Beware - Living Social

joeconway

About six months ago my wife bought one of LivingSocial's deals for a break in a hotel. when she contacted the hotel they had such a large response to the offer that they were unable to take a booking within the time period for the deal. After three unsuccessful attempts to make a booking she contacted LivingSocial to obtain a refund.
Initially she was told that it was company policy not to issue refunds and that we nneded to take it up with the hotel. This was unsuccessful and she went back to LivingSocial. She has been passed back and forth between call centres in the UK and the US to no avail.
She is still pursuing it, but my guess at this stage is that they will continue to stonewall until we just give up.

Esoteric_

Firstly, don't let them fob you off to the hotel. Your contract is with Living Social, as they sold you your deal. The hotel have nothing to do with it and there's not much the hotel can do except extend the date anyway.

Send a letter (registered) to Living Social, stating that your contract is with them as they are the people you purchased the deal from. As the hotel is no longer accepting bookings in the specified time period on the voucher, you are not receiving what was advertised and what you paid for, and as a result, you would like a refund.

Gamesnash.ie: Pat

LyndaMcL wrote: »

Firstly, don't let them fob you off to the hotel. Your contract is with Living Social, as they sold you your deal. The hotel have nothing to do with it and there's not much the hotel can do except extend the date anyway.

Send a letter (registered) to Living Social, stating that your contract is with them as they are the people you purchased the deal from. As the hotel is no longer accepting bookings in the specified time period on the voucher, you are not receiving what was advertised and what you paid for, and as a result, you would like a refund.

For what it's worth one of the terms you agree to before purchasing is that you are making the purchase and forming a contract with the seller / deal provider in this case the hotel. Living Social position themselves as a payment processor / marketing service for the hotel and the OP's funds would have been paid to the hotel (less commission) at the close of the deal. I know this as we ran a deal with them recently and this was they way all contracts and terms were worded.

dudara

In fairness to Living Social, I've received refunds from them without much bother in past. I contacted them via their Twitter account LivingSocialUK

Melendez

This post has been deleted.

fl4pj4ck

I recently contacted Groupon with similar case. Took me 3 emails, 3 weeks in total. In the last email I threatened them with chargeback. After this, they told me they could offer me company credit towards next purchase. I rang the bank again and ask for the chargeback, the money was in my account the next day.
Don't submit to their intimidation, it's your money and it's them who ou have contract with.

Pacing Mule

It's not them you have the contract with.

This is one of the terms ....

7. Merchant Responsibility

To be clear, LivingSocial markets the Deals and acts an as agent in selling the Vouchers on behalf of the Merchants. But the Merchant is the issuer of the Voucher. As issuer of the Voucher, the Merchant shall be fully responsible for any and all injuries, illnesses, damages, claims, liabilities and costs suffered by or in respect of a customer, caused in whole or in part by the Merchant or its products and services, as well as for any unclaimed property liability arising from unredeemed or partially redeemed Vouchers.

fl4pj4ck

they can write whatever they want, but the contract is with whom got your money. you pay the agent, you complaint to the agent. exactly the same way you'd complain about a trip to Teneriffe - not to the hotel, not to the airlines, but to the agent you bought the trip from

thesandeman

Em fl4pj4ck, you may need to reread and edit one of the words in the second last sentence of your post before last :-o

fl4pj4ck

thesandeman wrote: »

Em fl4pj4ck, you may need to reread and edit one of the words in the second last sentence of your post before last :-o

thesandeman

Hint: Account is spelled 'Account' not ... ;-)

fl4pj4ck

c'mon it's only a single letter
fixed that for you

newport2

Similar experience to the OP here with Living Social

Bought voucher. The company the voucher was for is not answering or returning calls. Started contacting Living Social a month ago. All emails ignored, not answering their customer service line, contacted via twitter and told customer service were dealing with it. Initiating chargeback now.

