addie m.

As a merchant who chose to launch a deal for my company through living social, it is now my turn to write a review on their company.

I am more frustrated with this company than imaginable. I launched a few deals with them. The first time we launched, it was great. We received a lot of repeat business, and as a new company, it definitely left an imprint in our community.

The second time around- they changed the way they ran things, and our company ended up suffering.
For 45 days- a month and a half- they held on to our payments- thousands of dollars. When we were negotiating the initial contract, I noticed some discrepancies, and immediately brought it to their attention. I got a bunch of thank yous, and "we will run this by our accounting team" and an entire run around- that made me feel extremely uneasy. I followed up daily. Weekly. Then monthly. Hours I spent on the phone, talking to this person, talking to that person. Emailing "supervisors", asking for a return phone call. I always got promised that I would be contacted with a follow up and that as soon as they fixed the mistake, we would be taken care of. I was promised several dates in which we would receive our payments, and those dates would come and pass, and still nothing was direct deposited into our account. I tried my best to take care of it before it became in issue- and it didn't matter. They didn't pay us!
Mutual customers, would call and schedule an appointment. I would drive to the appointment to complete the service myself, or send an employee. And no one would let us in, or answer our phone calls. When I would redeem their voucher and call living social to let them know the client didn't honor our 48 hour cancellation requirement, they would say "no problem, we will take care of it on our end". Come to find out- I was being charged the clients credit processing fee! This wasn't just on one occasion- this was on several!
We had negotiated the terms and conditions. We service a 20 mile radius of the town in which we do business. People that lived 30, 40, 50 and even 70 MILES FROM US were calling to schedule appointments. I would apologize and let them know they could call living social and receive a refund, and let them know they were out of radius. Not only did I get poor online reviews and told that I was an awful customer service rep (I am the owner by the way) but I also lost money because I was paying their credit card processing fees. Unbelievable! I would call living social, multiple, multiple, MULTIPLE times, and ask for a way they could resolve the issue of clients mistakenly buying our voucher out of zone- and although I was told they fixed the issue, it continuously happened. CONTINUOUSLY.
Our only negative reviews on yelp and google are from living social consumers, that I now believe are completely misguided from living social. I closed my account with living social and told them they can invoice me, but that I refuse any future business with them. Not that I want to add stress to the people who have unfortunately purchased vouchers, but because I cannot wait for the day I no longer have to deal with this stress. So many times clients have called and said, "I can only get a credit toward something else, but I don't want something else", or that "living social won't refund me because it's past the 90 days". I think that's ridiculous. It's not fair. Some of these vouchers are gifts that consumers have bought, and maybe it took a few months for these consumers to receive the voucher. Now that I am no longer doing business with you, you're going to hold onto their money? Unbelievable!
I had a woman who had bought the voucher and left the country for a couple months. She came back this week and tried to book with me. I informed her that I had closed my account and we no longer accept living social vouchers. I asked her to please contact living social for a refund, and if she wished to hear of my promotions and rates, I would be pleased to send them to her. I apologized for any inconvenience and let her know I would be excited to extend my services. She misunderstood and thought I was asking her for more money! Living social is making MY COMPANY look like a scam! It's not fair! This is not what I signed up for. In all honesty, living social has made my life a living hell. And my company means everything to me. The worst part about my review, is this is only a SCIMMING inkling of every amount of stress I've gone through. I could complain for days!