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Kind of really frustrated with sites like LivingSocial and Groupon as of late after both my wife and I had bad experiences with vendors who had coupons/deals listed one from each service and in both cases the company was failing to deliver on the deals as promised or kept adding delays, cancellations and limited terms in order to make it so inconvenient to claim the deal you feel like it was a waste and don’t want to bother doing business with the service anymore.
In one of these cases with Groupon my wife found out within a few days the hassle it would be to collect on the coupon, the cancellations and lack of availability and got a refund processed fairly quickly. In my case I purchased a LivingSocial deal 8 months prior and it had a full year to expiration, in this deal a cancellation combined with lack of flexible scheduling, no set specific blackout period which they clearly indicate after calling to schedule and book the appointment (none was stated in the original deal).
I have contacted LivingSocial but have yet to receive a response from a live person about a potential refund, as their policy is to not issue refunds after 7 days unless the company goes out of business, but this is ridiculous to the point where I am removing all my email subscriptions to both Groupon and LivingSocial as a result of these frustractions.
Bottom Line:
These Aren’t the Deals You Are Looking For
Most of the time, the deal will end up being a hassle and most companies can’t handle the influx of people trying to take advantage of the coupon which greatly reduces flexibility when they first publish. Maybe this isn’t the case as much for restaurant deals, but it is a problem for at least 2 separate companies.