Selling Your Groupon Coupons
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Lomo-Cam Social shopping sites like Groupon and LivingSocial are all the rage these days. Instead of hunting for a deal on your own, these sites create deals for a certain number of people. If that number is met and enough people are interested, the deal is on.
Otherwise, no deal.
Groupon is becoming so popular that stores are complaining they can't handle the amount of traffic a Groupon deal can generate.
So what happens if you see a fantastic deal but you can't take advantage of it for whatever reason? Well, you could try to get your money back (Groupon offers full refunds), but that won't always work. And if it's a really good deal that a lot of people want, wouldn't it be cool if you could sell it to the highest bidder?
Now you can.
Enter sites like CoupRecoup and DealsGoRound. They bring together people who have deals they want to get rid of with people who missed out on said deals and want in. If you have a coupon you no longer want, you can sell it. If you want access to a deal that you missed, you can buy it.
It makes sense that sites like these would pop up with the soaring popularity of services like Groupon, but there are concerns about security and fraud. Duplicating Internet coupons is a pretty simple task, and are stores really going to triple check coupons to make sure they're legit?
I'm curious to hear what Groupon users (and other social sites) think about sites like CoupRecoup and DealsGoRound — are these valuable services that you'd use or it just extra work for no real payoff?
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Thank you, Wise Bread! A few weeks ago, I hastily bought a discounted four-class pass to a local (Charlotte, NC) yoga studio on LivingSocial and have been looking for a way to unload it. I just posted it on DealsGoRound (fingers crossed!).
Thank you for the article WiseBread! I'm Kris, the founder of DealsGoRound. In the five plus months we've been running the website, we haven't heard of a single problem with fraud; however, we certainly aren't discounting that risk. As the deal providers and merchants get better at tracking the deals, I hope to be able to leverage that capability, as well. We do have a couple projects in development as I write this to help where we can.
I can tell you that people are definitely benefiting from DealsGoRound in the cities where we are starting to build a following. I actually get "thank you" emails once in a while which is nice :). Right now, we are doing our best to spread the word and get as many eyeballs on the website as possible. The more people we can get on the website, the better chance people like Leslie have of unloading their deals.
If I make use of a coupon today and try and sell it tomorrow through your website - what do you do to protect the poor soul buying the already used coupon please?
I wouldn't do that off course - but what security measures do you offer your clients?
How would I go about trading my coupons? Are they even transferable?
That's what I want to know, too. Can we sell, barter, trade them or will groupon or living social take them back or void them? Can someone answer that? I live in Miami and my mom is in LA and we both have some we didn't use but have not expired yet. Can we sell them on Ebay or in the internet.
You can trade coupons through forums, local trading clubs, or with friends and family. It is not legal to sell them, not even "for a handling fee".
It's amazing how many opportunities this concept has brought to the market. I've never used CoupRecoup and DealsGoRound but I love the fact that when there's a need, there's an entrepreneur that builds a solution. I have friends that have gotten caught up in the moment and purchased more than they are able to use. There are so many group buying sites now that it's almost unmanageable. LocalDealSites.com ( http://www.localdealsites.com/ ) is a new site that lists over 100 Groupon-like daily deal websites and let's you filter by city so you can see which sites have offers in your area. As a deal seeker myself, I love the concept and am glad that it's caught on so quickly.
By the time you go through the refund process with groupon from filing your case to actually receiving a turnaround you will have already forgotten about wanting your money back. I personally use 3 main websites… http://www.CoupRecoup.com http://www.dealsgoround.com and http://www.Skeedka.com all three offer consumers a very easy to use and safe platform for re-selling unused deal vouchers, you can also search for great deals that you might have missed once upon a time. The only difference between the three sites above is that skeedka.com offers some added value offering its consumers a variety of options to sell their deal, you can actually make use of an auctioning platform in addition to the traditional proven conventional resale methods.
One thing to be careful is that some of these daily deal sites actually prohibit this kind of secondary resale of their coupons. We run a website locally for Hong Kong with a free service to help resell these deals at (http://www.hongkonggroupon.com). So far we have been notified already by 1 such deal site telling us that this is not allowed and to remove their resale postings.
If you're based in the UK, you can use 'SellTheDeal' which is a secondary marketplace for daily deal vouchers.
Very interesting! I haven't tried Groupon yet although I hear so much about it every day. I really need to. It's good to know that you can not lose out though if you can't use a deal. That's so crazy too that stores are complaining for getting TOO MUCH traffic! lol
This article is old and the sites suggested don't work anymore. if you are trying to sell your deal try going to CoupFlip.com as they will buy deals instantly. It's pretty good if you don't want to hold onto your deal. They also offer a "listing" service as mentioned on the other sites, but for me that seems not as good as selling it now.