by Rochelle Dumlao
Let’s face it: not every deal was wonderful experience. How do you cope when a deal goes sour? Here are situations we personally experienced and what we did to resolve them:
Situation A: Compile Your Documents
A group buying site offered an all-inclusive travel package to a local destination. Once the deal was finalized, the airline rebooked us to a different flight without explanation.
We printed out a copy of the deal voucher and the airline e-ticket, and compiled it into a single PDF file (PDFs are better than DOCs as they are harder to tamper with). We emailed the PDFs to the group buying site’s support team and the airline who bumped us off our flight, along with a firmly worded email saying that we did not accept the changes to our itinerary. After a rapid exchange of emails, the airline put us back on our original flight.
Situation B: Set a Deadline
A group buying site offered an electronic gadget on their site. After the countdown timer had run out, the deal did not meet its minimum number of buyers, and did not push through. After waiting for two weeks, my payment was still not refunded.
Again, we printed out and compiled supporting documents into a PDF. We emailed the attachment to the group buying site’s support page along with request for a refund and made sure that the request had a deadline so that it would not be shoved into the backburner by the support team. After the deadline had passed, we took my complaint public and started tweeting and posting status messages on their FB fan page. A few days later, we finally received an apology email plus the refund.
Situation C: Boycott
A deal site offered tickets for a special holiday buffet at a luxury hotel. However, at the event people queued for hours, seats and tables were difficult to find, and several items like lechon and seafood ran out less than halfway through the event.
Making complaints on dining deals can be tricky. Although we could say we were overcharged because we were not served some items promised in the buffet menu, the deal site could argue back that these were served, but we were just too slow to get to them before they ran out. We dealt with this the only way we could: we stopped buying deals from them.
More Tips
Gather evidence before contacting the group buying site’s support team. Compile emails, screen grabs, saved IM messages, etc. into a PDF document. “Paper evidence” gives the support team something to work with as they try to solve the problem.
Use social media as a last resort. Only contact the group buying site’s Twitter or Facebook account when you think your emails are getting nowhere.
If the same deal site has delivered unsatisfactory goods or services not just once but several times, the best way to get back at them is to stop buying. If all dissatisfied customers boycott, then the bad deals site will soon go out of business.
Rochelle Dumlao is a bilingual account by day and a supervillain at night. She blogs at www.magnetic-rose.net.