photo by: Screenshot Groupon

A Groupon listing for Lawrence's Burgers by Biggs is shown on Oct. 26, 2021. The owner of Burgers by Biggs said he never authorized the deal, and now is facing blowback from customers who are seeking to redeem it.

Updated 3:40 p.m.

Sometimes a deal that is too good to be true is easy to spot, and Doug Holiday spotted this one fairly quickly. A customer was expecting to get $70 worth of food and drinks at Lawrence’s Burgers by Biggs for $39 because she had purchased a Groupon deal.

What was the key to spotting this too-good-to-be-true deal? That’s easy. Holiday is the owner of Burgers by Biggs, and he had never heard of it.

Holiday doesn’t do business with Groupon.

“It looks legit, but it is not legit,” Holiday warned consumers of the Groupon offer. “They aren’t giving us any money.”

As a result, customers who buy the package aren’t getting any food either, which bothers Holiday.

“I know they probably have anguish toward my business, and in this day and age you can’t afford that,” Holiday said.

But the alternative also isn’t very affordable, he said.

“Basically, I would be giving you $70 worth of food for nothing, and there is the rub,” he said.

It is not the only rub, though. Holiday started contacting Groupon last week about the false offer. He showed the Journal-World emails dating back to Thursday when he started reaching out to a Groupon customer service representative about the deal. The customer service representative told Holiday that the service line actually was only for customers who had purchased a Groupon voucher, not merchants who were clients of Groupon. She directed Holiday to another Groupon contact where he could check his merchant account.

Of course, that is part of the problem, since Burgers by Biggs didn’t actually buy anything from Groupon.

By Sunday, Holiday had gotten in touch with a member of Groupon’s “merchants operations” team. The representative said she had “reached out to the owner of the account about this issue,” according to an email that Holiday shared with the Journal-World. It is unclear what was meant by the “owner of the account.”

What was clear is that the false offer — which also included options to upgrade to $100 worth of food for $55 or $130 for $81 — remained on Groupon’s website and was being featured in numerous digital advertisements.

Holiday was told Groupon’s legal team would “get in touch as soon as possible to clarify everything.” The customer service representative also made another offer. “If you need anything else in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

You mean, like, maybe asking to take down the ad? As of Tuesday afternoon, Holiday hadn’t heard from the legal team, and the ad was still on the Groupon page and showing up in digital advertisements.

“It is really frustrating,” Holiday said. “Now I have people calling me about it all the time.”

Most of Holiday’s frustration is reserved for Groupon, but not all of it. He said he also was disappointed in the response from the Kansas attorney general’s office. The attorney general operates a consumer protection division, and he alerted the AG’s office to the Groupon problem through the AG’s “contact us” function on its website.

The office replied on Monday that it couldn’t address the Groupon issue, even though it may be impacting Kansas consumers. The reason: Holiday isn’t a consumer, in this case.

“Although the Consumer Protection Division is responsible for enforcing the Kansas Consumer Protection Act, corporate entities (e.g., Limited Liability Companies, Professional Associations, and Incorporated businesses, etc.) do not fall under the definition of ‘consumer’ pursuant to the Kansas Consumer Protection Act,” a representative of Attorney General Derek Schmidt wrote to Holiday. “You will want to consult with your business’ counsel on how to proceed, or seek assistance from a private attorney.”

Holiday said this seems like a flaw in the protection of consumers.

“I know I’m not a consumer, but I’m letting you know that Kansans are getting ripped off,” Holiday said.

I’ve reached out to the attorney general’s office to try to get a better explanation about how the Consumer Protection Act does work in a case like this. Spokesman John Milburn said it is accurate that only someone involved in a transaction can make a consumer protection complaint. However, he said Tuesday that the attorney general’s office was reaching back out to Holiday to see if it could gather more information on the situation.

Milburn also said anyone who purchased a Groupon that they think can’t be redeemed can contact the attorney general’s office to file a consumer protection complaint. People can file a complaint at ag.ks.gov/complaint-center. People also can call 800-432-2310.

I’ve also got a message into Groupon’s press office asking about how the false offer made it onto Groupon’s website, what its process is for taking down such offers and whether customers who bought the offer will receive refunds.

If you search for information online about false Groupon offers, you’ll find a few news articles, but not a ton. One of the more recent ones — a January article from the website Eater San Francisco — indicates there is a good chance people who bought the Groupon offer will get a refund. That article, which was about Groupon running an eight-year-old coupon for a pizza restaurant, included comment from a Groupon representative stating that everyone who had purchased the deal received a refund.

The representative in that case said Groupon also had reached out to the pizza restaurant to apologize. As for how the deal ended up online to begin with, the Groupon representative responded that the offer was made “inadvertently,” according to the article.

Holiday said he had heard from one customer who had purchased a Groupon for a couple of Kansas City-area restaurants and experienced similar problems, but he wasn’t aware of any other Lawrence restaurants that currently were experiencing the issue of false deals.

Editor’s Note: The Groupon deal for Burgers by Biggs has shown up in several digital advertisements, including one that has appeared on LJWorld.com. That ad was placed automatically — or programmatically as it is known in the advertising industry — by a third party. The Journal-World’s IT team is now working to block that ad from showing up on LJWorld.com.