We normally ignore individual group deals here at Lifehacker, because cheap restaurants and spas aren’t really our focus. But this one might presage a new way of getting cheap flights: Scoopon will be offering a return Melbourne-Phuket flight on Strategic Airlines for $599 from midday today.
Picture by Rui Fernandes
The standard return fare on Strategic is around $1200, so that’s a substantial saving. You don’t have to nominate your travel date when buying, but you do need to use it within 12 months. According to the press release announcing the deal, the fare can be used on any date between 26 July and September 15 or October 25 to 18 December this year, and between 2 February and 25 March and 20 April and 31 May 2012. That excludes the major school holiday periods, so it won’t suit everyone, but for anyone with a little flexibility, it might be worth considering.
Fancy the idea of planning your holidays around cheap group deals? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Rick
Friday, July 15, 2011 at 9:58 AMI would carefully read all the bad feedback about Scoopon before buying that coupon…
Google will find you more…But…
For example:
http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/47431
http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/39886
Is probably a sampler. I suspect only
people who publicly complain get their
money refunded.
I would suggest not buying anything you might need to rely on from these kind of sites…
In this example imagine buying your coupon and booking some flights and accommodation.
Then getting bumped or refused flight because they don’t accept Scoopons anymore. Your holiday and all those bookings gone to waste.
At least for the time they burned me, I basically lost nothing but my time chasing them up to get a refund.
Anthony
Friday, July 15, 2011 at 11:09 AMRick those issues aren’t Scoopon’s fault. It’s the companies that put deals on Scoopon. The same as if a company puts an ad on TV or in the paper, then doesn’t honour the deal. It’s not the TV station or newspapers fault. Scoopon can’t be blamed for a handyman not honouring a Scoopon coupon they said they would.
Rick
Friday, July 15, 2011 at 6:17 PMThey seem to be very good at picking those companies to partner with. :)
Anthony
Friday, July 15, 2011 at 11:47 AMStrategic are the airline famous for selling return flights to Phuket, then leaving their passengers stranded in Phuket for more than a week when they couldn’t manage the return flight. You’d want to be very cheap/brave to take them on trust again.
http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/476209-strategic-airlines-flight-cancellation-slams-phuket/
Scoopon
Friday, July 15, 2011 at 11:54 AMThank you for your feedback – we’re very sorry to hear that you’ve had a bad experience.
Scoopon works closely with deal providers to develop every single feature that goes up on our site. We subject all potential deal providers to a pretty relentless screening process (credit checks, background checks, on-site visits, etc) and when a Scoopon Member makes a reasonable claim for a refund, we always offer them one.
Scoopon.com.au makes it a top priority to ensure that our members have a great Scoopon experience every time. To make sure this happens, we have a dedicated team of Customer Service Specialists to help with all queries or concerns, no matter how big or small.
Scoopon has sold over 1.3 million Scoopons to date and has a happy, thriving community of Scoopon Members. The feedback we get from Scoopon Members is overwhelmingly positive; less than 1% of our members have reported encountering any problems with using their Scoopons and we’re doing everything we can to make that number even tinier. We’re only satisfied when our Scoopons members are having the best possible Scoopon experience.
Rey
Friday, July 15, 2011 at 1:43 PMbut, that’s still 13,000 unhappy ‘Scoopers’
JohnnyBoy
Friday, July 15, 2011 at 1:10 PM$599 return flight to phuket??!!
Well seeing as the general take by Scoopon is 50% that would mean the airline are doing the return flight for $299.50. Obviously not financially viable by them, so like companies like Tiger, they will only allow people on the flights if they are booked by full paying customers to make up the loss on the tickets sold through Scoopon.
And Scoopon don’t *really* care, they are in it to make the $$’s, I have heard of plenty of times that “dailydeals/group deals” customers get pushed out of bookings etc for full paying customers. They don’t report this because the scoopon customer doesn’t ask for a refund, they just cop the delay/overbooking/cancelled appointment on the chin because it was cheap! They will only ask for a refund usually after the 2nd or 3rd time they get cancelled on.
Dr_Stef
Friday, July 15, 2011 at 7:24 PMIt’s the people who advertise on Scoopon not holding up their end of the bargain, that’s what is risky about this stuff.