Thanks Sweet Willy-your vote of confidence got me to open that link

The deals in NYC were pretty good. I bought some 50% off mani/pedi and facial. Some deals are much better than the others. When you buy, beware of the expiration date. I like to get ones that are at least 6 months out. The places may get overwhelmed with the influx of customers, and it'll be hard to get appointment.

My wife checks out the offer virtually every day. I have used several of the restaurant coupons she has purchased: unlike restaurant.com, they have no minimums and are good for carryout also. Very happy with Groupon.

Looks like we can start a Conga for this site. I'll start:

Groupon Signon link

Miami's are similar to this.

Good idea.

Signup link

Groupon is awesome.. and you can sign up for multiple cities, which is great for restaurants or places you might travel to often. I'm signed up for BOS, PHL and SFO and occasionally check out other areas, I might like to explore.

Their products and services are all local, but all over the place as to what. I think good, recognizeable, restaurants market through them, so they're genuinely good deals. The spa treatments or mineral makeups aren't my thing, though. They're almost all 50% off, or two-fers. Not as good as restaurant.com, but neither is it the calculation shell-game of automatically adding an 18% gratuity and charging tax on all of it, then taking the discount, or whatever. (And standing over you while you make out the check that still has the blank tip line on it.)

If it was another restaurant or mani/pedi coupon I wouldn't post, but I think this is a good groupon, much like the discounted membership Groupon offerred to the Chicago Art Institute:

Chicago FT'ers, Today's (Fri Feb 5) Groupon is a discount on an Adler Planetarium membership: http://www.groupon.com/deals/the-adl...er-planetarium


Details on the Adler Planetarium: http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/

At last! A food one again for Boston! But that's not why I'm posting.

I learned something. Enough people, or a specified total of Groupon orders have to occur for the deal to go "live" and what you bought gets fulfilled. Today, it's in the hundreds. So it's a sort of a bid. I have always focused on how many of the deal are left -- e.g., when they will run out of the total number of deals offered. I didn't know that they, well we, have to reach a minimum threshold of Groupon orders of that deal. If the threshold is not met, then our credit cards are not charged. They claim to be very safe, and friends who have "belonged" - signed up to get the daily offers before me - say that they are.

OK, just looked. Minimum number of orders required was 300. (Looked daunting at 6:00am, when the offer opened.) They say the deal "tipped" at 8:15am -- e.g., hit 300. Now, the count is up to 1514. Sheez, everyone going to that restaurant will be using one. Wonder what the upper limit of orders is.

Oh - what is it? $30 of food at a (particular) Japanese restaurant for $15. Looks like I bought three "Groupons".

They're at 2,766 purchased as of right now, with 24 hours left to purchase more. [Insert expletive here.] Or wow. Just wow...




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3,028 as of now. The running timer says there are "18 hr., 2 min. 33 sec. Time left to buy." Not sure how they figure the time remaining, because this doesn't jibe with the above. I don't have a piece of Groupon, but in case anyone is interested in how it actually works...

http://www.groupon.com/boston/deals/ma-soba-1

Here are some similar sites to check out-not sure of all citiies that are available but Boston is one of them.

http://www.buywithme.com/getdeals
http://www.coupme.com/Default.asp
http://deals.livingsocial.com/deals/...eferred_city=2
http://www.wowwhatsavings.com/

Thank you, GOOFYam.

Curious that some of these have the very same deals to Groupon -- Tasca restaurant and the sushi-making class were deals in both Groupon and livingsocial, as examples. And they seem to operate on the same m.o., showing a counter of the number of deals purchased. Hmmm.

Puts me in mind of the catalog company guy I sat next to on one plane ride. His business was to take his stable of products and vendors, and re-mix them and re-mix them, putting different catalog covers on the result to appeal to different consumer profiles|"lifestyles". He was involved with the "Sky Mall" etc. airline catalogs that are in the seatback pockets. I'm suggesting an analogy, not the same thing. In particular, is this the same company with different websites, different faces?

I'm not going to take the time to go back and see if the number of deals purchased is the same, but what would your guess be? Just sayin'. But as long as the deals are fulfilled, it works for me.

I agree that groupon is great! Todays deal in Boston is for a round of paintball. You really never know what may come tomorrow. If you are signing up please use the referral link below and check out the site! Thanks.

http://www.groupon.com/r/uu748873