[derek west]

jason

you quoted 2 weeks  for your groupon deal to start and that was on the 15th of july so if its not happened all ready it should be good to go any time soon,

you must have a start date, cmon, i want that tenner off shaun, need the money i'm skint

[Billy Russell]

Here we go again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

[Simon Gerrard]

A guy in Southampton had signed up for groupon but I notice his website has gone off line in the last few days.
Simon

[Mike Halliday]

on a general note about groupon & carpet cleaning look at these links....

http://www.groupon.co.uk/deals/bournemouth/bournemouth-carpet-cleaners/536317

this guy has 520 jobs to do!!


and from this link we can see that a lot of carpet cleaners are giving it a go

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=0&oq=carpet+cleaning+groupon+&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GZEV_enGB374GB374&q=carpet+cleaning+groupon+uk#

[PaulKing]

buckle up this is going to get nasty !

[Ian Gourlay]

One of the features of this Forum is if one Cleaner says  he found the best thing since sliced bread everyone follows

I remember years ago Mr H said he was having a great sucess with a certain leaflet. looking at the special offers many followd

[jasonl]

I said I was doing it , and it is a low up front cost of getting business , I have also done deals on 2 similar sites , is has been a success , I will not go into £ details though .

The groupon deal is in a queue and I will post up a link when it goes live .

It is part of an overall plan ,and not the only way I am using to build the business.

[Simon Gerrard]

I think a scheme such as this could have its merits if the some of money the carpet cleaner receives was more realistic. I doubt anyone can make money at £17 per job, but some could take the view that it is a good way to build up your customer base, the question is, can you? Especially as the only reason people are going for it is the low price and low prices are something you never get away from. It's a completely different proposition for a photographer using a photo shoot as the incentive and accepting a lower price in order to generate sales of the finished product, in other words they are only giving away a part of the end product and further money has to exchange hands for the customer to get the full end product.

Simon

[jasonl]

I know for a fact I wont make any money the first visit , I am not trying to .

I started a topic a few weeks ago , and it was generally agreed that a new customer costs in excess of £40 to aquire ,, that is ad costs, quote costs,and time explaining about your service .

These voucher schemes are merely an extension of the fast track/joe polish type systems that suggest carrying out free cleans  in order to build a client bank of people who are  into having carpets cleaned .

The £ that  the customer pays merely weeds out the real penny pinchers.

[wynne jones]

I thought about it like that, cost to get a new customer and also the value of that Client over the average client lifespan which is around 5-6 years.

If you are going to do that though I would want a very select group and I can't see how you can do that with Groupon apart from of course selecting no loyalty bargain hunters.

[craignozza]

we decided against groupon after a previous thread that Dereck and Helen posted on - for us to clear the work generated by a deal potentially of around 300 sold would mean we would have to work around 3 months, 6 days a week with no opportunity of upselling or doing regular work - this is only as we're new and will prob be very slow to start with!

In my search for marketing stuff though found these on Hitman from the states http://advertisingblogg.com/?s=groupon If you read people comments on the blog entries groupon does make sense when done in moderation - the key looks like getting your terms and conditions in order to restrict the amount sold as much as possible eg new customers only, room size etc level of staining like has been mentioned before . Where people were having the opportunity to do extras they were making an average of $498 in some cases £300ish but they might have only been selling between 20-40 deals. Over here it can be anything from 60-360 sold which obviously limits your time & ability to carry out extra work unless they prebook additional stuff when they book their groupon.

Repeat customers is apparently 20-22% and around 10% of deals purchased dont usually get redeemed. There is a thread of disgruntled customers on money saving expert about a firm in Belfast who had sold 369 and were struggling to fit everyone in. If you can manage the workload then it is a sure fire way of getting customers and I agree it is an extension of that form of marketing with the bonus of you actually being able to sell to however many purchase the groupon - the return in theory should be excellent but obviously isnt for everyone, the same as door knocking, yellow pages, flyers etc arent for some.

