You've probably heard about Groupon, the service that offers you deal coupons. You may even be a subscriber. You may have also heard about their Superbowl ad this year, in which they, at best, make light of the plight of the Tibetan people.
They've been defending the ad by saying at least it calls attention to the situation. Yeah. Mocking it ain't such a good way to go there. I unsubscribed.
When you unsubscribe, the unsubscribe page has a comical little video featuring throwing hot coffee in someone's face. Hah hah. I won't be back. Weirdly, the majority of Google hits on this admire how cool it is. Yeah. Sick planet.
What makes this so unbelievably unutterably stupid is that Groupon is doing great. They are making money hand over fist. All they have to do to retain this position is…wait for it…not do anything that alienates a large portion of their customer base.
The kind of stuff they're doing is a risk, in a situation where any sane successful startup would be highly risk-averse. Say what you want about their taste level, but it's bad, bad business… Update: It occurs to me upon reflection that there's more to be said here.
First of all, my initial attempt to unsubscribe didn't work, because I tried to log into the site and unsub from there. As far as I can tell, there's no way to do that. I finally had to Google to find out how to unsub. So the great ethics of their "one-click" unsub impress me less than you might think.
Secondly, when you finally go to their unsub link, and are automatically unsubscribed, there is no option to resubscribe. At least not until you click on the "Punish Derrick" button and sit through the aforementioned hot coffee assault video. Apparently, it never occurred to them that someone might have clicked on the unsub button in their email by accident or out of curiosity, and would be happy to resub without virtually throwing hot coffee in someone's face. It also apparently never occurred to them that some people really can't play videos in their browser, for whatever reason, and thus might not be offered a resub at all.
This is a company making their money on an Internet-based service play.
Like I said, stupid. Stupid business. (B)