At Last, a Cure for Groupon Regret

Polly Chung is hooked on daily deals. Before she wakes in the morning, Chung, a self-described unemployed, middle-aged New Yorker, gets up to 50 e-mails touting steep discounts on everything from restaurants to rock climbing. She buys three to five coupons each week—more than she has use for. “I’ve gotten kind of carried away,” she says. Over the past few months, though, Chung has been able to alleviate her buyer’s remorse by tapping into a growing number of websites that help people sell the online daily deals they can’t use or suddenly don’t want.

Groupon, the online coupon leader, has filed paperwork for a $750 million initial public offering, while several prominent Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, and Foursquare, have expanded into the business. The popularity of daily deals has given rise to a new malady—Groupon regret—and new sites ready to make money off the condition. Startups including Lifesta and DealsGoRound allow addicts such as Chung to sell their unused coupons and buy the ones they missed or just want to amass. The new sites don’t have the explicit endorsement of Groupon or its main rival, LivingSocial, but they are growing rapidly. “Now I can sell my coupons, and I don’t have to give them away [to friends] and lose my money,” says Chung, who recently used Lifesta to sell a coupon for $5 off on cream puffs at a Japanese confectioner. Industry tracker Yipit reports that 20 percent of the daily deals people buy online go unredeemed.