It seems new daily deals site Qupon.co.nz is already being investigated by the Commerce Commission. According to a Stuff Article today.
After launching in February and causing fuss back then, Qupon.co.nz has since been charging customers credit cards before the group buying deal has gone live. A look at their Facebook page shows a tring of unhappy customers and dozens of complaints. It seems the site has been running a voucher deal for Z Petrol about a month, and has been charging customers credit cards in the meantime.
This is an illegal practice, and whether it was intentional or not, it seems that the people running Qupon haven't thought very hard about getting the basics right. With their first deal causing so many unhappy customers they are off to a bad start. Some say any publicity is good publicity but when it comes to credit card and financial transactions controversy is not good.
To make matters worse it seems Z Energy dosen't even endorse the deal. Qupon will be purchasing Z gift cards for $100 to and supplying them to customers for the price of $75 (orginally advertise price was $50). While this isn't illegal, its not the best way to start things off.
On their Facebook page comments are getting quite heated:
"Oh my god you little twat - stop ripping people off. I think you need to go back to school. Study economics and marketing, because you suck at both. Goodness gracious me - this is not the first company that has failed under your rule either, and you are only 21! Please step back and rethink your path......"
"i probably wont start buying your deals until i see some positive feedback from your buyers on you FB page"
Its a shame as I love the domain name Qupon.co.nz, and the site looks quite nice. I don't want to write them off just yet. If the credit cards being charged was a mistake then they need to issue a letter to all customers explaining exactly what happened and asking them to bear with them (after apologising profusely).
It will be interesting to see if the company can shake off this bad publicity. We urge caution, but have a look at the site and their Facebook page and judge for yourself.