Have unsubscribed and will not deal again. :mad:

Gamesnash.ie: Pat

Gamesnash.ie: Pat wrote: »

For what it's worth one of the terms you agree to before purchasing is that you are making the purchase and forming a contract with the seller / deal provider in this case the hotel. Living Social position themselves as a payment processor / marketing service for the hotel and the OP's funds would have been paid to the hotel (less commission) at the close of the deal. I know this as we ran a deal with them recently and this was they way all contracts and terms were worded.

i understood these places made their money by keeping payments from any unused vouchers
thats why hotels etc wont take booking after expiry as they wont get paid...

Gamesnash.ie: Pat

bluewolf wrote: »

i understood these places made their money by keeping payments from any unused vouchers
thats why hotels etc wont take booking after expiry as they wont get paid...

My understanding is that Groupon (Citydeal) operate this way. However one of the selling points of Living Social to us at the time was that they paid for unredeemed vouchers too.

They make their money (as do Groupon) by taking a cut of the sale price. For example the retailer gives a 50% discount on something. So a €100 item is being sold on the deal site for €50. After that though the €50 is divided between the deal site and the retailer (anything from 30%-50% of the reduced price goes to the deal site) So the retailer would end up with €25, the deal site €25 and the customer gets a product worth €100 (although there is a seperate debate on how many of the deals are really worth their original price !) Groupon would then on top of that make more money from unredeemed vouchers but Living Social don't / didn't when we dealt with them.

The thing is that quite a lot of businesses are making a loss on the deal they have offered (it is considered a marketing spend) so they most likely don't want to redeem coupons after expiry even if they had already been paid for them. In the facts and figures of the equation with Living Social businesses factor in the non redemption portion as part of the income offsetting the offer.

Gatica

interesting thread... just did a search for issues with LivingSocial and seems I'm not the only one. I tried to purchase an SD card recently. The badly designed website (Gadgets and Products UK) didn't give the option to use the voucher at check-out, which I'd have expected because there was a section that was not expanding called "Specials". Since we still had to pay for delivery I stupidly entered my credit card details, clicked next and lo and behold, I get a purchase confirmation! No option to enter voucher number nor request to confirm order as you do with Ebay and Amazon.
I contacted them and they asked for the voucher, saying the refund takes up to 30 days. No reply back to confirm they've redeemed my voucher, no email to confirm shipping. Nada. Well, 5 days to go now... No SD card yet, no refund yet. It's been 25 days, so fingers crossed.

Purchased another product advertised by LivingSocial recently too. There was also no confirmation of order and took nearly a month to receive it. I thought maybe my order didn't go through ok, so submitted it again. Got the same product twice then! Didn't mind, though contacted them to let them know they can collect it or I'll post it back as a return. No reply though. Just shows it was another poorly designed website and checkout process.

Seriously, do they just take the first start-up business that comes along for a bit of advertisement to them? Do they just get some cheap-a$$ web designer to do their websites? How do these f***ups happen??

lorcanthrope

I also bought that deal, got charged on their website, have heard nothing from my contact, have received no product and have been getting gradually more infuriated at getting screwed out of over a hundred euro essentially

Gatica

on the up side, received the SD card in post today. and received 89 euro refund 2 days ago.
Maybe yours is about to go through and arrive?

I'd call LivingSocial if you're having issues though. E-mailing basically does nothing. I've submitted requests through the account on LS website and never got replies. However got mail back 2 days after calling.
Their phone backlog is huge though, so was waiting for an agent for 15-20mins!!

the_syco

If you don't get satisfaction, tell whomever you gave money to that you're bringing them to the Small Claims Court; your contract is with whomever you paid money to.

tlatc

Hi all is anyone still having an issue with getting their money returned? I have been rining and emailing for almost a year.

Gatica

yeah, had issues with 2 deals since Christmas. Finally got refund for one of them. The company had actually refunded me fairly quickly for postage (didn't expect a postage refund, so was quite happy with that) when I returned the item. However, took aaaages to get voucher refund from Living Social. They needed to confirm with the company that they did indeed get the product back, etc... They said resolution takes up to 7 days, it was definitely longer.

