7 ms·

Groupon Sales Team Files Class-Action Suit

128 points by hunterowens 15y ago

suking 15y ago
Almost starting to feel bad for Groupon - what else could possibly go wrong? The only thing that seems left is insolvency.
- ams6110 15y ago
  There has GOT to be a great case study there once all the dust/ashes settle.
  - suking 15y ago
    "How To Almost Go Public By Making 50 cents for every $1 spent." - HBS Case (2012)
    - ams6110 15y ago
      ... or "When Google offers you $6B, take it." Pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered.
      - migpwr 15y ago
        They were pigs, not hogs. The original investors walked away with a majority of the final round of funding. I don't think Google's $6bn offer would have allowed them to do that. The people left holding this junk are now trying to pawn it off on the public...
Koldark 15y ago
Shit meet fan.
hop 15y ago
A side note - I have been supremely impressed with Groupon's customer service. Emails personally returned within minutes and no problem refunding groupons I no longer wanted.
- waterside81 15y ago
  As a business featured a few times on Groupon, our merchant contact at Groupon has been ridiculously good. She (hi Emily!) answers emails at all hours of the day. It's part of the reason why I've always rooted for them, their sales team seem to be good, hard working people.
- gojomo 15y ago
  My experience has been the opposite. Despite the fact that this blog post from Mason... http://www.groupon.com/blog/cities/groupon-organizes-class-action-against-itself/ http://www.groupon.com/blog/cities/groupon-organizes-class-a... ...suggests that Groupon's "completely open return policy" can be used, rather than a lawsuit, to get a refund on an expired Groupon, that's not true. They won't give such refunds, and their customer service responses have advised that the Groupon in question may still be usable "if state law applies". So rather than providing "unbelievable" customer service, or even following through on the refund promises of their CEO, they're doing the absolute minimum required by law. So in the single interaction where I could independently test whether what Mason touts is true, it was not. As a result, I don't put much weight in anything Groupon claims.
  - hop 15y ago
    Well they just refunded my 4 helicopter ride Groupons for a total of $596 that would have expired next week. If I let a Groupon expire though, I wouldn't bitch about not getting a refund, no matter the state law.
    - gojomo 15y ago
      And I would have requested the refund just before expiration... if I'd known the Groupon Promise and the Mason blog post were misleading. (Actually, I probably wouldn't have bought the Groupon in the first place. I bought it right after being impressed with the Mason claim, and thinking, "what a smart policy, it takes all will-I-use-it-or-not anxiety out of buying a Groupon".) But I trusted them, and was burned. Miniscule amount of money, but now I know that they strategically deceive about the refund policy, so I won't be trusting them again. I'm OK if a particular business wants to grind out their margins from fine print, 'breakage', and other gotchas. I'm all for caveat emptor. They could change the "Groupon Promise" to read "If your Groupon experience ever lets you down, let us know and we’ll refund your purchase. Period. Except for expirations." And Mason could fix his blog post so that it doesn't portray the 'completely open return policy' as the preferred remedy for people with expired Groupons. I just hate the act that they've got Nordstrom/Bed-Bath-Beyond/Costco/Zappos/etc-style customer service, when they don't. Together with the other reports of dodgy advertising claims, encouraging businesses to raise their prices pre-Groupon to inflate discount percentages, and pushy sales practices, it gives me the impression that they've ranked 'honesty' far below 'growth at all costs'.
dkokelley 15y ago
I never really understood Groupon's super high valuation. I think they grew too fast, and possibly needed to cut corners to sustain their growth. Can anyone explain what the appeal has been for investors?
- pyre 15y ago
  My take is that the appeal to investors has been to 'ride the wave' and make sure not to be the last one holding the bag.
- jinushaun 15y ago
  Me neither. They are in a commodity market with a low barrier to entry. They had dozens of other competitors, but had no secret sauce nor was Groupon any better than them. Even a basic Twitter search for deals is better than Groupon--nevermind paper coupons. The CEO should've taken the Google offer and run with the money. I don't understand why investors were gaga over it.
- jonnathanson 15y ago
  "Can anyone explain what the appeal has been for investors?" The usual shtick about how growth trumps all other considerations. "It's the fastest growing company ever!" "Who cares if COGS is absurdly high / users aren't buying / revenues have been overstated / etc? Fundamentals don't apply when they're growing this quickly!" "This is a winner-take-all market, like with Amazon in the 90s!" I remember reading endless defenses of Groupon's business model on SeekingAlpha in the months leading up to the IPO filing. People would trot out all sorts of highly sophisticated models and theories to demonstrate how Groupon was pretty much exempt from the laws of thermodynamics. I'm too young to remember if the same pitch was used for the Dotcoms of the '90s bubble, but the logic sounds eerily familiar.
