
GroupMe: Split the Bill - googletron
http://blog.groupme.com/post/44796541529/groupme-4-1-just-in-time-for-our-third-straight
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mgkimsal
Maybe I'm just not as social as other people, but bill splitting and chipping
in has never been a problem for me. Ever. On a handful of occasions I've had
someone in a group I was in say they were strapped, and I've covered their
portion of something. Others have done the same for me. Someone buys lunch for
me if I have no cash, I get their lunch next week.

Buying a gift in an office for someone? Well, I've not worked in an office for
a while, but cash used to work well (and didn't leave a digital trail of who
you're giving money to).

Maybe there's some bigger play going on in this market, but it's always felt
to me like a solution looking for a problem.

EDIT - on the few occasions where I've 'split a bill' with someone out at a
bar/club/restaurant, I always feel I get stiffed, because I don't drink
alcohol - so getting a $100 bill split 5 ways... well... I just had a $3 pepsi
- why the hell do we "split" this equally?

~~~
Domenic_S
I feel that. We can be old geezers together. We've had a solution to this
"problem" for centuries: cash.

If your group is too lazy to ask the server to split the tab 4 ways, what in
the world makes you think they're all going to pull out their apps and pay
this way? Then there's inevitably someone who doesn't have a smartphone, or
doesn't have that app, or doesn't want to sign up for a new payment account,
or doesn't like using credit cards online, or whatever.

More than a couple times I've been sitting there with people trying to add up
their totals, some taking out cash, some taking out cards, arguing over who
pays what, and just paid the whole thing and asked them to buy me coffee or a
meal or whatever when they can.

~~~
dregitsky
With restaurant bills, things get rather complicated when everyone orders
different items, someone bought a Groupon, etc. Unless people are OK with
over/under paying, a bill splitting app can be pretty useful to figure out
what everyone actually owes.

Cash works well when everyone has it, but from what I've seen that doesn't
happen all that often. Also, you get a lot of restaurants that refuse to
itemize the bill (maybe their point of sale system doesn't support it), and
sometimes they'll only take 1 credit card. Integration with payment apps is
great for that. It goes beyond saving time...an app can help make sure people
pay up and the IOUs don't become permanent.

Disclosure: I recently released Grouptuity
(<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.grouptuity>), which tries
to solve these problems and integrates with Venmo.

~~~
mgkimsal
Usually, there's a minimum charge ('gratuity') for parties of 6 or 8 or more,
so they better damn well split the bills for us. I've had it be a problem
_twice_ in the past 6 years of dining out, and once was sort of my own doing
(we had a party of 24 on a Friday night - I just paid it as a single thing vs
having everyone split it up - it was an unusual event). The other time it
happened was a party of 5 and the server refused to split up the bill. We all
chipped in something, but I don't go back there anymore.

Maybe it's a bigger problem in some areas of the world, but not mine.

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albiabia
This seems unreasonably expensive. Each contributor gets charged 4% plus
$0.99. This makes it very expensive to split a restaurant lunch bill.

8 people chipping in on a $100 check: Even split would be $12.50 per person.
With this service it would be $14.00 per person. That's a 12% tax on lunch for
everyone but the initiator.

This might be useful for bigger purchases, but even then, charging 4% to give
money to my friend seems a little ridiculous.

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bigdubs
I love that they're trying this, and it seems to be executed well.

My friends and I already use Venmo for bill splitting though, and it works
pretty well.

Generally I subscribe to the school of thought that each app should do one
thing and do it well, and this is sort of unfortunately getting away from
that.

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nayefc
This will never work with a 4% fee. Never.

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anthonycerra
Just a data point from one person's experiences:

I feel like check splitting is always a bigger problem for the
restaurant/server than it is for the people paying. All the customers need to
do is pull out a credit card. It's the server that actually has to split the
bill and you can always see the discomfort on his/her face when you ask them
to split it AFTER they give you the check. Just let them know before ordering
that you'll be needing separate checks.

The example on the site seems like a better use case, but the marketing copy
"split the bill" immediately makes me think of a restaurant or bar tab which I
don't regard as a problem.

~~~
LargeWu
If it's really a persistent problem for servers, maybe they should think about
asking themselves in advance of taking the order.

~~~
OGinparadise
Doesn't work that way, the default method--by far--is one check. So they'd
annoy and possibly offend, say, 98 people out of 100 when the 2 or so that are
splitting the check can say so before ordering.

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timjahn
One of the biggest lessons I've learned building matchist so far
(<http://matchist.com/talent>) is that there is a delicate balance between
when my opinion is king and when data is king.

In my opinion, GroupMe isn't solving a problem with this feature (for many of
the reasons others have commented on here). But I'm assuming GroupMe has a
good amount of data proving that this problem exists. I sure hope they do,
because in this case, data should absolutely trump their opinion of whether or
not this is a problem to be solved.

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secabeen
The fee is the killer, especially when you're in competition with PayPal's
ability to pay friends for no fee when funded through a bank account.

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davecyen
"How much does it cost? Per transaction, contributors will be charged 3.5% on
whatever they chip in for a Credit Card Processing Fee. GroupMe charges a .99
convenience fee."

They also state that they are using Balanced Payments to process the payments,
which charges 2.9% + 30c per payout (and additional 25c per deposit). I'm
skeptical that users would even be willing to pay this rate...

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kin
I eat in large groups often and we only split evenly on occasion. It almost
always never happens. To charge per transaction makes this even less useful
(to me in particular). I personally find something like Venmo much more
practical where one person fronts the bill (and gets rewards/points) while the
rest Venmo what they owe on the spot. It's never a fair even split.

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jmtame
Bill sharing has been a hassle for me since I have two roommates, but I've
been using Splitwise without any complaints. From the looks of it, this is
taking the group SMS approach, which I would find overwhelming. I get e-mails
whenever bills are added and that's good enough for me. Nice work on the UI,
that was the first thing I noticed.

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tiziano88
Great functionality, but the 4% fee is way too high, considering we are
talking about giving money to a friend.

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lcusack
I think this functionality (mobile first, crowd funding / group payments)
could quickly become a more important feature than the group texting.

Great work.

~~~
xradionut
Really?

Is it too hard to ask for separate checks or figure out Basic Dining 101? Call
me an old fart, but when I read about apps like this I want to do my Samuel L.
Jackson imitation and say; "Arithmetic, m-----f-----, can you figure it?"

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OGinparadise
What's the problem that this is solving? Paying friends with credit cards
isn't the way to go. Cash, if you don't have this week (it happens) I'll
/you'll wait for a week or x weeks.

People hang with people with similar values so it's extremely rare for friends
to screw friends and when that happens, it happens once.

