Launched in November 2008, Groupon features a daily deal on the “best stuff to do, see, eat and buy” in a variety of cities across the U.S., including the Washington D.C. area.

By promising their business partners a minimum number of customers, Groupon is able to offer unrivaled discounts.

So, how do you get a deal you want? Click “BUY” on an offer at Groupon.com before the deal ends at midnight. If the minimum number of people sign up, you’ll get a printable coupon in your e-mail inbox the next morning. If not enough people join, no one gets the deal and no one will be charged for it.

“It makes sense on a business level. If businesses can actually guarantee they will have a large amount of customers, then they are able to lower prices without hurting their profitability. Everyone wins,” said junior physiology and neurobiology major Nigel Hou.

Unlike annoying pyramid schemes, you don’t have to persuade a group of people you know to sign up. The Groupon network already includes hundreds of thousands of members that count toward the deals they buy.

“At first, I thought I had to round up 50 or so people myself in order to get the day’s deal. But when I found out that everyone across D.C. who hears about it or subscribes to the e-mails counts toward the same goal for each other, I thought it was really cool,” said senior criminology major Kirk Waldrop.

“We want each Groupon purchase to feel too good to be true, from the moment you buy to the day you use it. If there's anything unusual about a deal (e.g. an inconvenient location), we go out of our way to point it out,” touts the company’s Web site.

About 95 percent of the surveyed businesses that decided to offer deals on Groupon want to be featured on Groupon again.

Kelly Messer, of Groupon’s customer service department, said that although the site doesn’t offer Groupons specifically targeting college students, anything with “extremely deep discounts” should be a positive thing for college students on a budget.

Messer’s favorite deal was “the skydiving offer we had for half-off. It was an awesome experience - something I have always wanted to do, but never had a good time or reason to do it. It was incredible and I would recommend it to anyone!”

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