I have always been a Groupon lover. I have been using them in the US and when my move to Singapore got finalized one of the first things I did was to sign up for Groupon Singapore.

To be honest, Groupon SG baffled me. The fine print was longer – understandable but with it the frequency of buying groupons came down drastically. Reservations required for casual dining and most casual dining places had limited “groupon seating” available for weekends and weekends was the only time I get to go out and eat. Making a reservation took time and I really did not enjoy calling up people to book a table before going out to eat.

I still subscribed to Groupon emails and ocassionally picked up deals I liked.

Groupon opened its first store in Singapore and I really did not think much about it. We ordered something off Groupon and it needed to be picked up at the Groupon store in Suntec City Mall. I made my trek to the store.

The store was pretty cool – green chairs and sofas, representatives in green polos, 3 Macs, a few Ipads thrown in. It was cool. There was a crazy big crowd overflowing and hanging around when I went in. I handed my groupon to the representative at the counter. She scanned it and handed me my queue number. I looked at the boards and was shocked to see there were 100+ numbers ahead of me.

Knowing that I will have a long wait, I strolled into the craft store next door, picked some stuff up and came back and the number on the board was 1260. I had a queue number of 1360. With a sigh I looked around for a place to sit and obviously the store was beyond capacity and overflowing. I leaned on the table next to the representative handing out queue numbers and waited.

I watched people come in and go. I watched babies cry. I watched people buy groupons on the Ipads and print the groupons on the printers provided. I watched Ellen DeGeneres belly dance in silent mode. I watched Ellen hold Groupons and promote the brand. I watched people drift in without vouchers having the barcode and observed the representative guide them to the printers. I watched customers coming in to pick products out of stock and were asked to return. A few fought back and they were assured free delivery. They left their names and numbers with the representative. I watched people come in without having read the fine print – certain products are available after specific dates. I noticed there were 9 counters. At any time no more than 5 counters were operational. One counter was reserved for mooncakes pickup and had no queue. I watched customers walk to the counters, hand in their groupons and then wait for 10-15 minutes more while their product was retrived. I watched people come in and get shocked by their queue numbers. I watched the representative assure people that the wait time was 45 minutes to an hour. I was already there for 55 minutes. I sighed and waited.

Finally the number 1360 flashed on the 4 flat screen TVs suspended around the shop. I walked to counter 6. I handed in my groupon, the representative checked my ID and wanted me to write my name and number on the groupon. I did it. She stamped “REDEEMED” on my groupon and asked me to wait. I stook back and waited thinking about heading home. 10 minutes later, the representative at Counter 6 called me and said “Sorry, we are out of stock”

Believe me folks “I LOST IT”. I wasted nearly 2 hours waiting for it. I made it clear to the representative and she told me Groupon “must have” emailed me. I laughed. I check my email every couple of minutes – I am addicted and I know when I recieve an email. I asked why I was asked to wait for 2 hours before being told it was out of stock I heard a “sorry” nicely delivered. They offered to “call me” once the product was in stock. During my people watching phase, I had seen a lot of people arrive after having recieved these calls and the product was still out of stock. I told myself to breathe out. I smiled asked when to expect the product. I lost it again when I was informed that they had no clue. I asked for a refund. The representative smilingly pull out a card – it pissed me off. There I am fuming and they want me to call customer service. I told them to deal with it before I left.

The representative spoke to someone else – they called and handed the phone to me. I refused to “explain the issue” as I did not want to fight with yet another person. The phone was handed back to me and a well-trained customer service voice apologized for all the trouble after enquiring about my well-being. I asked for a refund and in simple terms it was REFUSED. No reason was given even though I asked for it couple of times. The only thing that was shared with me was after the product gets on stock I can “talk” about a refund. I was asked for my email id to which a confirmation will be sent when the product gets on stock. I wanted to scream but I had better stuff to do. The representative wrote some stuff on my Groupon and mentioned that I had to bring it in when I decided I had another couple of hours to waste after the product was in stock.

I said goodbye before I could say words I will regret and walked away fuming. I came home and saw an $8 credit gift from Groupon. It pissed me off more.

My love affair with Groupon is OVER. Groupon Singapore needs to buck up and needs to worry about customer satisfaction and not about the deals it puts online.

All opinions stated here are mine and everything stated here happened. I also need to mention that I have previously dealt with Groupon Customer Service via emails and they have been quite helpful in helping me with refunds.