Is Barnes & Noble Scamming Groupon Users?

On February 4th Groupon ran an offer for "$10 for $20 Worth of Toys and Games, Books and More at Barnes & Noble". As an avid reader I was interested in what could be a great deal on some new books. I checked the terms and conditions and saw that the Groupon could also be used for Nook purchases, which was the clincher for me. I purchased the Groupon and registered it with my Nook.

One of the terms of the B&N Groupon is that it expires on April 10th. If you did not spend the full amount of the Groupon by April 10, the remaining balance would be reduced by $10, or to $0 if less than $10 was remaining. I was a little concerned about this as I already had a $50 gift card registered with my Nook, and there is no way to re-order gift cards on the B&N website. Unless I spent $70 on books in the next two months, I wasn't going to get to take advantage of the deal.

On February 18th my wife and I were on a date and we had some time to kill after dinner before we went to a comedy club. We stopped at the local B&N and had coffee and browsed books. I found a paperback copy of "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman for $7.99. This book isn't available on the Nook and it was on my to-read list, so I decided to use my Groupon for it. When I presented the Groupon to the cashier, he gave me a funny look and asked if I wouldn't like to get something more. He explained that any unspent amount from the $20 Groupon would be lost. This was news to me, as my understanding of the terms was that it worked just like a gift card. He went on to say that all of the Groupons used the same number, so there was no way to tell them apart. We were pressed for time to get to our show, so I returned the book to the shelf and we left without purchasing anything.

The next day, I got to thinking about what the cashier said. It made no sense that all of the Groupons shared the same number. If they did, either the first customer to use it would use it for everyone, or I could go into the store and use my Groupon over and over again. I double checked the terms and conditions. Based on the wording regarding the April 10th expiration, I was certain that the Groupon would retain the outstanding balance. I went to a different Barnes and Noble location and picked out the same book, along with "Anansi Boys" (also by Neil Gaiman). Each book was priced at $7.99. I again approached the cashier with my Groupon. The cashier looked at the Groupon and said that I had to spend a minimum of $20 before I could use it. I held my ground this time. I said that there was no minimum purchase, and the remaining balance would be retained. She shrugged and we entered the number and pin. Sure enough, the receipt showed that the Groupon had a remaining balance of $2.90. I also confirmed the remaining balance on the B&N site.

I thought about this situation some more, and it started to seem more suspect. I had visited two different Barnes and Noble locations and spoken to two different cashiers. In both cases, the cashier instructed me to spend over the $20 Groupon amount (one in order to avoid forfeited value, the other as a minimum purchase). Are the B&N stores intentionally misinforming their cashiers in order to encourage customers to spend more than the Groupon amount? If you took advantage of the B&N Groupon, did you receive similar information from a cashier?


UPDATED:

I did a little research to see if anyone else was getting the same feedback when using the B&N Groupon. This thread on one of the B&N blogs details how some Groupon users were able to purchase multiple Groupons and use them in shady ways.

In addition, I sent a support request to both Groupon and Barnes and Noble to let them know about my experience. I'm not looking for anything in return, just to inform the businesses about the confusion surrounding this deal. I received two replies from Groupon within a few hours of submitting my e-mail (wow, fast feedback!). However, the two responses conflict.

Simon, Feb-21 11:39 am (CST):

Hi Adam,

I'm so sorry you ran into some problems when trying to redeem your Groupon.
Typically, our Groupons are used in one transaction and while this was an exception, that is no reason for the Barnes & Noble staff to not be better informed.
Thank you for your feedback and I appreciate your email informing me of your experience.

Regards,

Michaela

Simon, Feb-21 11:39 am (CST):

Hi Adam,

Sorry for the confusion and thanks for your feedback. These are the universal restrictions that apply to every Groupon (unless specifically contradicted in the deal's fine print):

- Not valid for cash back (unless required by law).
- Must use in one visit.
- Doesn't cover tax or gratuity.
- Can't be combined with other offers.
- Can't use until day after purchase.

In summary, I am positive that your receipt (with the remaining balance) cannot be used for future Barnes and Noble. If it does work, please email us back so we can correct this immediately for all Barnes and Noble Groupons.

Sorry again for the inconvenience.