Returned another product in January. Mailed an Rang LS about it, it's been in the process for weeks now. Finally got in touch with AnPost who confirmed date of delivery in January to the vendor. I contacted them and they said they've received it back and asked for paypal account for refund. Don't know if that means they'll refund directly now. Living social also gave me a case number for this, was told would take UP to 7 days to resolve, as they needed to get confirmation back from vendor that they got the product back. Needless to say it was over 7 days ago. I'm just waiting for this last refund to cancel my account.
I've no intention of buying anything else from them ever again. It's been pi$$ poor customer service. The reps on phone are nice, but basically the time it takes to get anything resolved is laughable.

Gatica

just received refund for an item I returned mid-January. I'm going to now cancel my Living Social account. I've been waiting last couple of months to get this done...

Timaya G

last Christmas i purchased two items on living social. the items never arrived. so I decided to contact them and find out what's taken so long as they were meant to Christmas presents, only for the company to tell me that my voucher has expired. so now ive paid for two items i never received and they have the cheek to tell me that there's nothing i can do. surely that's against the law. I wanted a refund but i would settled for being able to use the vouchers to purchase something. I feel completely robbed and cheated and they really don't care. I'm appalled. I'm on customer service myself and i don't recall treating any one like this. does anyone have any suggestions? i just want to get this resolved. I will most certainly never purchase never from living social again.

L1011

You've left it really too long to do much about it now. What value were the items?

Timaya G

L1011 wrote: »

You've left it really too long to do much about it now. What value were the items?

I actually contacted them straight away. I couldn't understand why I wasn't receiving dispatched emails only to find out the vouchers expired. the vouchers were about 15 euro each. purchased two all together

L1011

Amount is too low for legal recourse to be worthwhile; time is too long for a card chargeback at this stage.

Did you attempt to redeem the vouchers or were you expecting direct delivery? Can't quite tell from what you've posted.

Timaya G

L1011 wrote: »

Amount is too low for legal recourse to be worthwhile; time is too long for a card chargeback at this stage.

Did you attempt to redeem the vouchers or were you expecting direct delivery? Can't quite tell from what you've posted.

I thought I had redeemed the vouchers. turns out I hadn't done it properly. and by the time I realised my items still weren't shipped i decided to get in touch with them and request a refund. apparently you're not allowed to make any mistakes. it's not a lot of money but id love to know where the money has gone. their rules and regulations dont quite add up aren't consumer friendly at all. whatever happened to customer is always right. I couldn't even leave a review on the website. doesn't seem fair

L1011

They've thrown the money in to the massive black hole that is their finances (it has lost hundreds of millions of dollars)

Timaya G

L1011 wrote: »

They've thrown the money in to the massive black hole that is their finances (it has lost hundreds of millions of dollars)

I'm sickened. have you any idea how to leave a review on their website? is like to rate them and finally unsubscribe. want anything to do with them. thank you

Gatica

Did you pay for the vouchers with a credit card? you may be able to request a charge back from them because you never got a valid product, i.e. the vouchers which were suppose to entitle you to purchase a product, which didn't happen.

Timaya G

Gatica wrote: »

Did you pay for the vouchers with a credit card? you may be able to request a charge back from them because you never got a valid product, i.e. the vouchers which were suppose to entitle you to purchase a product, which didn't happen.

I paid via paypal which is connected to my bank. im not sure if that makes a difference

L1011

It's too long for a chargeback, think also too long for PayPal but PayPal would probably side with the expiration date argument

Pistachios & cream

my mother had the same issue around christmas, i lodged a claim with paypal. It's nothing to do with the voucher expiring as you have used your voucher but you havent received the goods. If you still have time lodge a claim with paypal for non-delivery of goods. keep screenshots of your correspondence with living social where you chase up the delivery. I also was able ot log in to my mums account to show that living social had a shipping tracker that said the items were shipped. They had tried to tell me that my contract was with the supplier but the shipping tracker on their website contradicted that.

Gatica

I think there's a timeout period in paypal, but check in our account, just in case you can open an issue to say you weren't able to get the product you paid for.

Timaya G

thank you for the advise and it's good to know I'm not alone. one thing is for sure I will never anything through living social again.