  - joe_the_user 15y ago
    But there was also other shtick... "They've solved a problem that no one else was able to solve ... how to go that last mile to the merchant" And "They've assembled a team like no one else [implication they can pivot if necessary]" And "Anything done by [supposed-superstar-manager] is worth a lot" And naturally, all this was wrong-headed. The retail sector as a generic is pushed to the boards in this economy. The idea that you can squeeze excess capacity for profits is simply false given that no industry has ever attained economies of scale without building for it from the ground-up. Blood? Stone? You cannot squeeze... TL;DR; You could say Groupon was built on looking at plans that worked for sky diving businesses and pretending they'd apply to restaurants.
johnbatch 15y ago
They should have taken that google offer.
- gravitronic 15y ago
  too bad it only lasted one day...
- sek 15y ago
  I wonder if they couldn't, what if Google took the offer back after they saw their financials.
  - felipemnoa 15y ago
    I'd wager it was something in that neighborhood. Either google withdrew the offer or groupon knew that google would not go ahead with the offer after seeing their financials and hence decided to decline it. The offer however made them seem really hot though. Hey, if google wants them why shouldn't we regular folks?
aresant 15y ago
Interesting tidbit from the article that I did not know: "a federal judge in San Francisco permitted a tour operator to proceed with a merchant class action lawsuit over alleged false advertising" leads to http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/24/us-groupon-lawsuit-idUSTRE77N6NY20110824 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/24/us-groupon-lawsuit...
mdoerneman 15y ago
I see Groupon's rise and fall as similar to MySpace. traffic for rival deal site Living Social rose 27% Maybe Living Social is the Facebook in this comparison.
- enjo 15y ago
  In my world it definitely is. They are MUCH more local for those of us living in the city (Denver in this case) than Groupon which typically has deals that are 20 miles from my house. For me and my social circle, Living Social is something we consistently use. Most people I know have actually unsubscribed from Groupons mailing list. Anecdotal for sure, but I think there might be at least a kernel of trend in there somewhere:)
  - r00fus 15y ago
    This brings up an interesting point. Perhaps hyper-locality (ie, zipcode or even neighborhood granualar offers) is the full-paradigm shift that will revolutionize this Groupon concept. Social sizzle like what LivingSocial adds I think is nice, but forgettable (no one I know has gotten/used the "free deal" group buy).
lhnn 15y ago
My spidey senses are tingling that this is some sort of sabotage... too many things are falling apart too quickly.
- lhnn 15y ago
  So much for " (-1, Disagree)"
- samyzee 15y ago
  ever heard of something called murphy's laws!
VladRussian 15y ago
a boom needs a webvan
jtap 15y ago
This is really sad. In my limited understanding of business, I always thought that Groupon's greatest asset was it's sales team. Who else has a sales team that can hit so many small businesses across the us so fast. I was hoping that they would leverage this asset in more ways than just selling advertisement.
byrneseyeview 15y ago
suddenly unpopular with both users and investors... The first rule of bad journalism is to confuse the first and second derivatives. Groupon is enormously popular with users and investors--it's just not the most popular it's ever been. Yipit's fairly recent data indicate that while the daily deal market contracted slightly over the summer, but Groupon shrank more slowly than LivingSocial ( http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/25/yipits-daily-deal-report-groupon-up-livingsocial-down-travel-deals-take-off/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/25/yipits-daily-deal-report-gr... ). In "Fooled by Randomness," Taleb points out that the more frequently you measure results, the more random they are. Second-by-second, Warren Buffett is losing money just about half the time. Groupon obviously has problems, and LivingSocial is executing amazingly well, but it should be laughable to call them "unpopular" rather than "less massively popular than at their peak a couple months ago," in the same way that you wouldn't call someone "poor" because they moved down a spot in the Forbes 400.
- andrewljohnson 15y ago
  I upvoted your comment, but I still think you might be wrong. The journalist may be sensationalizing here, but a high-growth, pre-IPO start-up that is contracting, before it begins to exploit profits, is in trouble. Whether it's the market or the company that is in trouble, or a mixture of the two, is debatable. But I do think "suddenly unpopular" conveys the gist of the story better than "contracting from its previous peak." The first tells me something is wrong in Groupon world (and there probably is), and the second tries to convince me the whole thing is a non-story.
- jonnathanson 15y ago
