Groupon & TeamBuy.ca Customer Service

Great customer service can be hard to come by so when I experience it first-hand, especially in the online world, I need to talk about.

Last weekend I ran into some issues with two online coupons that I’d purchased.
The first was with TeamBuy.ca and it was for tickets for this Ghost Stories play. This was sort of an odd coupon because I didn’t actually buy my tickets from TeamBuy’s site. Instead, I essentially put in a request to receive a code that I would then use over on TicketKing.com.

This promo ran for a few days and once it had closed I received an email with what I thought contained my code. But when I tried to use the code on Saturday to order my tickets, it didn’t work. The email that contained the code made reference to following specific redemption instructions but I couldn’t find those instructions, or at least none that worked, so I emailed TeamBuy.

Now, this was the Saturday evening of a long weekend. I figured that I’d hear back from TeamBuy by Monday morning at the earliest. I was wrong. They actually got back to me within hours of my email and gave me a working code. They also emailed everyone who “bought” this deal on Monday with the new code and redemption instructions.

The speed of TeamBuy’s reply really impresses me and I’m quite grateful that they did get back to me so fast since getting that code quickly allowed me to secure a couple of great seats for the show.

I’m also equally impressed with how promptly Groupon dealt with an issue with had with one of its coupons. Last year, I bought Husband a coupon for auto detailing. He wanted to wait until the snow was good and gone before he used it so he only tried to redeem it last week. However, the coupon was due to expire on May 6 and I guess everyone who bought it was scrambling to use their coupons up because the auto detailing place didn’t have any slots left.

It told us that Groupon would refund our money so Saturday evening I shot Groupon an email, again not expecting to hear anything until Monday at the earliest.

But Sunday morning, Easter morning, I work up and there were two emails from Groupon in my inbox. One was from a customer service rep apologizing for our problem and promising to refund our money (yes, to our credit card) and the other was the official “we’re refunding you” email.

I know that online coupon sites have been getting a lot of grief lately, particularly on the business-owner end, but as a customer,  I have to say I’ve only ever had positive experiences with these transactions.

Would I buy this again: Yes! In fact I bought a Groupon for the Body Shop just the other day.
Should you buy it: If these sites are offeing something you want, go for it (just read the fine print, like the expiry date first).