Maybe they can get a good voucher deal on legal representation?
Tagged With group deals
Beleaguered group deal provider Groupon has come under the ire of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) for sending multiple email newsletters to people without their consent. Affected customers found they were unable to completely unsubscribe from the service despite making attempts to do so.
Eight of Australia's largest group buying sites have signed up to a code of practice designed to protect buyers. We're all for ensuring that consumer rights are respected, but will the code really make any practical difference?
We've seen individual group deals for travel before, but Biggest Travel Deals takes a more specific focus, only offering travel bargains. Deals get updated weekly and (unlike many deal sites) there doesn't appear to be a minimum threshold before buying in.
Group deal provider Groupon has an Android tablet offer today, with prices starting from $149 for a 7-inch model. That's certainly a lot cheaper than an iPad, but you can actually get similar Android devices for less and make a more informed purchase.
Lifehacker readers are clearly hungry for shopping-focused Android apps, so this could be appealing: daily deal site Scoopon is offering a free app that highlights its current bargain.
Facebook, Jump On It, LivingSocial, your Uncle Rick with his crazy business ideas. Everyone's getting in on online coupons now. But what's the proper method in using them? Are you committing cheapo faux pas left and right? The High Low instructs.
Yes, DealFetch.com.au is yet another group deal aggregation site, but at least it has a potentially worthwhile twist. The site add location details to deals and lets you pick ones near your suburb, so you can filter out cheap restaurant meals that require you to drive for kilometres in peak hour traffic.
So you've foolishly lashed out on a spa deal coupon and then realised there's no way you're trekking into bland suburbia to fulfil it. Swapdeals lets you list it for a possible trade or sale to other bargain hunters.
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.
If you don't want to track a lot of daily deal sites, there are already lots of aggregators. DealWatch is another contender, offering summaries of deals from five major providers and across 14 cities.
There seem to be two main growth areas for Australian web sites in 2011: group deal providers, and sites aggregating all those group deal providers. Deal Compactor is the latest entrant we've heard about in the aggregator category, and emphasises its ability to collate deals from multiple sites into a single email.
No-one seems to have been scared off launching group deals sites just yet, but in the competitive local marketplace, having a point of difference seems vital. Earlier this month we saw a group deals site concentrating on tickets; now we've got a site promoting deals for small businesses.
There's clearly no shortage of group deal sites around, so anyone looking to enter the market needs a point of distinction. Firestub's differentiator is that it concentrates solely on cheap tickets to events, rather than products or "experiences".
Lifehacker rounded up group deal aggregators back in January, but like the group deal market itself, aggregators continue appearing. Grouped is yet another contender, rounding up offers from both deal of the day and group deal sites.
Sometimes I think that the only market in Australia that is growing faster than deal-of-the-day and group deal sites is aggregators of those sites. We've already seen a bunch of them and noticed occasional legal trouble, but that hasn't stopped All Today's Best Deals entering the market.
The "group deals" scene in Australia continues to flourish with new entrants on an almost-weekly basis. Everyone loves scoring a bargain, but do retailers risk long-term damage if they sell experiences or tickets through a group deal after already selling some of them at full price?
