[browser411]

We've surveyed over 1600 Groupon merchants, and 75% say they would like to use Groupon again. In general, it seems they are pretty satisfied.

We did a text analysis of over 150,000 words of open-ended responses:

* Fewer than 2% of all these merchants even mentioned "cash upfront" as a benefit of running a deal. Not a single one mentioned it as a primary benefit/drawback.

* A few merchants did in fact complain that Groupon sometimes held on to the cash a little TOO long before funding their accounts

* FYI, the top stated benefits were "New Customers" and "Advertising Effect".

Groupon is in no way perfect, but its characterization as a check casher is pretty silly. I'm sure if you hunt hard enough, you can find an unhappy Groupon merchant and put words in their mouth.