Groupon.ie - Who is my contract of sale with?

markiemark2005

I recently placed an order for a mattress through groupon.ie. The offer stated that the item would be delivered within 7 working days. The company selling the mattress, bedsandmattressworld.co.uk did not respond to messages sent through their website regarding delivery. Groupon are now claiming that the item was delivered, but it was not. Its almost a month since I placed the order.

I was of the belief that any vendor was not allowed to charge a persons card until an item had been shipped for delivery, is this still the case? Also, as my card has been debited by groupon.ie, is my contract of sale with them or with the 3rd party vendor?

seamus

As best I understand the model, you don't buy the product through Groupon, you buy a voucher through groupon, which you then redeem against goods or services from a retailer.

So in terms of the actual product and placing an order for the product, the contract is between you and the merchant, not you and groupon. The voucher you give the merchant forms part of the contract of sale between you.

Groupon's liability covers the redeemability of the voucher. Basically if you cannot use the voucher because the merchant is unavailable, the merchant refuses to honour it, etc, then Groupon are required to refund you the value of the voucher because they have failed to deliver on their contract of sale of a valid voucher.

In your case, you basically have to rewind the chain of events. Cancel the order with the merchant, including chargebacks, etc. Then go to groupon and tell them that the merchant was unable to honour the voucher, and therefore groupon failed in their contractual obligation, and claim a refund. Go as far as a chargeback if necessary.

FWIW, this is actually fairly typical of a lot of groupon deals; small manufacturers get drawn into offering thousands of products when they might only logistically be able to deliver a hundred products a week. Then the deal kicks in and the manufacturer finds themselves with 2,000 orders on back order and 4,000 angry emails and 500 phone calls looking for an update. So not only are they unable to deliver the products in a reasonable timeframe, they also lack the staff to deal with the volume of calls and emails they're getting and so it looks like the company have just dropped off the face of the earth.

fl4pj4ck

If you have been charged by Groupon then with them you are in contract with.
Happened to me before, Groupon pointed me towards the supplier to which I quickly reacted by raising a chargeback. money in my account in 2 days

markiemark2005

How do you do a chargeback? Contact the bank? I used a visa debit, so I presume chargeback is the same as for a creditcard?

fl4pj4ck

In my case they sent me a form to fill (reason for chargeback) and sign and that was it. Scanned and emailed back, money in the account 2 days later.