CHICAGO Online coupon provider Groupon, in response to a lawsuit alleging that it “systematically deceives its customers,” is striking back with its own class-action suit -- against itself.
The real class-action suit against Groupon was filed Tuesday in Cook County, Ill., by Chicago-based attorneys Jay Edelson and Bill Gray of Edelson McGuire LLC. The firm claims that Groupon’s business practices are deceptive because expiration dates are imposed after purchase of coupons sold by the website.
“As a company with one of the most irrationally liberal customer satisfaction policies on the planet — we refund anyone that feels like Groupon let them down for any reason —we’re baffled by this whole thing,” Andrew Mason, the site’s founder and chief executive, said in a statement e-mailed to Nation’s Restaurant News. “In fact, we’ve decided that the best way to respond is by organizing our own class action. If there actually are customers out there who feel like we’ve let them down, we want to get them their money as quickly as possible.”
Groupon has a form that can be accessed on its blog where customers can fill out their name and how they were systematically deceived, available at http://groublogpon.com/cities/groupon-organizes-class-action-against-itself.
Groupon is set up in most major cities to provide registered users with gift certificates to popular restaurants and stores at a discount. The offers are able to be activated only when enough users agree to buy the gift certificates, effectively taking advantage of group discounts.
In their lawsuit, Edelson and Gray said: “Groupon expressly advertises itself as a company that does not impose, in its own words, ‘gotchas,’ on the consumer. In clear violation of the law, Groupon imposes illegal terms or ‘gotchas,’ post-agreement, on the very consumers it prides itself on helping.”
On its website, Groupon said it has sold more than 2 million gift certificates, for total consumer savings of more than $100 million.
“We are so not the type of company that needs to be sued to bend over backwards for our customers," founder Mason said in a blog post. "We didn’t need to be sued to have an open-refund policy. We didn’t need to be sued to print our phone number on Groupons. ... I don’t know if it’s some kind of weird complex, but the idea that there’s even one customer out there that is less than thrilled with Groupon horrifies me.
"So while we obviously think this lawsuit is ridiculous," he added, "it’s an opportunity for us to reinforce the fact that there is nothing more important to us than making sure [users] love us.”
Contact Mark Brandau at [email protected].