SideDeal = Groupon?
2A cursory search didn’t show anything for this, and the sidedeal forums are a little less inside baseball about Mercatalyst stuff, so I’m putting it here.
I just got something in from SideDeal and my packing slip label says:
Than [sic] you for your purchase from GROUPON!
If you have questions about your order, please visit us on www.groupon.com
It comes from the Meh HQ address, with a three word order number, but shipped Priority Mail and doesn’t say SideDeal anywhere on it.
Groupon doesn’t show up on the Mercatalyst website anywhere. But maybe SideDeal is doing some drop shipping for Groupon’s deals?
I thought it was interesting.
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This is the first time I have seen what looks like confirmation that Groupon has branched out to having physical inventory. I had heard rumors.
Or maybe SD didn’t have enough to fill your order, so they nabbed one from Groupon and left the receipt in the box. Kinda like the retail equivalent of re-gifting.
@ybmuG it doesn’t make it fact but the return address was Meh HQ. I already took the trash out so I can’t confirm what name (if any) was on it but I knew from looking at the bag that it was my SideDeal order so it didn’t say Groupon there.
I doubt Meh has that much trouble keeping up with their inventory since deal logistics is a core competency for them. I also think they would cancel something before buying it from elsewhere to fulfill it. But they may be having Groupon drop ship things for them as well. I know I’ve bought things from Meh in the past that drop shipped from elsewhere but that was clear (return address in NY).
@djslack yeah, was really just being sarcastic, but still interesting to figure out where it came from. Your drop ship theory is most likely.
I’ll give you a little peak behind the curtain. So when we purchase inventory, we try to take all units available of an item. Sometimes inventory might be housed at other retailers. Likely that’s what happened, the goods may have been prepackaged like that when we received them.
@mandirose well, that’s a lot less dramatic than drop shipping, or that you bought Groupon, or bought product from someone else to fulfill an order, or that you “found” a storage unit with a bunch of stuff from other retailers, or that you dug a tunnel under the Groupon warehouse and raised a family of trained rats to operate a rudimentary rail system, or something.
@mandirose thank you for the info!
@ybmuG of course they are not going to let the rat railway be known publicly… That’s a trade secret! The best part is that the rats are about 86% accurate at picking, so the extra stuff they bring back is more fodder for IRKs.