MoneySupermarket.com has joined the growing ranks of daily/local deal websites with the launch of MoneySupermarket Local Deals.
Once you’ve chosen which city you’re interested in receiving deals for, and registered your email address, you’ll receive a single email each Wednesday with the deals found. MoneySupermarket are suggesting that some discounts could be as high as 90%.
In some cases, there will be a countdown to the deal expiring. Once expired, you’ll receive the voucher in your inbox, which will detail the next steps.
Here’s a video promoting Local Deals:
It’s not surprising that MoneySupermarket would get into the local deals market, given the astronomical growth of similar sites recently. With a big brand behind it, they should see good take up from deal hunters, and lots of businesses wanting to push their wares.
But with all these types of site, a lot will depend on the types of deal that it can generate. And there are other concerns starting to appear in this young but fast-maturing market.
Relevance & variety
If you’ve experienced similar sites such as Groupon and KGB Deals, you’ll know that the relevance and variety of some of the deals on offer can be pretty poor – there’s only so many offers for laser eye surgery and waxings you can take before hitting the spam button. They are also often focused on the larger UK cities, with us small townies left out. MoneySupermarket Local Deals does cover a reasonable number of cities from launch, and we’d expect them to increase the number if the site proves to be popular in the original cities.
There’s also a growing concern about the business practices of some of these sites, and the effect they can have on the businesses they’re promoting.
The deals market in the US has grown even quicker than in the UK, with a recent report suggesting that a new daily deal site is appearing every single day. This article from SmartMoney.com suggests there are a number of things (ok, ten) that daily deal sites won’t tell you, which details the trials and tribulations of customers trying to get their deals fulfilled and businesses struggling under the demand created, amongst other complaints.
Facebook & Google
One final warning to MoneySupermarket is that its yet to be proven to be a sustainable model, and there’s some big competition out there. Facebook launched a daily deal site earlier in the year, but decided to shelve the idea a mere 4 months later. Google is currently testing its own deal site, Google Offers, in a limited number of US cities, but it remains to be seen whether it will take off.
Over to you. If you’ve tested out MoneySupermarket Local Deals, let us know your thoughts in the comments below.