Do Irish Businesses really Understand the Uses of City Deals?

Since the launch of Groupon (citydeals) onto the Irish market, an explosion of copy cats have followed suit. These include Livingsocial, dealrush and boardsdeals to name but a few, with Google soon expected to follow suit. I have been taking advantage of these to explore new places to eat out in and try new beauty treatments.  But the levels of service and value for money I have received from has been not been consistent to say the least.  


Out of the two restaurants I have gone to, both offered terrible customer service. One also offered us the smallest table in the empty restaurant  and the other placed more menu restrictions on our coupon offering when we arrived without prior noticed. So I certainly did not go and review my experiences with my friends and family positively, nor did I fell like I got great value for money while being treated as a "voucher holder". I understand that there is not a lot of money to be made by businesses using these "deal" sites, but are they not using them as good opportunities to get new customers?  

On the other hand, I also bought a voucher for a course of new expensive beauty treatments and the customer service, value and results from the treatments I received were excellent throughout. I sang my praises high from the hill tops; but when my peers said they would wait for a similar deal to appear and where not fussed about going back to the same beauty clinic, this begs the question, for exclusive businesses are these "deal" sites the places to reach your target market?

Instead of jumping on the bandwagon businesses must individually evaluate their business offering, not only looking  at their ability to maintain customer service but also if these are the areas to reach their potentially reoccurring customers.