  I think the word "unpopular," in the context of the article, is referring to people's perceptions of the company's business practices and brand. Not so much to the size or engagement of the userbase. I might be wrong, but that was my interpretation. (It's "unpopular" right now because it's come under a lot of heat in the press; perhaps "embattled" would be a more accurate word).
  - hammerdr 15y ago
    And neither would be accurate. Most users, both businesses and customers, are wildly happy with group on.
candre717 15y ago
Poor business fundamentals create poor business outcomes. Groupon needs to reevaluate itself, and if it must, downsize and regrow with a better product. Basically, Groupon needs to figure this out - or everyone else will - and it won't be good for Groupon.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
This had to be sort of expected. Groupon has grown fast and they turned down the acquisition offer from Google. This suggests that they were messaging new employees "We're taking this one all the way to IPO." And then proceed to ply new employees with stock and spreadsheets showing great returns. Many people at a 'startup' understand that they are sacrificing a bit of pay or benefits now, for a potentially much larger upside later. And Groupon certainly fit the mold. Now Groupon pulls back on their IPO plans, folks who had been "taking one for the company" feel cheated because they have a harder time imagining huge returns than they did before. (On a related note I've had this issue with calling options and stock 'compensation' in the past because really until someone buys your paper it really isn't something you can spend) So the sales folks turn around and say well if we're not going to get that money we foolishly believed would be dripping out of the IPO spigot, they're going to ask for it in cash. I really wonder if they would have crossed this threshold (suing) if the 'big cheeses' in the company hadn't decided to do a huge funding round to pay themselves off. (another way to convert 'potential' in earnings into cash).
gyardley 15y ago
Completely misleading title - it should read 'Groupon Salesperson Files Class-Action Suit'. You only need one person to file a lawsuit, class-action or otherwise, and there's no indication in any of the docs that any other members of Groupon's sales team are involved. From the filing (in Justia - http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/illinois/ilndce/1:2011cv05685/259040/1/ http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/illinoi...) it looks to my completely-not-an-expert-eyes like Groupon's mistake here was not treating its salaried employees like salaried employees - on rare occasions it gave them overtime pay, and on the attached pay stub hours and an hourly rate ($15.62) are clearly recorded. Whoops.
- tptacek 15y ago
  If that's true, it's a pretty common error. Most tech companies operate under the (usually valid) assumption that their employees are all salaried and exempt from OT comp. But it's usually to the benefit of all those employees to be classified "hourly", and theres a bunch of innocuous things employers can do to make that happen. More common than breaking people's status with overtime payments: threatening to dock pay for coming in late or missing days.
  - tedunangst 15y ago
    California, a few years ago, cracked down on this. Entry level programmers are not exempt. I think because they lack responsibility or skill or somesuch. I found this out only when I had to start filling out time sheets. I became exempt again after a raise, apparently there's some salary floor at which point they assume you have to have responsibility because you're paid too much not to. FWIW, CA appears to exempt outside sales but not inside sales, so probably all groupon salespeople in CA have a case.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      This is shocking to me. Are you sure? Being non-exempt is a big deal. And it cuts both ways: it also means your employer can dock you when you show up late. Are you sure about this? Are junior devs literally punching timecards?
stmartin 15y ago
Should've taken that GOOG offer I guess. But greed, excuse me, "growth" trumps all else. Now all we need is a sex scandal and let's seal the deal.
auston 15y ago
To summarize the situation (someone please correct me if I am wrong?): 1. Files for IPO 2. ASCOI (Adjusted Segmented Consolidated Operating Income) falls under scrutiny from public & SEC 3. VP of Global Communications resigns 4. Internal Memo "leaked" to major press outlets 5. SEC investigates said memo 6. Sales Team files Class-Action suit Wow.
- suking 15y ago
  They're on a roll.
- blantonl 15y ago
  7. Cancels IPO 8. Insolvent in 6 months 9. Layoffs 10. Lawsuits
adnam 15y ago
The turning point for Groupon was that awful, offensive Superbowl advertisment.
divvlr 15y ago
I would recommend to groupon instead of forcing businesses to give deals. Set up a system that has the users bid to spend a certain amount for a good or service. Once you have enough people agreeing to it, there's no way a business would turn it down. You could cut the work force in half and let the users have control of where they get deals. That's my 2 cents.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