Even if they didnt want to use you again and wanted to wait for another groupon you would still have their details to send out a reminder / newsletter / special offers or your own voucher etc in a bid to get work from them again for more than the initial discounted rate you did the work for in the first place.

Hope it works out for you Jason,

Vickie

[Hilton]

on a general note about groupon & carpet cleaning look at these links....

http://www.groupon.co.uk/deals/bournemouth/bournemouth-carpet-cleaners/536317

this guy has 520 jobs to do!!


and from this link we can see that a lot of carpet cleaners are giving it a go

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=0&oq=carpet+cleaning+groupon+&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GZEV_enGB374GB374&q=carpet+cleaning+groupon+uk#

And this is where it falls down, 520 jobs doing 4 a day will take 6 months and thats not doing any of your other work earning you £112.00 per day.

They will not be able to honour it and then the bad publicity kicks in.

[jasonl]

on a general note about groupon & carpet cleaning look at these links....

http://www.groupon.co.uk/deals/bournemouth/bournemouth-carpet-cleaners/536317

this guy has 520 jobs to do!!


and from this link we can see that a lot of carpet cleaners are giving it a go

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=0&oq=carpet+cleaning+groupon+&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GZEV_enGB374GB374&q=carpet+cleaning+groupon+uk#

And this is where it falls down, 520 jobs doing 4 a day will take 6 months and thats not doing any of your other work earning you £112.00 per day.

They will not be able to honour it and then the bad publicity kicks in.

6-8 JOBS a day are easily achievable , I have the kit to put 2 extra vans on the road very quickly  , groupon derive a lot of profit from people not redeeming vouchers too.

[Gary Humphreys]

Factor in 10% of deals fail. Wear and tear on the van, chemicals staff wages including a sick day when your member of staff collapses through workin at the pace required, I think Groupon should be viewed with caution. A local beauty salon in Nottingham closed because they were rediculously busy but losing money.
I have bought a few Groupons myself but wouldnt dream of paying the full price and only use the deals coz they are cheapies.
Good luck to anyone trying it out.

[derek west]

ive seen a lot of blogs about groupon disasters, has any one got any rags to riches stories of service industries using it and becoming successful?

[Simon Gerrard]

Jason,
Are you obliged by the agreement to do ALL of the jobs that come your way?
If so and people get innundated with low price jobs, instead of a mix of full price jobs and a few groupon's thrown in to fill the diary, they could very easily end up out of business, or so it seems to me and the example above would seem to support that view?

Simon

[Steve Chapman]

Is Groupon only for the major towns & cities or are other areas included ?

( not that im going to do it    just interested )


regards
steve

[Doctor Carpet (Ret'd)]

Cleaned for a new client today having been let down buy a company offering a Groupon deal. She'd taken day off and emptied the rooms. Then it was a now-show and no response when she emailed them

In the light of these discussions I aasked her about her reasons. (She's a chartered accountant by the way.)

She explained that she had been meaning to get the carpets cleaned for some time and had thought to give the Groupon deal a whirl having bought some of their vouchers in the paast and not always having redeemed them.

She new it was a below market deal and took the view that if it was a rubbish job it hadn't cost her a great deal of money (although she hadn't considered that the carpets could have been damaged). However if the job had been undertaken and done to a good standard she said she would have had them back and pay their market rate. If the job was poor she'd have sourced another company the next time, either by another method or groupon as the case may be.

I'm pleased to report she paid my full market rate, has already recommended me and has followed my recommendation to contact her again for the next clean in 6 months time.

So what does this case study prove? Just that which ever side of the fence you sit you can use it to prove your point of view is correct.

Rog

[Simon Gerrard]

Good post, Doc. Agree with every word.

Simon

[John Higgins]

I hear tell some of the ladies in the Manchester red light district are offering groupon but in all fairness to groupon they do know they are getting screewed from the very start