Man, do I know talent?????? Great and FUNNY article. I’m looking forward to the next one.

Way to go!

Joe

The radio station called me today and gave me a gift certificate for a free one-night stay at your house.

I’m betting you didn’t authorize that?…hmm…doesn’t seem fair, does it? Well that doesn’t matter; I want what’s mine and they said so, so it doesn’t matter that YOU live there.

I pride myself on treating customers with respect. I don’t appreciate that when I apologized profusely that we did not authorize nor could we accept the promotion you said “oh it’s okay I understand”, then later posted publicly that I treated you poorly.

Using your thought process, YOU should have been the one to make the lemonade. Ever consider that this unfortunate circumstance may have brought you in to discover a good thing? Why should a place of business be forced to shell out freebies based on someone else’s error? How about giving a muffin a try (only $1.50)? I believe your exact words to your party were “well, they’re not takin’ them [groupons] so let’s hit it”–without even looking around to check out what we have? It’s no wonder so many “amateur” small businesses struggle to make it in this country–constantly getting screwed by both multi-million dollar corporations and cheap, dramatic busy-bodies.

The bottom line is, you didn’t get your 10 dollars worth of merchandise for 5 bucks and I can understand the disappointment. But to vindictively turn it around on innocent bystanders trying to make an honest buck… well, that says A LOT about you.

Our initial reply:
“Sorry you feel slighted by your treatment at our establishment. But, we first found out about this groupon upon opening for business
this morning. We never authorized the promotion. It seems to have been
launched by an over-zealous groupon salesperson who neglected to
obtain the appropriate permission.

We treated all groupon people fairly today, and stand by our
no-redemption policy.

Please feel free to say whatever you feel concerning what happened
today. If bashing us makes you feel better, it’s your karma on the
line. As a small, privately owned business, we refuse to yield to the
unethical business practices of a multi-billion dollar corporation.”

Her response:
“Wow…my karma is threatened by an amateur businessperson. I’m terrified. Thanks for giving me more to work with as I tell everyone about this.

The professional response to your situation would have been a sincere apology, perhaps half off on one item (Your business really must be hurting if your OCF can’t handle that) and a less rude response by your counter person. ”

And our (final) reply:
“Please feel free to quote anything I have said.

No apology is owed, especially from the counter person, as she treated
you very kindly.

Enjoy telling the world about how horrible we are. I hope it brings
you some joy.”