128 points by hunterowens 15y ago

Almost starting to feel bad for Groupon - what else could possibly go wrong? The only thing that seems left is insolvency.

ams6110 15y ago
There has GOT to be a great case study there once all the dust/ashes settle.
- suking 15y ago
  "How To Almost Go Public By Making 50 cents for every $1 spent." - HBS Case (2012)
  - ams6110 15y ago
    ... or "When Google offers you $6B, take it." Pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered.
    - migpwr 15y ago
      They were pigs, not hogs. The original investors walked away with a majority of the final round of funding. I don't think Google's $6bn offer would have allowed them to do that. The people left holding this junk are now trying to pawn it off on the public...

Koldark 15y ago

Shit meet fan.

hop 15y ago

A side note - I have been supremely impressed with Groupon's customer service. Emails personally returned within minutes and no problem refunding groupons I no longer wanted.

waterside81 15y ago
As a business featured a few times on Groupon, our merchant contact at Groupon has been ridiculously good. She (hi Emily!) answers emails at all hours of the day. It's part of the reason why I've always rooted for them, their sales team seem to be good, hard working people.
gojomo 15y ago
My experience has been the opposite. Despite the fact that this blog post from Mason... http://www.groupon.com/blog/cities/groupon-organizes-class-action-against-itself/ http://www.groupon.com/blog/cities/groupon-organizes-class-a... ...suggests that Groupon's "completely open return policy" can be used, rather than a lawsuit, to get a refund on an expired Groupon, that's not true. They won't give such refunds, and their customer service responses have advised that the Groupon in question may still be usable "if state law applies". So rather than providing "unbelievable" customer service, or even following through on the refund promises of their CEO, they're doing the absolute minimum required by law. So in the single interaction where I could independently test whether what Mason touts is true, it was not. As a result, I don't put much weight in anything Groupon claims.
- hop 15y ago
  Well they just refunded my 4 helicopter ride Groupons for a total of $596 that would have expired next week. If I let a Groupon expire though, I wouldn't bitch about not getting a refund, no matter the state law.
  - gojomo 15y ago
    And I would have requested the refund just before expiration... if I'd known the Groupon Promise and the Mason blog post were misleading. (Actually, I probably wouldn't have bought the Groupon in the first place. I bought it right after being impressed with the Mason claim, and thinking, "what a smart policy, it takes all will-I-use-it-or-not anxiety out of buying a Groupon".) But I trusted them, and was burned. Miniscule amount of money, but now I know that they strategically deceive about the refund policy, so I won't be trusting them again. I'm OK if a particular business wants to grind out their margins from fine print, 'breakage', and other gotchas. I'm all for caveat emptor. They could change the "Groupon Promise" to read "If your Groupon experience ever lets you down, let us know and we’ll refund your purchase. Period. Except for expirations." And Mason could fix his blog post so that it doesn't portray the 'completely open return policy' as the preferred remedy for people with expired Groupons. I just hate the act that they've got Nordstrom/Bed-Bath-Beyond/Costco/Zappos/etc-style customer service, when they don't. Together with the other reports of dodgy advertising claims, encouraging businesses to raise their prices pre-Groupon to inflate discount percentages, and pushy sales practices, it gives me the impression that they've ranked 'honesty' far below 'growth at all costs'.

dkokelley 15y ago

I never really understood Groupon's super high valuation. I think they grew too fast, and possibly needed to cut corners to sustain their growth. Can anyone explain what the appeal has been for investors?

