When it comes to shopping, we all love a bargain. The Groupon phenomenon, whether from the original business or its various off-shoots in your area, is but one manifestation of that generalization. Even 3CM, King Loser on DK, has partaken of this phenomenon, purchasing the occasional groupon, though not from the parent Groupon company itself, which has been having its issues of late, such a reported in this Financial Times article recently.
However, as with all discounts, there's a catch, namely the expiration date. While self hasn't missed the deadline for one (yet), that's not uniformly the case, as you can imagine. More below the flip....
One such article about people who buy Groupons and don't use them before they expire is this article by Geoff Herbert of the Syracuse Post-Standard, which mentioned:
"A new class-action lawsuit filed in Illinois seeks a preliminary injunction to block Groupon from selling deals. According to The Chicago Tribune, Adam Dremak spent $25 on a Groupon deal in November 2010 for $50 of merchandise at Nordstrom Rack. The voucher expired December 31, 2010, before he could use it.
Dremak and his lawyers contend that daily deals like Groupon's should be classifed as gift certificates. The Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act prohibits gift certificates from being sold or issued if they expire within five years."
Memo to Adam Dremak: well, if you bought the damn groupon, it's your job to make sure you use it, not the merchandise seller's. Case in point, self: I mentioned last month that I (loser) had purchased a groupon for a restaurant which expired last month. Subliminally, at the time I bought it, I'd hoped to use it on a date. Being a loser, no date materialized in all that time. So the deadline approached, and I just had to use it all up myself. Fortunately, the food was good, but that's not the point, of course.
Another, subtler loser version of a groupon purchase on my part was when I purchased a half-price groupon for a bike shop, for a bike tune-up. I figured that I had plenty of time to use it, since I bought it in the winter. However, I didn't think that as the weather got warmer as the deadline approached, the turnaround time for the tune-up would get longer. So I dropped off the bike a few weeks back and gave them the groupon, but because I waited too long for a relatively quick turnaround, the bike is still there. I didn't realize how much I miss having the bike.
Today was another case of a restaurant groupon purchase, where again, the theoretical "share with a date" scenario was in the back of 3CM's head. Again, no date (usual pathetic loser, that 3CM), but I did get to share it with a friend, which I suppose is the next best thing. But continuing the loser restaurant streak, I recently purchased another one, for a rather swanky place, where I have until October to use it. We'll see.
With that, time for the usual SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories of the week.....