19th
Major Laser Fail
I joined Groupon a few months ago and have gotten a few good coupons off of it—a mani-pedi, a facial, a coupon to Caselulla that I haven’t used yet. And I know a couple people who have had their businesses featured on there. I’m assuming it’s basically an advertising deal, but I don’t know for sure.
Anyway. Every day they do a short writeup of the company or service they’re featuring, and they always link to any Yelp or Citysearch reviews. Today’s New York Groupon is for laser hair removal at a spa called Assara Laser Hair Removal, in Midtown. The deal seemed almost too good—three laser hair removal sessions for $199 (and they were saying that this was a nearly $1000 value). But I almost considered it, because I would totally get my underarm hair lasered off! I don’t want lasers going anywhere near my ladyparts, though. No thanks.
And according to Groupon, Assara has over 300 five-star Citysearch reviews. That was my second red flag—300 five-star reviews, on Citysearch no less, for some random laser hair removal place? Seemed odd. So I checked out the Citysearch reviews. They actually have 359 five-star reviews, five four-star reviews, zero three-star reviews, two two-star reviews, and fourteen one-star reviews. They got four five-star reviews on October 7 alone! And on September 10, they got a whopping SEVEN five-star reviews!
But if you look at their one-star reviews, you start to get the feeling that they should be spending more time on lasering than on writing laughably similar Citysearch reviews. Like this one:
Liz BURNED ME
by Kellyburning
My name is K>B. and I am suing assara right now because
they burned my abdomen. Liz is the worse technician, they never gave me cream or anything. Read about it on the internet, they are liars.
- Pros: NONE
- Cons: ALL OF THEM
So Citysearch needs to edit out their shills (though to be fair, it looks like they’ve also been shilling on NYMag’s site). But also, Groupon! Not cool. You’re really going to tell me with a straight face that a company that is going to be putting a LASER NEAR SOMEONE’S COOCH has over 300 five-star reviews without ANY alarm bells going off?