pyre 15y ago
My take is that the appeal to investors has been to 'ride the wave' and make sure not to be the last one holding the bag.
jinushaun 15y ago
Me neither. They are in a commodity market with a low barrier to entry. They had dozens of other competitors, but had no secret sauce nor was Groupon any better than them. Even a basic Twitter search for deals is better than Groupon--nevermind paper coupons. The CEO should've taken the Google offer and run with the money. I don't understand why investors were gaga over it.
jonnathanson 15y ago
"Can anyone explain what the appeal has been for investors?" The usual shtick about how growth trumps all other considerations. "It's the fastest growing company ever!" "Who cares if COGS is absurdly high / users aren't buying / revenues have been overstated / etc? Fundamentals don't apply when they're growing this quickly!" "This is a winner-take-all market, like with Amazon in the 90s!" I remember reading endless defenses of Groupon's business model on SeekingAlpha in the months leading up to the IPO filing. People would trot out all sorts of highly sophisticated models and theories to demonstrate how Groupon was pretty much exempt from the laws of thermodynamics. I'm too young to remember if the same pitch was used for the Dotcoms of the '90s bubble, but the logic sounds eerily familiar.
- joe_the_user 15y ago
  But there was also other shtick... "They've solved a problem that no one else was able to solve ... how to go that last mile to the merchant" And "They've assembled a team like no one else [implication they can pivot if necessary]" And "Anything done by [supposed-superstar-manager] is worth a lot" And naturally, all this was wrong-headed. The retail sector as a generic is pushed to the boards in this economy. The idea that you can squeeze excess capacity for profits is simply false given that no industry has ever attained economies of scale without building for it from the ground-up. Blood? Stone? You cannot squeeze... TL;DR; You could say Groupon was built on looking at plans that worked for sky diving businesses and pretending they'd apply to restaurants.

johnbatch 15y ago

They should have taken that google offer.

gravitronic 15y ago
too bad it only lasted one day...
sek 15y ago
I wonder if they couldn't, what if Google took the offer back after they saw their financials.
- felipemnoa 15y ago
  I'd wager it was something in that neighborhood. Either google withdrew the offer or groupon knew that google would not go ahead with the offer after seeing their financials and hence decided to decline it. The offer however made them seem really hot though. Hey, if google wants them why shouldn't we regular folks?

aresant 15y ago

Interesting tidbit from the article that I did not know: "a federal judge in San Francisco permitted a tour operator to proceed with a merchant class action lawsuit over alleged false advertising" leads to http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/24/us-groupon-lawsuit-idUSTRE77N6NY20110824 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/24/us-groupon-lawsuit...

mdoerneman 15y ago

I see Groupon's rise and fall as similar to MySpace. traffic for rival deal site Living Social rose 27% Maybe Living Social is the Facebook in this comparison.

enjo 15y ago
In my world it definitely is. They are MUCH more local for those of us living in the city (Denver in this case) than Groupon which typically has deals that are 20 miles from my house. For me and my social circle, Living Social is something we consistently use. Most people I know have actually unsubscribed from Groupons mailing list. Anecdotal for sure, but I think there might be at least a kernel of trend in there somewhere:)
- r00fus 15y ago
  This brings up an interesting point. Perhaps hyper-locality (ie, zipcode or even neighborhood granualar offers) is the full-paradigm shift that will revolutionize this Groupon concept. Social sizzle like what LivingSocial adds I think is nice, but forgettable (no one I know has gotten/used the "free deal" group buy).

lhnn 15y ago

My spidey senses are tingling that this is some sort of sabotage... too many things are falling apart too quickly.

lhnn 15y ago
So much for " (-1, Disagree)"
samyzee 15y ago
ever heard of something called murphy's laws!

VladRussian 15y ago

a boom needs a webvan

jtap 15y ago

This is really sad. In my limited understanding of business, I always thought that Groupon's greatest asset was it's sales team. Who else has a sales team that can hit so many small businesses across the us so fast. I was hoping that they would leverage this asset in more ways than just selling advertisement.

byrneseyeview 15y ago

suddenly unpopular with both users and investors... The first rule of bad journalism is to confuse the first and second derivatives. Groupon is enormously popular with users and investors--it's just not the most popular it's ever been. Yipit's fairly recent data indicate that while the daily deal market contracted slightly over the summer, but Groupon shrank more slowly than LivingSocial ( http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/25/yipits-daily-deal-report-groupon-up-livingsocial-down-travel-deals-take-off/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/25/yipits-daily-deal-report-gr... ). In "Fooled by Randomness," Taleb points out that the more frequently you measure results, the more random they are. Second-by-second, Warren Buffett is losing money just about half the time. Groupon obviously has problems, and LivingSocial is executing amazingly well, but it should be laughable to call them "unpopular" rather than "less massively popular than at their peak a couple months ago," in the same way that you wouldn't call someone "poor" because they moved down a spot in the Forbes 400.

