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Subscribe to RSSAre you a fan of those “daily deals” that arrive in your inbox every morning from Groupon and other discount websites?
You're not alone.
But buyer beware: Some Southern California residents who bought discounted round-trip bus tickets through Groupon and Voice Daily Deals for trips to Las Vegas were left stranded when the buses never showed up, broke down or were hours late, NBC San Diego reports.
The offer, which was available for trips throughout the summer and was advertised through multiple news and shopping websites, left many passengers feeling frustrated and cheated.
Shermetria Maddox bought her deal on Groupon for $55. “You can’t beat that,” Maddox said.
I caught up with Maddox outside the Bally’s Casino in Las Vegas. She was sitting with a pile of luggage waiting to be picked up from her trip home to Anaheim.
Her trip was provided by LUX Ground Transportation and promised a round-trip ticket on a “luxury bus” with free Wi-Fi, premium movies, snacks and an “unlimited drinks” option.
Getting to Las Vegas from her home in Anaheim was uneventful. The bus was an hour late, which she could live with. Getting home was another story.
The LUX bus never showed up. Two shuttle buses finally arrived from another company that had been hired by LUX to rescue the stranded passengers waiting to go home to California.
The passengers reached their drop-off locations in Los Angeles, Anaheim and San Diego after 1 a.m. — five hours late.
Markelle Gray and her friends bought 15 coupons for the same deal. It was featured through Voice Daily Deals, which operates under the Village Voice moniker and is distributed on multiple outlets including the LA Weekly and OC Weekly.
“I thought I found a deal," Gray said. "Forty-five bucks round-trip to Vegas.”
But Gray had second thoughts about trusting the deal after reading bad reviews on Yelp. She canceled her trip.
On a recent morning, Alex Cassidy of Huntington Beach waited for his bus, which was scheduled to depart for Las Vegas at 8:30 a.m. from the Marriott Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport.
He had purchased a discounted ticket from Voice Daily Deals.
“We waited and waited,” he said.
At 1 p.m. Cassidy received a call. The bus was canceled.
Cassidy went home, picked up his car and drove himself to Las Vegas.
Eventually he got his money back.
Groupon says it screened LUX before offering the promotion, and the bus company met their “high quality standards.”
A month later “we determined that the merchant was not providing satisfactory service,” said Julie Mossler of Groupon. Groupon canceled the deal and refunded the passengers' money.
But how thorough is that screening process? A check of LUX’s motor carrier permit number on the U.S. Department of Transportation website indicates that the company does not appear to have a valid license.
LUX now appears to be out of business. The doors of their San Jacinto office are locked and the windows papered.
Voice Daily Deals said they do their best to vet every deal. “We’ve done a lot of deals and 99 percent of them are really good,” said Beth Sestanovich, group publisher of the LA Weekly and Orange Weekly.
How to protect yourself? Contact the business to make sure they will honor the Web deal. If you can’t get them on the phone, how are you going to collect on your coupon?
And check Yelp.com for reviews. I know some Vegas travelers who wish they did.
More on Overhead Bin
- Groupon and Expedia team up for travel deals
- Need a good hotel room? Follow the herd
- 8 great getaways for every budget
Leave a Comment:
This is one of the best ideas. Although you DO have to realize some reviews may be biased, most of them end up being filtered, fortunately. I check Yelp all the time before I buy one of these deals, and it's saved me from bad experiences.
I don't get the big deal, you see a deal come up for a place, then you research the place to make sure they are on the up and up. With the internet there is no excuse for not being an informed consumer. I've used these daily deal sites with great success, but you just have to be careful.
Caveat emptor.
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!
There is an old saying. You get what you pay for.... and this is a prime example....
If it seems to be to good to be true...DON'T do it!
Looks like LUX might be the same as Blue GroundWays, just with a different name. Same MO, at least. SoCal to Vegas luxury buses would be a good idea if it worked.
should have went with THE CUSTOMER ADVANTAGE ... , they are going to swallow groupon
I've been using daily deal sites for almost 2 years now. Every morning my inbox is full of them (Im a bit of a shopaholic), but I've learned to quickly edit which ones I open. If it looks interesting or useful I'll open the email and follow the link to the actual company site to get a better feel for who they are.
I bought two bootcamp membership once that was good for a year. When I tried to redeem it about 9 months later the instructor told me that it expired after 6 months but he'd put me on the waiting list. So waited...and waited... and waited, all the while getting update emails from the bootcamp with "inspirational" messages and heatlth tips. The thing is, because I get so many daily deals in my email, I knew that the same bootcamp was offered on every site for our city... The bootcamp is run by the same guy three days a week. There was no way that he was able to keep up with all of the discounted business along with his regular clients. I emailed Groupon after waiting for 3 weeks and they gave me a credit on my account which I really appreciated. Too often companies will have you pay for an offer and not credit/refund you if things don't work out.
I've used Groupon deals for opera and symphony tickets, and never had a problem with them ever. (Not an advertisement, just pretty happy with their service so far). $45 for R/T transportation to Vegas does sound like a lowball offer - as always, you get what you pay for.
yelp is mentioned several times in this article. Beware of yelp -- pay no attention to the reviews by yelp's "Elite" team. These include people who seem to do nothing but write reviews, some of them are totally made up. See the EastBayExpress website for several investigative articles on yelp, with the writer calling yelp the "Bay Area Mafia." yelp has had at least one class-action lawsuit against them by small businesses. This is not an organization that has integrity.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably IS. I never put my hard earned money into these coupon deals. I want to know what I'm getting and I want to be sure I'm not going to have to cancel at the last minute, thereby wasting alot of money. Just another scam, in my humble opinion.
You get what you paid for, sometimes (or often) less, almost never more.
Not sure about Groupon. My favorite Daily Daily Site is Dobango.com . You play fun games to win daily deals.
With all the accidents on the east coast from bus companies that not longer have valid licenses, there is no way I would do a deal like this unless I knew the company.
Wow! That sucks. Have used Groupon several times and have never ran into an issue. I guess "buyer beware" still applies in the USA.