Online group buying, where people are able to buy vouchers for deals on products and services, is rapidly gaining in popularity but there are some things to keep in mind.

How it works is companies approach sellers about a campaign where the merchant would offer a deal for a certain product at a drastic discount.

The company then markets the deal as a limited time offer available online to whoever subscribes to the service and consumer would then buy into the deal, receiving a voucher for the service.

Lesley Turner subscribes to one of the sites which then emails her daily about the deal available that day.

She says she's been pretty satisfied with what she's bought so far. "I've purchased some for landscaping, I've purchased one for a cleaning service."

But that wasn't the case when she bought a $29 voucher for an auto detailing job she had bought from Dealfind.com.

She says the worker refused to do the job. "He took one look inside my van and said, ‘No, it's too dirty. We're not gonna do that for $29'."

Lesley said she tried to meet him halfway with the coupon, but they refused and quoted her $300 for the job.

The coupon did seem like a good deal at the time, but what Lesley didn't check was the fine print.

The ad posted on Dealfind.com does state that ‘heavily soiled vehicles' would incur an extra charge.

Lucky for Lesley, though, is that Dealfind has a very liberal refund policy.

President of Dealfind.com, Gary Lipovetsky, says they have a 30 day refund policy, no questions asked.

Beyond that, they will still do refunds depending on the circumstances.

The Better Business Bureau says that they've had a recent spike in complaints about online group buying companies.

They say that's probably because there are more companies out there selling and there are more customers buying in.

Kara Hendriksen, with the Better Business Bureau says there is room for miscommunication. "You're dealing with two different companies; the coupon website and the company offering the coupon, so there's definitely more complaints coming in because of that."

It's not only the buyers complaining either.

Merchants are saying they didn't realize what they were getting into when they agreed to participate in one of the online campaigns.

Peter Philemona of Philemona Landscaping says it's hard to keep up. "1,600 vouchers is quite a bit for a small landscaping company. Yep, keeping up with those vouchers has been a difficult task."

But there are many things you can do to protect yourself and ensure you're getting the best bang for your online buck.

Don't let the clock stop you from checking out the company first before buying in.

Check out the BBB website and call the company to ask about things like refund policies.

Read the fine print and any exceptions with the deal.

If you are looking to buy a coupon for a service you need right away, know that that might not happen.

Merchants often get more customers than they can handle during one of these campaigns, so you may be left waiting until they can deal with the backlog.