andrewljohnson 15y ago
I upvoted your comment, but I still think you might be wrong. The journalist may be sensationalizing here, but a high-growth, pre-IPO start-up that is contracting, before it begins to exploit profits, is in trouble. Whether it's the market or the company that is in trouble, or a mixture of the two, is debatable. But I do think "suddenly unpopular" conveys the gist of the story better than "contracting from its previous peak." The first tells me something is wrong in Groupon world (and there probably is), and the second tries to convince me the whole thing is a non-story.
jonnathanson 15y ago
I think the word "unpopular," in the context of the article, is referring to people's perceptions of the company's business practices and brand. Not so much to the size or engagement of the userbase. I might be wrong, but that was my interpretation. (It's "unpopular" right now because it's come under a lot of heat in the press; perhaps "embattled" would be a more accurate word).
- hammerdr 15y ago
  And neither would be accurate. Most users, both businesses and customers, are wildly happy with group on.

candre717 15y ago

Poor business fundamentals create poor business outcomes. Groupon needs to reevaluate itself, and if it must, downsize and regrow with a better product. Basically, Groupon needs to figure this out - or everyone else will - and it won't be good for Groupon.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

This had to be sort of expected. Groupon has grown fast and they turned down the acquisition offer from Google. This suggests that they were messaging new employees "We're taking this one all the way to IPO." And then proceed to ply new employees with stock and spreadsheets showing great returns. Many people at a 'startup' understand that they are sacrificing a bit of pay or benefits now, for a potentially much larger upside later. And Groupon certainly fit the mold. Now Groupon pulls back on their IPO plans, folks who had been "taking one for the company" feel cheated because they have a harder time imagining huge returns than they did before. (On a related note I've had this issue with calling options and stock 'compensation' in the past because really until someone buys your paper it really isn't something you can spend) So the sales folks turn around and say well if we're not going to get that money we foolishly believed would be dripping out of the IPO spigot, they're going to ask for it in cash. I really wonder if they would have crossed this threshold (suing) if the 'big cheeses' in the company hadn't decided to do a huge funding round to pay themselves off. (another way to convert 'potential' in earnings into cash).

gyardley 15y ago

Completely misleading title - it should read 'Groupon Salesperson Files Class-Action Suit'. You only need one person to file a lawsuit, class-action or otherwise, and there's no indication in any of the docs that any other members of Groupon's sales team are involved. From the filing (in Justia - http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/illinois/ilndce/1:2011cv05685/259040/1/ http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/illinoi...) it looks to my completely-not-an-expert-eyes like Groupon's mistake here was not treating its salaried employees like salaried employees - on rare occasions it gave them overtime pay, and on the attached pay stub hours and an hourly rate ($15.62) are clearly recorded. Whoops.

tptacek 15y ago
If that's true, it's a pretty common error. Most tech companies operate under the (usually valid) assumption that their employees are all salaried and exempt from OT comp. But it's usually to the benefit of all those employees to be classified "hourly", and theres a bunch of innocuous things employers can do to make that happen. More common than breaking people's status with overtime payments: threatening to dock pay for coming in late or missing days.
- tedunangst 15y ago
  California, a few years ago, cracked down on this. Entry level programmers are not exempt. I think because they lack responsibility or skill or somesuch. I found this out only when I had to start filling out time sheets. I became exempt again after a raise, apparently there's some salary floor at which point they assume you have to have responsibility because you're paid too much not to. FWIW, CA appears to exempt outside sales but not inside sales, so probably all groupon salespeople in CA have a case.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    This is shocking to me. Are you sure? Being non-exempt is a big deal. And it cuts both ways: it also means your employer can dock you when you show up late. Are you sure about this? Are junior devs literally punching timecards?

stmartin 15y ago

Should've taken that GOOG offer I guess. But greed, excuse me, "growth" trumps all else. Now all we need is a sex scandal and let's seal the deal.

auston 15y ago

To summarize the situation (someone please correct me if I am wrong?): 1. Files for IPO 2. ASCOI (Adjusted Segmented Consolidated Operating Income) falls under scrutiny from public & SEC 3. VP of Global Communications resigns 4. Internal Memo "leaked" to major press outlets 5. SEC investigates said memo 6. Sales Team files Class-Action suit Wow.

suking 15y ago
They're on a roll.
blantonl 15y ago
7. Cancels IPO 8. Insolvent in 6 months 9. Layoffs 10. Lawsuits

adnam 15y ago

The turning point for Groupon was that awful, offensive Superbowl advertisment.

divvlr 15y ago

I would recommend to groupon instead of forcing businesses to give deals. Set up a system that has the users bid to spend a certain amount for a good or service. Once you have enough people agreeing to it, there's no way a business would turn it down. You could cut the work force in half and let the users have control of where they get deals. That's my 2 cents.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]