From time to time, you may require fulfillment-related exceptions when you are unable to monitor your account for a number of days due to holidays, personal leave, etc.
During a calendar year, the merchant is allowed ten (10) exception days excluding weather-related closures and the Groupon holidays listed in our 3P Warehouse/Holiday Closures Best Practices.
Exception requests must be submitted to this form and merchants will be notified via email whether their request has been rejected or approved.
Requests must be submitted at least five (5) business days before the impacted date(s).
Please note that exceptions cannot be provided for CS-related NCCRs.
What will I receive an exception for?
If approved, you will receive an exception for fulfillment-related non-compliance chargeback recoveries (On-Time Tracking Upload, Movement, and/or Delivery) for the requested date(s). Please note that exceptions cannot be provided for CS-related NCCRs.
Types of exceptions allowed
Weather-related:
Advance notice is not required but form submission is. Please submit your request here and write a brief explanation of the weather-related issues you are experiencing.
If insufficient information is provided in the form and we cannot confirm that there are major weather-related issues in your area (based on the business and fulfillment addresses in Gateway), your request may be rejected.
For all other reasons, you have ten (10) days per calendar year that you can use to submit an exception, for whatever reason, here.
Requests must be submitted to the above form. Please submit requests individually. Please do not request exceptions via ticket or email as they will not be accepted or approved.
Exceptions need to be submitted at least five (5) business days before the impacted date(s).
If you will not be able to monitor your account for one (1) to two (2) business days, you can choose to keep your deals live or zero out inventory.
If you will not be able to monitor your account for three (3) or more consecutive business days, you should follow our 3P Warehouse/Holiday Closures Best Practices. To protect the customer experience, we cannot approve exceptions for three (3) or more consecutive business days. If these best practices are not followed, any issues/delays in fulfillment or customer service will be reflected in your Merchant Performance Scorecard and can result in Non-compliance fees.
How do I know if my request has been approved or rejected?
You will receive an email if your request is approved or rejected.
If you have submitted more exceptions than are allowed in a calendar year, you will be notified that your request has been rejected.
If exceptions are submitted without advance notice, you will be notified that your request has been rejected.
If you have submitted three (3) or more consecutive days in a row, you will be notified that your request(s) have been rejected.
Customer Service Handling
For closures of any amount of time, customer service tickets are expected to be monitored and responded to within SLA. Some of our merchants have hired temporary staff to take care of their customer service responsibilities during closures. If customer service tickets cannot be handled during closure of any amount of time, you will risk the following:
Customer service tickets will be escalated to Groupon’s CS team after not receiving a response within our one (1) business day SLA. Once the ticket is escalated, it is at the Groupon CS team’s discretion if a refund is warranted.
Chargebacks may be assessed.
Scorecard will be negatively affected.
Because there is a Groupon cost associated with customer service ticket escalations, chargebacks will be assessed and we cannot offer exceptions. Scorecard cannot be adjusted following any closures as it reflects the customer experience in addition to merchant performance.