Regards,

Mark P.

Two messages sent at exactly the same time with directly conflicting information. Looks like the cashiers at B&N aren't the only ones confused about how this offer works.

Effective Presenting

I've given a number of presentations to a variety of audiences. Over time I've developed a mental list of things to look for in providing an effective presentation.

Ear lobes and eye balls.

Where do you want the audience's attention? If you are giving a presentation, you want the audience to be focusing on you and the words you are saying. Complicated slides with lots of text and images will distract your audience from what you are saying and give them an excuse to tune out. Make sure the content on the slide is an augmentation of your spoken content, not a replacement for it.

PowerPoint is a horrible format for a white paper.

If your goal is to deliver documentation, deliver a document. Slides are for presentations, not documentation. There is nothing worse than sitting in a presentation where the presenter does nothing more than read their slides to you.

Expect to be interrupted.

If your audience is paying attention, they should have questions. Be prepared to stop at any moment and discuss either a detail of what you said or a detail on your slide. This is a good argument for limiting content, both spoken and on the slide, as it limits interruptions and side conversations. If you haven't been stopped, no one is listening.

Build in transitions.

For group presentations, build in a transition to cue the next speaker. Jumping directly to the first content slide of a follow-up speaker gives the audience time to digest the slide and make assumptions without the guidance of the speaker. This can lead to an ambush, or lack of attention.

Be concise.

You are brilliant. You've done an incredible amount of research on your topic and you want to show your audience how brilliant you are. Your audience, on the other hand, is probably bored and pressed for time. Assume your audience is a bunch of six year old kids hopped up on mountain dew and pixie sticks. Get your message across directly and immediately. Follow-up with reinforcement.

Be consistent.

Use a consistent layout. Turn on snap to grid and rulers. Be sure that common content elements appear in the same position throughout. Do not make your audience go hunting around the slide. Get familiar with the slide master.

Know your message.

Related to being concise, know the message you are trying to deliver. Everything you say or show should be geared towards reinforcing that message. If you can't relate the slide or discussion to your message, remove it.

Time the material.

Practice the presentation to get a feel for timing. Are you way over your time limit? Way under? Leave 10-20% of your available time for discussion.

One idea per slide.

Just because you can fit a lot of things on one slide doesn't mean you should. Focus on just one concept per slide. Loading a slide up with multiple concepts will only lead to confusion.

Over-prepare

All those slides you took out to be concise: put them in a different slide deck. Any additional material that someone might ask you for, such as data to backup your findings, keep in that second slide deck. Call it your Fully Updated (F.U.) slide deck. This way, if you suffer the misfortune of someone in the audience questioning your research, you've got it covered with a big F.U.

Wake 'em up

Let's face it, you and everyone in that room would rather be somewhere else. The longer the presentation the higher likelihood that your audience will lose interest. Throw something in there to wake them up. It can be anything, speaker transitions, physical samples, audience participation, home video of you bungee jumping, whatever. Find a way to break the monotony.

Warning signs that things are going very, very wrong

• No interruptions
• Waiting on audience to finish reading / digesting your slide
• Your spoken content doesn't track with your slides
• Lack of eye contact

Warning signs that things are going very, very well

• Lots of interruptions / questions
• Audience discussion
• Eye contact

Related Materials

Here are links to great materials on effective presenting.

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs - How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience

Don't Make Me Think - Geared towards web usability, but applicable to presentations as well

TED Talks - Watch a few of these videos online. These are some of the world's greatest presenters exhibiting their craft.

Angel Investors and Charging for the Pitch

Jason Calacanis is a very successful entrepreneur who is associated with some of the best known sites on the web. He is also an angel investor, and has recently taken other angel investors to task for charging startups to pitch their idea.

One of the first truisms anyone learns in the business world is that it takes money to make money. Even the best ideas need some seed capital to get off the ground. There are a number of ways to get this initial funding. You can exhaust your personal savings and go into debt. You can borrow from friends, family, banks, or anyone else that trusts you. Alternatively, you can seek out investors. One type of investor is the angel investor, someone who has independent wealth and is looking to invest it in startups. These investors typically provide the investment in return for a form of ownership in the business. In this way, if the startup is a success, the angel can reap some of the same rewards as the entrepreneur. In addition, if the angel invests wisely (or just gets lucky) the returns can be much greater than what other forms of investment might provide.

