Poor LivingSocial can't catch a break. It'd be one thing if any other company with a reliable and highly-demanded product experienced the recent blunders the D.C. online deals company has – you know, throwing a Halloween party with a "greed" room featuring dreidels and gold coins and not being able to bring the website back online for almost two days when it went down earlier this week. But LivingSocial – and it appears to be in good company with e-commerce sites like Groupon – is a failing model. People simply don't want it any more, and because of that, the site continues and continues to lose money on top of its constant mistakes.
While it's the opinion of most that nothing can save this sinking ship, LivingSocial is still trying its darndest to stay afloat. Last week it was the selling of Korean subsidiary company Ticket Monster to rival Groupon. But even that was borderline comical, because, though LivingSocial will take on a hefty amount of capital, the majority of the deal is for stock in its main competitor. And today, the company is employing another do-good gesture that it hopes will win back some business.
In a press release, the company announced that "Customer appreciation is in full force this weekend at LivingSocial." With that, they will be having discounts ranging from 15-25 percent all weekend on deals and escapes "to thank their loyal customers." I'm no marketing genius, but this seems more like a ploy to get new customers more than to thank old ones.
Still, with a 25 percent discount all day Friday for customers in the U.S. who use the code HEART25 – with the caveat of a max savings of $25 – that's a pretty nice deal. Over the weekend, the discount drops to 15 percent with the code WEEKEND15. Knowing this at least encourages me to do something I otherwise wouldn't today: visit LivingSocial's website. And I'll likely go even further, passing the deal onto my friends.
Though we can all see right through this discount ploy, and it's not going to save LivingSocial in the long run (it's not even going to come close), it seems at least temporarily like a great move to take the sting away from what CEO Tim O'Shaughnessy called “an incredibly low point.” And something positive out of LivingSocial is something we haven't seen from LivingSocial in a bit. The big question, though, will be: how do they get customers to return in the future without a discount?
