The Coromandel Shelly Beach Top 10 Holiday Park says it will honour the GrabOne deals, despite the collapse of the e-commerce website. Photo: Google Maps
The collapse of GrabOne has left many businesses struggling to cover the cost of vouchers that the site sold, but has not paid the retailers for.
Some of the businesses say they simply can not afford to honour the deals, worth thousands of dollars.
For one Coromandel holiday park, it was the third liquidation to affect the business in a year, pushing the total owed to them up to nearly $60,000.
Coromandel Shelly Beach Top 10 Holiday Park owner Aaron McFarlane has deals with GrabOne and told Checkpoint the liquidation had left them with empty pockets.
The e-commerce website offered cut price deals - customers bought vouchers directly from the site and it paid business their share, keeping a commission fee.
It was placed into liquidation last week.
The liquidators have said retailers are unlikely to be reimbursed for the vouchers, and consumers should contact individual merchants or register their claims with the liquidator.
It has created a dilemma for businesses wanting to protect their reputation and their bottom line.
McFarlane said while they had been paid out 90 percent of what they were owed by GrabOne, they were still waiting on close to $1000.
"This is the third liquidation that I've had in the last 12 months - that's cost the business quite a lot of money. So that's scary."
On top of the money he is owed by GrabOne, McFarlane had already lost close to $59,000 to two other businesses over the past 12 months.
"We lost about $9000 to a building contractor staying in the area and then lost about $49,000 to a tiny home builder that was building a cabin for me.
"It is very tough, it just makes business harder and harder and we'll make cuts in different bits."
McFarlane said GrabOne had been two months behind in their payments to his business, before they received the liquidation email last week.
He said GrabOne was selling deals right up to the liquidation, and since it was announced his business has been left in the dark.
"Well, we've been locked out. We can't see any vouchers or anything like that purchased after the date, so that's the hard bit. We don't know what they've sold after the liquidators got in there."
While it was the latest of blows for the holiday park, McFarlane remained positive.
"[It's a] bit gutting for everyone. But yeah, we're probably a little bit better than most people, we have been paid some money from GrabOne."
Despite the loss, the holiday park would be honouring every voucher to 100 percent value.
"[We want to] stick to our part of the deal with the guest and get them so they can sort of experience the Coromandel."
The deal the business had been offering through GrabOne was already at a discounted rate.
"We had a two-night Coromandel glamping escape on the beachfront that was dropped down to $205 for the two nights."
McFarlane said they had received encouraging feedback about their decision to honour the vouchers.
"We've put a post up on Facebook last week and 73,000 people have reacted to that in a in a positive manner."
"This is what we can do in the situation is being positive about it and looking after the people that have been hurt the most."
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