How does someone green to the startup business approach an angel investor? Networking, networking, networking is the best answer. Work your network of contacts until you can find someone who will put you in front of an investor who will listen to your idea. If all goes well, you get your funding and become a huge success. Are there any other ways? Many angel investors participate in workshops, conventions, and other events where many startups are able to pitch to a group of angels at one time. In some cases the angel investor(s) ask that a fee be paid. This fee could be anywhere from a few hundred dollars to possibly several thousand dollars as well as a ownership stake in the business. Is that an ethical practice? Jason Calacanis of Mahalo says no, and is calling out those angels who require entrepreneurs to pay to pitch their idea.

It is easy to side with Jason on this debate. From the entrepreneurs perspective, you have little money to start with, and a wealthy investor asking you to pay to present your idea seems like a kick in the teeth. Jason's position is taken from the basis that these wealthy investors can certainly afford the cost of a meeting room and a cup of coffee where the startup would struggle to provide those things. To an extent, I believe what Jason is saying is right. Angels that prey on the naiveté of new startups are as unsavory as those "modeling workshops" you may seen advertised throughout the year. On the other hand, I feel that there is a need to play the devil's advocate here.

One statement I take issue with is the supposition that an investor's time is both infinite and worthless. An investor's time is certainly not infinite. Investors are not stupid, and have typically attained their wealth by getting the most return on their time and effort. So is it so wrong for an investor to expect their time to be compensated for listening to a pitch? Jason even admits in his post that he is inundated with pitches, much like a lottery winner might have people come from every corner to ask for money. If I were in the investors shoes (and wouldn't that be great!) would I really be interested in opening the floodgates? Would it be worth my while to wade through thousands upon thousands of ideas to find the one I find interesting? Perhaps. On the other hand, I could assign some small fee to each pitch that says, "If you pay this fee, you go to the top of the stack and are guaranteed to get read." This could be taken a step farther, "If you pay for my time I commit to acting as a consultant for so many hours, advising you on your business and potentially making an investment." According to Mr. Calacanis, any form of payment for listening to a pitch is wrong. Not only is he calling out those that require payments, but he is seeking out those who might pitch to these investors and actively discouraging them from working with these folks. He is engaging in a tremendous smear campaign against anyone who charges startups to pitch their idea.

So is the Jason way the only way? Again, I have to say for the most part, I agree with him. The number of investors out there who ask a nominal fee and provide real value on that money are far outnumbered by those who are simply preying on the ignorance of others. Still, I do believe that there are those out there charging a small fee for their time who are legitimately providing value, so I can't agree 100%. I wish the Jason Nation the best of luck in exposing the most grievous offenders, and hopefully this leads to more great ideas getting the funding they deserve.

Have you ever paid to pitch? Did you get funded? If not, did you still feel as though your pitch money was well spent? Should those who charged and provided value be praised or vilified?

Proactive Budgeting with Double-Entry Bookkeeping

I am a nut about maintaining a budget in our house, and even more so now that we are planning to build a new home. I've used tools in the past, such as Microsoft Money, that allow me to tracker where the money went and to get an idea of what my regular expenses are. The problem I have with these tools is that they are reactive. They are only useful to me after I have spent my cash, not before. In my opinion, systems that give you a postmortem on your finances are not really useful. I want to feel the pain before I spend, not after. If I feel pain before, I have a chance to avoid spending at all, thus alleviating the pain of deviating from our budget (and potentially running into debt).

The system that I've come to use is decidedly low tech, but very effective. Using Google Docs I created a spreadsheet and added worksheets for all of our regular expenses, both monthly and annually. There are additional worksheets for our accounts: credit, checking, savings, loans, etc. Finally, there are worksheets for each of the things we would like to save for throughout the year. I use these worksheets to perform double-entry bookkeeping. Here is the full list of worksheets:

• Checking
• Savings
• Credit Card
• Television
• Internet
• Food & Gas
• Electricity
• Water
• Sewage
• Phones
• Trash
• Car Payment
• Mortgage Payment
• Life Insurance
• Car Insurance
• Plates and Tags
• Christmas Fund
• Birthday Fund
• Personal Allowances
• Slush Fund

Most of these accounts are self-explanatory, and the budget for each is fairly easy to gauge. We spend a set amount each month on television, internet, water, and sewage. Others are annual or semi-annual expense, such as insurance or plates and tags for our vehicles. The birthday and Christmas funds represent how much money we would like to spend for each of these events. Finally, the slush fund is just that, a pool of money for any unexpected, irregular, or one-time expenses.

