Daily Deal Sites… Unbeatable Deals But Don’t Just Sign-up Without a Thought

Daily Deal sites have infiltrated our market over the past few years and most savvy shoppers use these to scout out unbeatable deals on restaurants, retail, services and more. With so many daily deal sites out there and even more popping up each day, the world is your oyster! But at the same time, with so many new group buying sites, how do you discern which ones to sign up with?

When I saw this tweet from a hip coffee shop/restaurant on the Hill a few months ago, it really grabbed my attention:

April 30, 2011 @poundcoffee: If you see a daily deal run by @homerun_dc today, DO NOT BUY. They are a scam company and this is not a deal we are running.

Of course, my curiosity got the best of me, and I had to check out the Homerun DC twitter account and then their website. And the scary part was, it looked like a real, legitimate daily deal site. And the deal they displayed for Pound Coffee was well-written and looked legit. Yet here Pound Coffee was announcing on twitter that it was not a legitimate deal and in fact this was a product of a scam company. I even found that the Washingtonian had shared that faux deal online a few months prior on their Daily Deals Round Up for January 25, 2011. Yes, unfortunately scam sites can be very convincing!

In light of this, I want to give you some advice: On the Internet, it’s a good idea to exercise caution. Before you sign up for a new daily deal site that you’ve never heard of, take some time to research it. You want to be very careful when providing your personal information on the web. So in order to avoid that:

1. Start off by doing a quick internet search on the name of the daily deal site. I would also Google the name of the company plus the word “scam” to see what pops up.
2. If you receive a generic or spammy looking email sent from a friend’s email address promoting a site you’ve never heard of, do not click on the links.
3. Look at websites with complaint message boards like RipOffReport.com to see if others have filed complaints or shared negative experiences.
4. Trust your gut feeling; if it seems fishy, just don’t sign up no matter how enticing the offer is!

Now I don’t mean to make you ultra-paranoid, just wanted to make you aware that there are scam companies out there trying to take advantage of the daily deals craze.

And since there are many daily deal sites and group buying sites out there that have fantastic offers and are legitimate, I wanted to highlight my favorites over the next few weeks, plus offer some giveaways. These are companies I have researched and signed up with. Group buying sites that I trust and have used to enjoy new restaurants and find services my family and I might need with a 50%+ discount. So stayed tuned for my first special giveaway coming up later today!