The missus and I went on a cheapo China tour (to Beijing) in the early aughts when I was on assignment in Hong Kong at the time and she came to visit me.
She recently went on another similar cheapo China tour (various places) a few years back, with her parents and she said it was essentially a similar experience to ours.
If the Groupon deal is similar to our trips, it's what many people have posted above.
The tour is basically subsidized by businesses in China. In return, the tour operator takes you to these businesses (jade and jewelry shops, tea shops, herbal medicine shops, china and vase factory, etc). Some of these shops are in the middle of nowhere on the way to an attraction so you are pretty much held hostage there until some sales quota is met. If you're lucky, there'll be some big spenders in your group to satisfy the quota quickly. Otherwise, it can drag on until someone buys maybe a bunch of water, snacks, whatever, to get things moving.
The hotels they put you up in are pretty nice but are located in the outskirts of the city so you can't easily ditch and go exploring yourself.
Transportation was in a coach bus and it was in good condition. Our tour wasn't packed so there was extra space. We flew from Hong Kong to Beijing on a Chinese carrier. I suspect flights from LA would be a Chinese carrier (China Eastern, China Southern, etc) too. They seem to regularly have cheap fares to Asian destinations with a connection (sometimes very long) somewhere in China of course. While the Chinese carriers generally have a modern fleet, their seat pitch is typically small, meals are subpar, etc.
Most meals are basic and served to the group "family style". We did do a Peking Duck meal though.
You don't get a lot of time at the attractions. We tried to maximize our time by ditching the guide/group, going off on our own, and then rendezvous'ing later. We did have some free time in some street market locations where everyone wandered off on their own.
Yes, you are expected to tip the tour guides at the end and they're not shy about hinting for it.
Would I go on another of these cheap tours? Unlikely. I'm now willing and able to pay more to have a more "focused" tour. Would I recommend going on one of these tours? Only if you are ok sacrificing time/scope during your trip to save on costs and can mentally handle being stuck at some locations.
Mainland China's off our list anyways until the Canada/China diplomatic dispute is resolved.
