So your BFF work friend cc’d you on that super cool Groupon and you bought in with everyone else and then a little bit down the road, regret sits in. Maybe you remembered you hate fondue. Maybe the restaurant was closed for rats when you got there. Maybe you realized you would much rather have the money for your upcoming cross-country skeeball championship. Well, you’re stuck, right? Not so. Enter Lifesta, a clearinghouse site where you can buy and sell unused Groupons, coupons, discount packages, or vouchers.
To sell, you just set the price and Lifesta levies a $.99 fee plus 8% of the total. The site vets each transfer to make sure it’s for real and gives you money back within 60 days on any coupon that is fake or has already been used.
For sellers, it’s a way to offload coupons that they don’t want any more. For buyers, it’s a way to get an even better bargain off the daily deal and get in on deals that might have sold out before they got to them.
Lifesta [Official Site]
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I thought Lifesta was a typo at first. I was planning to be surprised. And then you ruined my grammar Nazi-ing fun by providing a useful topic. Curse you Ben!
I buy Groupons for places I want to go / services I want to use. I see this being useful only in the rarest of cases.
I suppose people exist who try to be frugal but don’t follow through, which would translate to people who lots of Groupons and then decide they don’t want them. Idiots.
Or if you aren’t dedicated to following groupon on a daily basis. Oh and livingsocial, oh and buywithme.com, oh and all the other sites that are going to pop up.
This is a system for scalping discount coupons. As such it will be useful if you miss an opportunity, can’t afford the offer at the time or discover a need after the offer but before expiration.
It does not operate to the benefit of the retailer though and they might just try to shut it down or the other sites might include terms that do the same.
Did we break Lifesta already? Won’t load for me.
Interesting…looking at the prices there, it looks like quite a few people are actually trying to capitalize on especially lucrative Groupon deals by selling their groupons at higher than face value. Sounds like a lucrative new career path.
Groupon to add “offer only valid for original purchaser” in 3…..2…..1…….
Groupon to offer their own exchange service in 3…2…1…
Fixed that for you.
A $50 Restaurant.com certificate for $35 is not a deal. They routinely sell these for much, much less.
Agreed, I really want to report that guy for fraud… lol.
How stupid. If you change your mind you call just call Groupon and they’ll either refund you or give you a credit.
All of the ones for my location are priced higher than the actual groupon – some by 2x
It seems like it selling it above the original deal price would be a way for the seller to recoup what Lifesta takes as a commission. Not so terrible of the seller to do (I do it on Amazon and eBay), but at least the site puts up the original Groupon link so you can see if you’re paying more than you would have if you had bought the deal when it was still available. The deals repeat so frequently sometimes that it may not be worth paying a 3rd party’s jacked-up fees.
This site seems too narrowly focuses but I can see the need for a similar site where you can also direct trade and buy/sell a wider range of deals like event tickets, store coupons, gift certficates, etc. I know there’s a ton of that going on through ebay and craigslist, but it’d cool to find a site that vets the deal in exchange for a percentage.
FAIL- Prices for coupons cost more than what they originally went for. Sorry but I will not pay face or more than original.
Outstanding. You may pay retail instead.
The original price is not relevant if the original offer is no longer available.
When I looked at my two home cities, Des Moines and Madison, both showed results for Vancouver. Perhaps an incentive to travel but not to purchase other people’s misbuys.
How do they deal with coupons that state that they are “not transferrable?”
I am wondering the same if anyone knows. I thought most of the groupons say that in the terms.
Okay – going to answer you and myself. I checked out the site and when I click through to Groupon, it doesn’t seem like anything being sold there has that limitation.