When we talk about Groupon Malaysia, you will definitely read or hear about Joel Neoh. The CEO of Groupon Malaysia and Groupon Taiwan.
Back in 2011, this young enterprising Malaysian who’s company GroupsMore was acquired by Groupon.
As reported in The Star recently, Groupon Malaysia has more that 1.5 million customers in the country, offering over 160 deals per week from some 3,000 over merchants.
Groupon Malaysia is the most visited deal site in Malaysia. Period.
It was reported the US daily-deal site company Groupon Inc became profitable in less than a year.
In 2010, Forbes magazine called it “the world’s faster growing company in web history”.
While we are reading glowing writeup about Groupon Malaysia and Joel Neoh, but lately, Groupon Inc is having big problems; its business model, accounting issues, refunds, and complaints of inflated saving claims, substandard customer service, overselling deals and false advertising.
There is even a Facebook page specially for complaints called Groupon Complaint Page.
According to Wikipedia, its first earnings release as a public company, Groupon reported a fourth-quarter 2011 loss of $9.8 million.
Well, Groupon claimed that the latest accounting problems arrived from a move into higher priced coupons, which led to more customer returns and refunds than anticipated.
Now, Forbes is asking: “Is Groupon Over?”
One site even said, “Groupon On The Road To Bankruptcy“.
Last year, a guest post in Techcrunch, titled: “Why Groupon Is Poised For Collapse”
ABC Action News: “Is Groupon done? Customers business complaints and falling sales leave many observers wondering.”
And I have read that this online coupon company is threatening to sue small merchants.
In the last two years Groupon has managed to break over 20 advertising regulations in UK.
Hopefully Groupon Malaysia by Joel Neoh is not facing all these problems.