Rant 827 / So Many Tasks Incomplete, So Little Time.

That's a lot of special effects for a Youtube video!













Groupon Singapore actually refunded the coupons I bought for a meal at half price at Honjin Restaurant and Bar just because the restaurant "revised" (ie downgraded) its menu after the Groupon promotion.

Granted, it was unethical of the restaurant but I believe it was completely within their rights to do so.

Nevertheless, I sent a ticket to Groupon's customer support immediately to ask for a refund.

First ticket:

Hi,


My friends had recently visited this restaurant using Groupon vouchers which I had also bought 6 on my own. Their experience was terrible and the menu, according to them, was very different from what was found online on the restaurant's website.


Furthermore, the same thing was described in the review by someone else on the Hungrygowhere website, and others also agreed with it.


This is obviously a fraud.


Therefore, I'd like a refund of my six vouchers please. I don't know if my friends had already ask for it and I'm not sure if they can because they've already used it. As for mine, they're still unused and not even printed.


I'm using this email for my Groupon account, so you can find it with this email address.


Regards,
[my name]

Ok, so the part about my friends' visit was not wholly true. Whatever.



Reply from Groupon:

Hi [my name]


Good Morning!


Thanks for your email.


We totally understand your concern, however kindly note that our refund policy is usually very generous, but does not cover cases where a Groupon is not used with no fault to the business or based on comments or reviews. We understand that sometimes extreme circumstances arise due to emergencies, and we can often work something out in those situations.


But if you purchase a Groupon and then later decide that you do not want to use it because you changed your mind based on reviews, we ask that you give it to someone you think may enjoy it(:


I hope this helps to further clarify things and if you have any further questions, let me know.


Thank you!


Kind regards,


[name of Groupon employee]
support@groupon.sg

It totally makes sense. The bolded part made me feel stupid for trying too. Btw I bolded that part on this blog to highlight the point.

But the thing was, this ticket was answered after more than a day. When 24 hours passed after I submitted the above, I thought they were deliberately ignoring me, thus I decided to send another ticket to prove I was determined to get, at the very least, a reply.

The second ticket was merely a slightly rephrased version of the first.



Second ticket:

Hi,


My friends had recently visited this restaurant using Groupon vouchers which I had also bought 6 on my own. Their experience was terrible and the menu, according to them, was very different from what was found online on the restaurant's website.


Furthermore, the same thing was described in the review by someone else on the Hungrygowhere website, and others also agreed with it.


This is obviously a fraud.


Therefore, I'd like a refund of my six vouchers please.They're still unused and not even printed.


I'm using this email for my Groupon account, so you can find it with this email address.


Regards,


[my name]

Groupon's reply:

Hi [my name],

We are sincerely sorry if this deal did not turn out well for you and thanks for bringing this to our attention.


We hope customers will utilize their Groupons and not let their decisions affected purely based on comments or reviews. We seek your understanding that as Hon Jin has only recently updated their new menu, we have just received the designed menu from them.

Please rest assured that we do our best to feature businesses that see Groupon as an opportunity to gain loyal customers as well as advertise their services. Before featuring a business, we send out our quality assurance team to make sure that it reaches the high standards held up by Groupon.


Given the circumstances, we would like to offer you a full refund in Groupon credits on goodwill. Groupon credits are valid for a whole 6 months and have the benefit of being instantly available for you to use toward your next purchase on www.groupon.sg


• Deal: $20 for Japanese Ala Carte Buffet Dinner at Honjin Restaurant and Bar (Worth $40)
• Refunded 6 Groupon(s)
• Total amount refunded: $120.00
• Mode of refund: Groupon Account
• Voucher codes: [codes]

$120.00 credits are now available in your Groupon account, all you need to do is click the “Use Your Credit” tick box on the final payment page. Hopefully you will find another deal that you like the look of to spend your credit on, so keep an eye out on www.groupon.sg!

Thank you.

Warm Regards,
[name of Groupon employee]
support@groupon.sg

Whoa!! I seriously didn't expect this to happen. When I got the first reply, I thought I might as well use them then. I mean, what's the chance they would soften their hearts all of a sudden?

Moreover, the reservation I made several weeks back was for this Saturday. Might as well just go.

Then when everything was done, and I even confirmed with Honjin when one of the employees called me, I found the reply to my second ticket.

Derp.



And on the bigger picture, I had already been making a lot of changes when I organized this dinner.

Initially we were supposed to go for Honjin for a Saturday dinner due to the reservation I mentioned above.

Then on Monday it appeared that we didn't have enough people to use all 6 coupons. I didn't want to go through the fuss of handling one ticket (maybe by selling it or whatever), so I decided to postpone this reservation and have our dinner someplace else.

So while looking through the deals on various discount sites, an inexplicable urge came over me to check the reviews of Honjin on Hungrygowhere.com.

The recent reviews were not very flattering about the food there. Furthermore, they mentioned that the menu was quite different from the one found on their website initially, with multiple items missing now.

Worse, more than one person agreed with this.

Hence the story about the tickets above.

Next, I checked Groupon and found a deal for Charly T's, $15 for $30 worth of food. I asked the gang and for some reason, 6 people agreed.

So I bought 6 coupons after making a reservation there.

Somewhere between 24-48 hours after submitting my first ticket, I got the reply. Feeling foolish for even sending the ticket, I decided to just use it anyway. I hadn't called the restaurant to postpone it, so it was totally workable.

Therefore yesterday, the 5th of August, I called Charly T's to change my reservation to the 13th.

After everything was confirmed, SMSes all sent to my buddies, I checked my email for no reason last night (I usually only check once a day in the morning) and found the reply to my second ticket.

What.

So this morning, which is the very Saturday we were going to have our dinner on, I hastily called Charly T's to change my reservation back to today.

Luckily they were okay with it, but I was told I cannot surprise them with extra people because the place were expected to be crowded tonight. I booked for 7 since other than the 6 of us, another person was unable to confirm due to work. He said he would join us if he could. Might as well book for him. If he doesn't come, they wouldn't make us pay for 7 meals anyway.


I hate messy stuff. Good thing it's still the holidays. If there were classes now I'm not sure if I'd be this calm about it.











Charly T's roast chicken was pretty good. Alright, so I'm no expert in this field, and I can't tell if the chicken itself was any better than that offered by other better known restaurants like Kenny Rogers Roasters, but I love the sauces.

My favourite is the Creamy Roasted Sesame. The least outstanding was the Kansas City BBQ.

The garlic rice and garden salad were great too.

We also tried the Moroccan Sticks, which were roasted skewers of beef, but we didn't think the dish was special in any way. The beef was rather tough too. Maybe it was supposed to be that way but I didn't like it. And I like beef.

Then there was the fish skewer which isn't in the online menu like the rest of the seafood dishes but we weren't impressed either.

As for dessert, I had the ice cream sandwich, which was 2 large cookies and a scoop of vanilla ice cream in between.

The filled waffle was decent and there was the option of adding a scoop of ice cream (no discount for ordering 2 desserts at one go though).

The Rote Grutze was just a scoop of ice cream in a bowl of sour berry sauce. Theoretically a pudding, but ice cream was ice cream.

The Chocolate Coconut Pecan Pie was so full of pecans.

Finally, the Black Forest ice cream was alcoholic.

IMO, only their secret sauces for the chicken were interesting in the entire meal. Maybe their wraps were also interesting too but we didn't have the chance to try them.

We had 2 chickens to share among the 6 of us, so I had plenty of opportunities to try all of them.

Spent $90 on this $180-meal by using Groupon vouchers.











Don't like loud music.