Tuanbao, the group buy clone that snagged the Groupon.cn domain before Groupon could, is in trouble. That much has been clear for a while. But, like many group buy sites looking to change things up as it became clear succeeding with the group buy model wasn't as easy as originally thought, Tuanbao said it planned to offer new services. In fact, it even plastered a big red banner across the top of its website announcing the new service would be arriving on February 20th. That was yesterday. The new service? Nowhere to be found.
As of right now, Tuanbao's site still offers only group buying deals. Clicking on the red banner just reloads the homepage. So not only is there no new service in sight, but Tuanbao is essentially running a big red ad announcing they failed to meet their own deadline. That is...odd.
The Beijing Business Times is reporting that in an interview yesterday Tuanbao general supervisor Li Wei declined to comment on the situation, and calls to Tuanbao's customer service number went unanswered. Penn Olson's calls to Tuanbao repeatedly resulted in a busy signal. The on-site banner is not the only place Tuanbao has made promises of a new service. Last week, Tuanbao CEO Ren Chunlei posted to his microblog account that the company would be entering a new business. But what this new service will look like -- if it's even real -- has yet to be seen, and given that Tuanbao's self-imposed deadline has already passed, it's beginning to look like perhaps it never will be.
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