New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
I can't believe they're still willing to sell these servers until they are caught up??
I don't know why LET/LEB still allows the sales promotional offer still to be up considering the undelivered, missed dates, shorts on RAM, etc.
It reflects poorly on the community if we don't police idiot companies like this off the offers.
I had no problem with it the last time I used it. It take a long time but I don't care about time, it's not 1000$, it's 35$. If I do it directly on the credit card, it will be against Paypal and not against Commercial Media.
Thanks @Jack and @Liam.
Sorry their offer has gone this way. Hopefully they pause and resolve and regroup.
PayPal has been known to block credit card numbers from further purchases if there is a chargeback associated with the credit card number
Ask them for a refund before filing a chargeback. They've been issuing refunds almost immediately when people cancel their orders and request a refund. My refund was issued less than 5 minutes after I requested cancellation on February 1st.
Failed to mention @Liam about the RAM shortage issues --- giving folks 8GB when order is for 16GB.
That's the most glaring issue, along with weeks of wait post order.
Well, it is still against Commercial Media, as Paypal simply work as a messenger to send/receive documents from/to Commercial Media. It is up to Merchant to defend themselves in a charge back request. If Credit Card company rule against merchant, Paypal will simple debit the amount out of merchant's account.
I think what Mike said is what we already know.
Someone on LEB noticed that the new offers are now only including just 1 IP! not the 5 IP's they were giving out before.. kinda tricky considering there was no mention of this from CM
1 instead of 5.... Kind of a big deal.
Yup to get 5 IP's is a $5 add on now..
New offer or the same offer from the LEB ad doing this?
It was from the same link as the LEB offer.. but the order link has been removed by Liam now
That @Liam, poor fellow, offers are keeping him busy today.
Some business saw their reputation drop after offering big deals. I saw a news story said that after Some business post a deal on "Living Social" or Groupon. Many of them were not prepared for the flood of customers. As a results, their reputation goes down with customer experience.
+1 @dnwk. Groupon was known for this effect.
Small businesses basically were giving away services and owners working themselves to death at an often loss.
@pubcrawler
Looking to see if there are any researches on what percentage of customers would be a returning customer when there are no more Goupon deals.
I pretty much doubt it is worth the cost. I assume most of them on Groupon are deal hunters. They are not likely to return once deals are over.
Agree with your assessment 100% @dnwk.
You know, I sort of think the same thing when I see companies that price match for what they sell. If you know the price someone else is selling something then you more than likely are a deal hunter also and are at that one place for the cheapest deal.
Brick and mortar stores may create a sense of connection with the customer through this but I wonder how it works for online only environments and especially resellers. If you create your own products or software then you can almost set any price you want that a customer will accept.
I see companies on Groupon that I am surprise to see over and over re-listed. One of which is Dippin Dots, but when you are just selling something from a giant tub and not pre-packaged it is easier to break even and even make a profit.
Groupon is fine for imported mass made low cost give aways. As lead and customer generators.
But, restaurants, hair salons, massages, etc. those service companies lose their shirts on the Groupon deals. Part of it is the revenue share and super low offer price. Results in company delivering their service probably often at 75% discount.
I think it depends on if you have done a good homework. You need to estimate how much more customers will be drawn by the deal and if you have the ability to handle that many. So that you need to decide how big crowd you need and (10-20 other factors). It is a very complicated math. I doubt small business have resources to calculate those factors before they name a price. (Which I think Groupon should do this for merchant)
If you careful enough, with the right price and crowd, you could have a smooth promotion and enough return rate. However, it is pure math, if you know how to do it.
If your material costs are pretty much nil per customer (massage parlors, pool/snooker clubs, bowling, etc), then better put your employees do something and put to use the space you rent for so much, even if you only manage to cut your loss overall.
In the end some ppl might like it and you can gain some customers in the long run too. After all, they might buy a few beers too.
This true where you have fixed costs @Maunique and idle people and where customers won't cause the other bills to run up.
Seen many horror stories of honest small businesses in the Groupon mess who lost hordes of money and ran themselves into the ground and their regulars were ignored/pi$$ed in the process.
This is a story a math teacher might use to scare their student.
They obvious have no idea how to price their product.
From what I have read about how Groupon works for a small business is they push you for a price they want and you actually get nothing out of the deal. Groupon keeps all the money made off of the Groupons and tells you that it is better than paying for advertisements since you pretty much have a guaranteed customer on the other end of the deal.
Groupon says the customer will buy OVER what the Groupon is for which is where you make back your costs and profit. The problem lays with the fact that a great deal of the customers who purchased that Groupon are only there for that single reason and will stick as close to the amount given as possible. If there is no reasonable limit set/allowed by Groupon the amount of people getting merchandise at half off (in general) will drive you into the ground.
Unless you create the product you sale and control the back end cost 100%, you will lose money in some sense and more than likely not gain long term customers. The customers there will hop from coupon to coupon and provide no loyalty and just lost costs.
So crazy....
That little fact @dnwk, is pure insanity.
Not seeing so much Groupon activity these days. Assuming they've ran much of their course. Can't take all, share none and do so with idea of luring some customers. The companies can accomplish the same thing themselves with other methods.
@pubcrawler Does Groupon set the price or merchants?
I am unaware of who sets the final price, but I do believe it is Groupon, but the merchant can say no to the offer.
To do Groupon right you have to set realistic small cap limit on total offers. People go for bore insane and sell to everyone. That's the big issue, along with no revenue.