Thursday, March 26, 2009

LivingSocial.com Review

As usual, during the week I check out sites such as Facebook,LinkdIn and MySpace, along with Twitter. Lately, ever since Facebook undertook some changes, I started to see different "Highlights" on the right side of the Facebook main page. I think that the section is incredibly important for advertising different sites and programs.For instance, I realized that 17 of my friends are part of a site called www.livingsocial.com. I like to look at the site as a Zagat that goes well beyond restaurants and pubs. At LivingSocial, you can keep track of what you like, discover new things to try, and find out what your friends enjoy, all in one place. As described on Facebook to introduce people to it, it's stated that:
LivingSocial.com is a social discovery and cataloging network that allows people to review and share their favorite movies, books, games, music, restaurants and beer. As the most comprehensive interest-based online community, LivingSocial is now helping more than 7.5 million users catalogue their interests, seamlessly integrating with Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, hi5, and Orkut.

Maybe I'm wrong but it appears to me that when I signed up for www.livingsocial.com that it's geared towards iPhone users since it automatically asked me to transfer information from an iPhone(which I don't have).Other than that it's basically like a poll for people to take on their favorite movie, beer, etc. and others can view it. Afterall, word-of-mouth is the most effective advertising isn't it?!
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Other than www.livingsocial.com,I've been looking for new music. As usual, I use Pandora which I love because I leave it on when I do not have time to look for music and just do things around the house. But after last class on March 24, I wanted to check out www.last.fm and I love it!!!! It's a wonderful site where you get a lot of feedback from users just like you who share similar music tastes as you. I've come across many international users which I think is an interesting way to communicate with people throughout the world, not to mention being exposed to music I would not typically hear to Z100 or KTU.
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I must add that this class has exposed me to sites I would not have looked for myself. Thanks to everyone for the interesting postings!

6 comments:

  1. what's interesting, then, is to consider how many of these sorts of services involve some kind of rating system.

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  2. Be very aware of Living Social. I have been trying to resolve an issue w/ them for 6 days now and it is still ongoing.
    When you buy a deal and have purchased a deal in the past, they charge all cards they have on file for you.
    There is a bogus pending transaction on one account that is now in overdraft thanks to Living Social (I am closing the account and had very little money in it)
    My credit card has already been charged too.
    Don't waste your time trying to call them...you will end up in a maze of Press 1 for this and press 2 for that and you end up back where you started.
    What ever happened to Customer Service...well, Zappo's has excellent customer service so I know it still exists somewhere.

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  3. Excellent review. Just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to write it! :)

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  4. Bought a deal from them back in August – called a company to book an appointment, But they wouldn’t do it for various reasons. Decided to cancel the deal all together and get confirmation email from living social customer service (they confirmed a refund!!! Will be set to me in 7 – 10 business days) Now, end of October, two month and tons of emails later – NO REFUND received. Very annoyed, they are longer responding to my emails, and it is impossible to reach them over the phone. Don’t see why they are still keeping my money, if they agreed to give them back two month ago! Will never buy from them again! People be aware – they are not reliable!!!! Customer service is total rubbish.

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  5. I bought two 'deals' from LS. I should have learned from the first time. This site is a rip-off!!!! They sell so many deals that the merchant is unable to meet the demand. The first deal ($30) I could never get through to the merchant for an appointment and they never returned my call. I called LS and they quickly gave me account credit for the $30. Knowing I had that credit and could not get a refund, I purchased another deal. Again, the merchant was very busy but scheduled the service for 2 weeks later. After he didn't show within that time period, I contacted him and he said he had 'issues with LS' and that he would not be able to get to us for another 2-3 weeks. This was 2 months after the purchase and completely unacceptable. When I contacted LS, Georgia was nice enough but said she could not do anything and would be submitting the request for refund to the consumer services department and they would get back to me within 1 business day. Three emails and 5 business days later, nothing. I contacted my credit card company to dispute the $65 ($95 less the $30 credit). They filed and contacted LS (telephone conference), some snotty guy ( I think James) said their policy is not to issue credit simply because the merchant is too busy. I explained that they had in the past and he flatly said they weren’t going to this time. My credit card company has issued credit for the $65 and hopefully I will eventually get the other $30 back. This site really does not care about customer satisfaction, its bad when even the merchants feel taken by LS. They just want the money and don’t care if the customer actually receives the service or product. I've used Groupon and Daily Deals with great success. Yes, I know what the refund policy is and I understand it but the company has to take some responsibility, its not OK to just sell a service and then say, sorry you cant get the service or product but its not our problem. Stay away from LS!!!

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  6. Your contents force out your readers for commenting.
    living social

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