Have you checked out this new thing - Living Social? I keep seeing it advertised all the time on the right side advertisement column on Facebook. I hate those right side advertisements on FB and I ignore them, but it must work because I have seen Living Social so many times out of the corner of my eye that it now exists in my brain and I have wondered about it. Well, today I finally checked it out.
You go to http://livingsocial.com. You enter your city. You then enter your zip code. And ta-da - there it is - today's deal. Apparently there is a deal a day and now I will get emails alerting me to these deals every day. Today's deal? Sugarhouse Coffee. Actually I have been wanting to go there - I drive by it a lot and it looks like a cool little independent coffee house. Today's deal of the day is that I can buy $20 worth of items for only $10 at Sugarhouse Coffee. That is a great deal - 50% off. If only I had a group of people to take out for coffee today. But alas, I do not. So no deal for me today. But it says that 182 people have bought this deal, so there are a lot of people out there who felt they could spend $20 at the coffee house today.
Further exploration of this site reveals that you actually buy these deals on line before you go to the place. You create an account in order to buy these deals ahead of time on line. Therefore, you have to be committed to using the deal that day. It looks like you can only pay with credit cards. I did not see a note about PayPal. Here is something interesting. If you share the deal of the day with others and three of those people buy the deal, you get the deal for free. I don't know if I know enough people in Salt Lake City to make that work, but that is kind of a cool thing and it could work for some of you.
The site allowed me to see a few "past deals." The list included some spa treatments and hotels and stores - with big discounts. There are definitely some items of interest there for me so I will be interested to see the upcoming deals of the day. You can also see deals in other cities, so if you are traveling, you can check and see if there are any deals worth buying.
Have any of you checked this out and are you using it? What has been your experience using it?
I got a great deal from Living Social last month - $10 for a $20 Amazon gift card - and I also do the Groupon thing, very similar. My only problem is that I have a few Groupons that I purchased some time ago for restaurants that I haven't managed to visit yet. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteThat is exactly my worry with the Groupon thing.
ReplyDeleteWe have one here in Roanoke called the "Daily Deal" and I know Groupon is moving in on us as well. I bought one of the local daily deals ($6 for $12 worth of food at a little diner in downtown); thing is, you don't have to use it that day. Usually, they'll have an expiration date, but it probably varies by place.
ReplyDeleteFacebook is actually working on "Facebook Deals" right now, and Google (who tried to no avail to buy Groupon) is working on their version as well.
I have heard people say negatively that this doesn't benefit the businesses at all (something about they don't actually make any money off these deals? Not sure, should check up on that.)
I have also heard people talking about how this will be bad in general because people are spoiled enough already, and who's gonna pay full price when they can wait for Groupon to offer 50% off?
I personally think it's ok in moderation- It'll familiarize people with places they've never patronized before and can create some repeat customers.