So how does this double-entry bookkeeping work? I get paid twice a month, which means I get 24 paychecks in a year. Out of that paycheck I need to fund each of the accounts listed above such that, when the bill comes due, there is enough money in the account to pay the bill. Take the mortgage payment. Each time I receive a check, I initially enter the full amount in my checking account, but then I move those funds into the other worksheets to cover expenses. Let's say our mortgage payment is $800. That would mean that on each check I receive I need to 'transfer' $400 from the checking worksheet into the mortgage payment worksheet. On my second check of the month I transfer another $400 from checking to mortgage payment. Since it is the end of the month, my mortgage payment is due, so I transfer $800 from the mortgage payment worksheet back to the checking worksheet, and now I have enough money in checking to cover the check to my lender.

In doing this, I don't actually have a true account with a bank for each of these worksheets. In reality, all of the money from each of the worksheets just stays in checking. However, each time I am looking to spend money, I have to make a conscious decision to take money out of one fund in order to supply another. In this way, this budgeting system is proactive. If we want to go to a movie or I want to buy the latest gadget I have to take money out of a fund. If I want to buy a new gadget, but my personal allowance is depleted, I have to decide which other account I want to take money from to fund it. Do I spend less on food this month? Do I reduce the amount we'll be able to spend on birthday and Christmas gifts? It really forces me to consider how badly I need whatever it is I'm going to buy before going out and spending the money.

It would be very easy to ruin this system by simply putting everything on a credit card. A credit card is just another account, though. We treat spending on the credit card just like writing a check: we have to 'fund' the card prior to charging anything to it. If we go to the grocery store and spend $100 on groceries we transfer $100 from the food and gas budget to the credit card budget. This way, when the bill comes due at the end of the month for the credit card, we know that we can transfer the money from the credit card worksheet to the checking worksheet and have enough money to cover the bill.

I really like this system of budgeting. Knowing what budgets I'm taking from before I spend money is a huge advantage over trying to recover after the fact. There are some drawbacks. It is cumbersome to manage all of the worksheets. Money that sits in checking could be doing us a lot more good in a savings account earning at least a little interest. In my opinion, the benefits greatly outweigh the drawbacks. We no longer fear opening the credit card bill at the end of the month, or scramble to find money for birthday gifts. We know ahead of time that we will be able to cover our expenses, and can feel confident about affording a luxury expense when we decide we deserve one.

Selling Out

I like Extra Life Radio, and listen to it as often as I can. Occassionally something comes up in the discussion that gets me thinking, and this week's episode did just that. The host, Scott Johnson, mentioned that one of the things that really irritates him is when he hears folks use the saying "oh, they totally sold out". He mentioned this in response to criticism of the recent Mt. Dew ads featuring a World of Warcraft tie in.

That got me thinking about the phrase. Scott's beef was that it didn't make sense. After all, Blizzard (Activision) is in the gaming industry not to create some love-in for RPG fans, but to make money. If working with Mt. Dew leads to more money, then that's good business.

Is it really though? I do agree that this term "Selling out" gets thrown around rather flippantly, but sometimes, it is spot on. Branding is incredibly important to some companies. Great care must be taken not to dilute that brand or associate the brand with things that do not synergize with the brand. For instance, you probably won't ever see a Rolex tie-in with McDonald's. McDonald's is all about convenience and being inexpensive, while Rolex is about luxury and prestige. If such a combination were to occur, it could be accurately described as "selling out the brand".

I do agree with Scott Johnson that the pairing of WoW with Mt. Dew does not diminish either brand, and thus the "selling out" comment is not relevant. On the other hand, I do believe it is important to listen to your consumer base, and to be cautious about how, where, and when your brand image is used.