me up with him. On the surface I ask him to inflate his BCD. Still in a panic so I get in behind him and rescue him. Once he is calm we talk. Apparently he never could do the mask recovery. The shop told him it wasn't important and to skip it. He couldn't get neutral or do a fin pivot. He used the inflator button like an elevator button. He had no idea how badly he was trained. I felt compelled to tell him if he was in our open water class he would fail but because he is a certified diver there is no pass or fail to a refresher course. He agreed to come to the pool whenever we were holding class and who ever was there practicing skills could work with him.

Not hard evidence but fairly suspicious... back when I was just an OW my wife wanted to go on a cruise. She doesn't dive but agrees to an itinerary which has a lot of ports with good diving. On the first few ports we had 22 divers. We'd talk on the ride back to the ship. Someone said at the next port the dive operator starts with a shore dive but before you leave the lagoon you need to do a mask and regulator recovery. If you cannot do that you do not dive. I booked the dive anyway because these skills took me less than 10 seconds to complete. Someone asked at the shore excursion desk and confirmed the rumour was true. We had 6 divers including myself. I suspect the other 16 divers didn't think they could do a mask and regulator recovery. Oh, the reason for the test before the shore dive was because fishing boats passed overhead at high speeds. A few years back someone had a leaky mask, panicked, went to the surface and got hit by a boat. They just wanted to make sure you wouldn't bolt for the surface. If you had trouble they had a roped off area. You'd indicate trouble and a guide would lead you to the roped off area were you could surface safely.

 

[acteg]

My experience with groupon has been mixed generally speaking. If the groupon is through a big company like fandango for instance there have been no issues.

That being said, I bought a groupon for open water padi , and advanced open water padi through groupon. The price was really good. The only problem is every time I tried to contact the independent padi instructor for the groupons I bought, I either never got a response back, or he would respond and we would start to work out the details, then I would never hear from again, and I would have to restart the whole communication process. In the end I just cancelled the groupons which was very easy to do and I got my money back.

 

[grouchyturtle]

Not trying to pick on people in this post, or say they fit into this category, but...

It's not just dive offers - it seems the whole Groupon thing is in a bad state across all industries at the moment

For brands, Groupons can mean bad reviews | ZDNet

Apologies if this has been posted already.

Exactly! This IS the problem. I'm a charter boat operator (not diving). You do get some good customers, but the majority of the deal site people are the worst of the worst. Especially look at point 3 in that article.

People become daily deal addicts.
Many don't believe in paying fair price anymore and only chase the lowest-priced deal. The restaurants realize they are not earning anything from this crowd. The withdrawal of legitimate restaurants begin.

And of course those types of people rarely tip, including the ones who show up extremely late, without calling of course, who you do a favor and do a private trip for, when you don't have other bookings, even after clearly explaining to them that you normally can't run with less than 4. Also many don't even show up with cash, so I need to chase them down after the trip just to collect the sales tax. A few even left me a bad review about collecting taxes! All they see is a cheapo deal, and they don't read any of the details. Then complain about not getting what it never said was included in the first place. I haven't gotten many bad reviews, but here's a little example of one. I had one customer who paid for a 3 hour trip for 2. We had 6 people and went out for 4-1/2 hours, got so close to the Volvo Ocean Race that we were less than a boat length from most of the boats. Didn't tip a penny at the end of the day, and wrote a bad review on top of that, including complaining about not serving snack, which clearly weren't included, and me somehow not being able to magically control the conditions of the ocean.

I could go on and on for days, but the point I'm trying to make is these sites are far from a picnic for the businesses too. You get paid pennies, and then have to deal with an extreme amount of BS on top of it. And as much as they say it, most will NEVER return unless you offer another deal again. As far as the marketing aspect someone pointed out. A handful of people booked through me directly and I got a few new fans to my page. Hardly worth it. I did make enough to at least get me out of the hole I was in, but once was enough.