Bownty.com: new way to track deals from top voucher and groupbuying sites

Bownty.com promises to track deals on the top voucher websites to help make sure you never miss a great bargain. But does it work?

I'm going to say it straight out: I'm not the biggest fan of voucher and groupbuying websites. But I'm hopeful that Bownty will help those of you who are looking to find gold dust among the dirt.

Bownty.com is a new website and app that pulls together the best of over 2,500 deals from more than 100 websites (including Groupon, Living Social, KGB Deals and Wowcher), and helps you keep track of them so you can use them before they expire. It earns commission from each of the deal websites every time a shopper buys something through it.

I'll be checking out the website version for this article, but it also offers an app.

My issue with daily-deal websites

Firstly, though, here are my thoughts on discount-and-deals websites in general.

These websites can quite easily save you money when you're doing a search for a specific item while comparing prices elsewhere. Taking an easy example, the Grand Designs Live exhibition in London will cost at least £24 for two people when buying direct, but Groupon currently gets you two tickets for a total of £16.

Despite this, these websites typically come with far too many psychological tricks, as well as a confusion of offers for those who wander into their labyrinths.

Bownty chief executive Steffen Frølund optimistically reassures me that: “All deal sites adhere to the general marketing laws of any given market.”

Be that as it may (and reports from the Office of Fair Trading suggests that it might not be) my research shows that typical deal websites, or the businesses supplying the deals, use an awful lot of marketing tricks that could encourage you to spend more money, and more quickly than you would have done had you never visited them.

In my opinion, there are too many ways that vendors can offer “deals” that are nothing of the sort.

In addition, I believe these websites or their vendors use a good number of tricks to get you to buy products at prices that are not actually cheap, but which still manage to leave you happy, thinking you've got a great deal, so that you come back and do it again.

Visiting the Bownty website

Hopeful that Bownty would cut through the confusion, I was disappointed to see a bewildering list of deals on entering its website. At first glance, it looks just like any other voucher website.

The deals are listed by popularity by default. Pretending my home city is London, I see that the most popular deal in my area is a spa visit through daily-deal website Living Social.

Does that realistically sound like it could be the most popular deal? The Grand Designs deal I mentioned has been bought by nearly 1,100 people, for example. Perhaps Bownty just doesn't have enough users yet, which could skew the results. Or maybe its users need to relax a bit more.

Looking at the spa deal it looks to me like one of the typical cheap adverts disguised as deals that overrun deal-of-the-day websites. Yes, for £9 you get entry for two people to a day spa in one of 18 around the country, and a free coffee and pastry, but you have to pay for all of the treatments, e.g. massages, separately.

The old wheelers and dealers at the hotel chain in question throw in a typical hook for shoppers: 20% off all treatments. But 20% off how much? And how does that final price compare to similar spas? It doesn't say, and nor does Bownty.

I'm going to need more convincing before I go for a facial.

First impressions

So far, then, Bownty has failed to save me time on researching comparative spa prices.

Frølund told me that it doesn't vet the deals in any way. Indeed, although it said in its press release that it pulls together “the best of over 2,500 deals”, it actually indiscriminately gathers all of the deals in a given city from each of the websites.

This means, for example, it doesn't remove deals from those sneaky vendors who sell exclusively or almost exclusively through discount websites – which by definition means the “discounted” price is really the full price with “50% off” written next to it. Vendors who do this are basically getting some cheap advertising to take advantage of the warm buzz that deal websites give shop-happy customers.

Bownty doesn't check that the deal is really good value (which would be difficult, admittedly), meaning verifying that the item is not just a “bargain” because the vendor says so. Nor does it check that the deals are cheaper than they would be if you shopped around for similar items elsewhere – now we're all waiting for a service that can do that!

Never forget a deal

It was an unthrilling first look, but digging a little deeper I find the Deal Wallet function, which lets you save deals you like in one place.

This promises to make it easier to keep track of deals, and sends you a reminder before they expire. A useful feature for bargain hunters.

If you don't think you can use the deal before it expires, you can invite friends and family to do so.

Personalisation

Bownty also offers personalised information. You can mark your deal preferences in your account and it will notify you of precisely your favourite deals, and favourite types of deals. We could block out spa deals, then, and many more irrelevant adverts that assault our senses and confuse us.

You'll receive a daily email of personalised deals, which you might consider a good or bad thing, depending on how full your inbox is.

Independence hasn't led to progress

I had hoped that Bownty would offer an intelligent system for narrowing deals down to genuine, quality bargains, but it does no analysis of the deals whatsoever.

It doesn't score any points in my book with statements like this either:

“Bownty aggregates daily deals onto one website and sends it out in a single daily e-mail. This makes it much easier for you to find the best deals on cool things to do in your city - often at half price or less.” (My emphasis)

In my opinion, a website that tells you you're paying “half price or less” without verifying whether you really are paying half of a fair reflection of the item's value (as opposed to half the value the vendor says it's worth, which could be anything), is not being the useful, independent aid to shoppers that it could be.

It does nothing to get rid of adverts in disguise, or clever and extremely effective marketing ploys.

Oh, and it turns out on closer questioning and inspection that the 2,500 daily deals Bownty boasts about are spread across four continents and that only around 25 of the 100 deal sites it connects to are for the UK. I'm sure that's plenty, but they could be more up front about it.

Get what you can out of it

Bownty isn't going to bring much-needed rationality to shoppers or make it easier to analyse whether a deal really is a deal.

However, I'm sure Bownty will make it easier to look through and shortlist deals (and adverts) from different daily-deal sites. In that broad sense, it does what it says on the tin.

More on bargains and discounts:

Frugal Friday

Frugal Food

Midweek Moneysavers

Where to find voucher codes

How to cut the cost of your cinema tickets

How laser eye surgery can save you money

How much money will I save by quitting smoking?

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