The other day my wife sent me an email with a link to a Groupon Deal. This deal was only available for customers who receive the promotional email directly from Groupon. However, after purchasing the deal, Groupon prompted my wife to share the deal via email with her friends, hence her forwarding it to me.
I tried to access the deal and got the message about it only being for the chosen people, not the unwashed masses like myself. But I thought I’d reach out to Customer Support just to check. I explained what had happened as described above.
A few hours later I got the “but sir, you cannot purchase this deal unless God Groupon emails it directly to you.” So I asked why they asked people to share the deal after they purchased it instead of disabling this feature.
A few days later I got this response:
Hi Michael,
Sorry for the trouble. This deal is only available for customers who receive the promotional email directly from Groupon. If you are trying to purchase the deal using a different account you will not be able to do so. If you did receive the promotional email, please be sure to use that same email address when making the purchase. Our apologies for any confusion.
If you have any further questions regarding this deal, please let me know! To expedite your request, please include or forward the original email you received.
Regards,
[name redacted by me]
Groupon Customer Support.
And then to add insult to cluelessness, they sent me a follow up “How would you rate the support you received”email. I’ll give you three guesses how I filled it out and the first two don’t count!
At first glance it looks like a failure to communicate. They are not understanding that my use case is different from the one their explanation applies. But what’s really happening is Groupon likely gets so many support issues that they cannot take the time to parse through each one. So they have some program that is probably picking up on keywords and spiting out scripted responses.
Either that or they have outsourced their support to someone who doesn’t quite understand English whose only job is to follow rules, stick to the script and leverage the experience and expertise that are embedded in the system.
Here’s the thing. I can live without $10 off already cheap pizza, but I cut my teeth in Tech Support and cannot stand crappy customer service. DO BETTER GROUPON!
Happy Reading! Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.
therunninggod 