So, here’s an interesting situation.
Completely hypothetical of course.
What if you were to buy into a Google Offer and the place of business you take your printed offer to denied all knowledge of said offer.
Say, for example, you go to a restaurant. You’re stuck with the entire bill. You’re going to pay it. You pretty much have to pay it.
It worked! you tried something new, you did something that you likely wouldn’t have done (Google Offers’ selling point), Google brought new business to the establishment and gave it some very heavy advertising over four or five days and direct email to it’s subscribers. Then there’s word of mouth with this being such a great deal.
Then the restaurant doesn’t honor the Offer.
They’ve lost nothing – in fact they’ve gained a whole lot! Most of it on Google’s dime.
I’ve worked with a number of companies. Set them up with Facebook, Foursquare, Google Offers and more.
There are agreements and more that have to be put in place before a ‘deal’ can go down.
Foursquare, Google, Facebook, etc don’t just blindly throw an offer or special out there. It’s the companies (or a representative of) that approach these outlets for exposure.
Why then would any place to claim no knowledge of, and refuse to accept, their Google Offer?
I’m sure that Google would obligingly (after 20 mins on hold), after apologizing for the inconvenience, refund the $10 for the Offer.
They might even send the complaint around to the Google Offers team to have it all looked into.
The only recourse, apart from Google’s refund. Would be the contracts and agreements signed between the merchant and the Offer provider. Surely not honoring the Offer would be an absolute violation of these terms.
However, the point remains – the establishment still got the exposure, the advertising, the SEO, the customers, the patronage, the… well… everything.
Sadly this all leaves me not so much wary of online offers but unscrupulous merchants who would take advantage of those who buy into these promotions.
What do you think?
