Do everything OTC and without netting. Default on every losing position. The counterparty is probably not going to make a fuss about it while dealing with ghosts, robots, zombies and the exploding sun. Also, Zaratron’s legal system is probably pretty weak anyway.
Choose your commodities wisely - ghosts don’t eat as much. Zombies have very specific tastes. Investing in toasters is probably safe though. Everybody likes toasts.
BTW, this is all opinion, not fact. So CFAI doesn’t go after me. I hope they side with the humans on this.
Ok. So I used to take advantage of Groupon’s inefficiencies all the time. When I bought one and used it, I knew the workers were too lazy to cancel it on their end. I would wait a week and check online to see if it was still active. If it was, I’d use it again and again until I saw it cancelled in my online account or til it expired.
Now I’ve found another flaw to their system. I’m not sure if it was the policy back then, or maybe it was, but not as widely known, when a voucher expires you never lose the money you paid for it. Meaning that $25 you spent for a $50 voucher is still worth $25. I just logged into my account for the first time in like 2-3 years and there’s a credit voucher section where they changed the original voucher for the deal into a credit for the value that I paid. I see I have 8 vouchers worth $218. To the AF Brothahood, check your account…
Sounds like a promising tip. Unfortunately, the $5 for $10 coupons at Starbucks I had purchased did not get the credit ‘reversed,’ so I won’t be getting a free lunch. Would be curious to hear anyone else who does though.
I don’t understand what the “trick” is. The vouchers clearly state that the price you paid never expires (though if the company goes out of business in the interim, you may be screwed, or groupon might allow you to put that money toward something else, but I doubt it).
I bought a $20 Groupon good for $40 of food at restaurant I liked, but my GF kept saying “let’s go later.” Finally we go and discover the groupon expired 2 days earlier. I still got to use it for $20, though I found myself grumbling that I could have gotten $20 more if we’d just gone earlier that week.
It’s good for Groupon to do this because it increases the number they sell; otherwise fewer people would buy them for fear they would forget to use them and lose all their money.
But it’s the restaurants that pay the inefficiency value right, not Groupon? Groupon takes their cut when you buy the coupon, but the restaurant ends up giving you food for half price. It seems like one of those things that will not change until the merchants complain. Lots of these repeat users seem to go to chain restaurants where the employee doesn’t care if they see the same customer submitting a Groupon every week. So, maybe the merchants are not complaining since the inefficiencies don’t get noticed by the top of the house.
I guess it depends on how the money transfer works. If I pay $20 for $40 worth of food at NakedSushiFun, the question on my mind is whether NakedSushiFun gets the $20 minus Groupon’s cut right away, or if the money remains with Groupon until I use the coupon, and then it goes to the restaurant.
If the latter, it should be easy enough for Groupon to issue a Groupon credit useable for something else, as Itera had. Or maybe Groupon just reimbursed Itera and swallowed the loss because annoyed customers are less likely to be repeat customers.
While we’re on this topic. Do people have a preferred site for this stuff. i.e. as a customer (as opposed to an investor), do you have any preferences with regards to Groupon vs LivingSocial vs some other site??
In other news, I noticed Groupon started sending me offers on various sex toys. I was amused, though I wonder how their algorithm decided to put those on my page.
I don’t have any real preference, though I did just nearly get burned by some nasty fine print on one from LivingSocial. The fine print said if you returned any of the items you bought, you’d forfeit the value of the voucher. I complained enough that the store gave me a gift card for the amount of the voucher, but had I not done that I’d have paid for the voucher and had nothing to show for it.
