VN groupon vouchers cost more than the discounts
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Groupons, restaurant and service discount vouchers that are sold online, have become popular among Vietnamese students and white-collar workers due to their attractive discounts. Anyone can buy groupons with the click of a mouse and have them delivered to their house. However, the quality and reliability of the coupons is suspect it is not guaranteed by groupon websites.
Many customers purchase groupons without any information about the product. When it comes time to use the vouchers, they discover the discounts are more difficult to get than they thought.
At the end of March, Mai An, an employee in District 1 in Ho Chi Minh City bought two groupons on hotdeal.vn for Cay Sa restaurant on District 3’s Vo Van Tan Street. When she arrived there with a friend they found the restaurant had closed down. The groupons were valid until April 6 but Mai An could not use the coupon.
Feeling embarrassed, angry and deceived, Mai An called hotdeal.vn to ask for her money back. Customer service told her to visit the company during working hours. As a white-collar worker, she could not leave work during that time and asked them to refund the money to her at her office. The company refused.
Mai An has still not received a refund. She said the money is not a big deal but the companiy’s credibility is gone.
Tung, an employee at an international bank who often hunts for discounts at new cafés and restaurants, had to pay twice the price of a groupon when he used it. After eating at the restaurant he had visited for the first time did he found out there was a new owner, who did not accept groupons. Tung had to pay the full price.
“The groupon provider did not notify us,” he said. “We didn’t know that we would not get a discount.”
Another groupon buyer, Hong in HCM City’s Binh Thanh District used a groupon to get a budget price perm in a salon owned by a barber who won the Golden Scissors Award. However, an intern did the perm, and the results were disastrous. At the end of the treatment, Hong said her hair was dry and not curly and she now has to put her hair up to hide the damage.
A more careful groupon customer, Tran in Tan Binh District, HCM City, decided to get rid of all of her skincare vouchers for fear of the results.
She bought two VND180,000 (US$9) groupons worth VND700,000 ($35) each for pimple treatment in a spa. However, on talking to a spa consultant, she was given a treatment plan that cost up to VND8 million ($400) and lasted four weeks. If she wanted to use her two groupons, she had to pay at least VND6 million ($300) more for the process.
“Receiving the treatment only twice, it’s hard to know if your skin has changed or not,” she said. “And the spa also does not guarantee the effects either. I’d rather lose money on groupons then deal with the risks.”
Groupon websites in Vietnam admit that the fast growing service has had some unexpected results. Each website serves an average of 1,500 to 2,000 customers a day. Some companies even have 30 staff members in customer service, but are still overworked.
Nguyen Than Van, head of Vinabook Company, which owns hotdeal.vn, said this kind of business is bound to create problems, due to its high number of customers and partners who stop operating or change owners without notification.
He said in the case of the Cay Sa restaurant, it closed because the lease had ended.
“However, there are a great deal of groupons that have been sold, so mistakes in customer service are inevitable,” he said.
According to government regulations, starting on June 1 this year all e-commerce sites operating in Vietnam have to register with the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Registered businesses will be listed on the ministry’s site. It is also obligatory that businesses publicize how it will solve conflicts that may occur during transactions. If the sale of goods or services causes loss to customers and the contracts cannot identify liabilities on the customers’ side, the e-commerce businesses have to take responsibility.
