Living Social Amazon Deal Leads To One Million Purchases In Hours

Buy one, get one free never sounded so good.

Living Social's latest deal has taken the Internet by storm, attracting over 1.2 million purchasers in just hours, and has group buyers scrambling to pick up a $20 Amazon.com gift card for just $10. There's still several hours left for the deal.

Click here to check out the deal for yourself.

The Groupon competitor could be making close to $2.5 million already, according to Business Insider, assuming they are splitting the purchases with Amazon.

In either case, the tremendous amount of traffic in so little time is hammering the site, causing some load-time issues, and another surge is likely as the West Coast begins its day.

The site works by encouraging users to share the daily deal through social media. Though in many cases the deal itself may be attractive enough to make users come back to the site daily, Living Social also offers the deal for free to users whose social media friends make a purchase.

If three Facebook friends take advantage of the deal via the shared link on your profile, you can get it for free.

Comments

[cliff gady]

10:52 PM on 01/24/2011

savemore a groupon / living social copy cat is giving away 50 pairs of tickets to Superbowl 45! with that they are throwing in a $500 visa too!

http://www.savemore.com/?r=f9ea93ca-db19-e011-810b-005056a20007

[Holibags]

09:45 AM on 01/21/2011

There is a new version of Living Social and Groupon for Holidays only. It's called Holibags and is only for holidays from the UK at the moment but they too are looking to become massive in this area. check out www.holibags.co.uk.

[Seaborn75]

07:15 PM on 01/20/2011

Haven't seen a confirmation.
Haven't seen a code.
And LivingSocial has my cc info....

First and definitely last time I use that website....

[levoyageur]

03:44 PM on 01/21/2011

I got mine today. Bought yesterday.

[Beez Beezer]

03:48 PM on 01/20/2011

As far as I know, that's illegal.

[Beez Beezer]

03:46 PM on 01/20/2011

Hi -

Living Social is getting a lot of press, but I haven't seen anyone addressing their upcharging of customers' credit cards without the customers knowledge.

Originally, if someone used a referral link to purchase the Amazon card, it showed the cost of the card as just $5, because the site applied their 'deal bucks' to your first order at the time of purchase.

If you did this, it clearly showed that the price was then $5, before you clicked 'purchase this' and that price remained through the purchase screens. Sometime during the next day, LS apparently decided that was a bad idea, and removed the ability - posting a notice saying Deal Bucks were not available to be used on the purchase of the card. However, they'd agreed to sell possibly hundreds of thousands of cards for $5 (the last time I saw their total sold before they removed the Deal Bucks discount, it was over 600,000, though how many of those people were using a referral I obviously don't know).

Their remedy for this was to go in and upcharge people's cards to the $10. You can find people posting on various sites about how they had agreed to pay $5, the purchase had gone through and later, LS had decided they wanted $10 instead of $5 so they went back and charged people's cards and bank accounts higher amounts than customers had agreed to pay. They did this with my credit card. As far as I know,

[Kimberly Mayer]

02:21 PM on 01/20/2011

This would have been a much better deal if it had been LEGIT! :-/ I have nothing, and there's no longer anything pending in the "my deals" section. I have a feeling that over a million people just had their credit cards stolen!

[Seaborn75]

07:16 PM on 01/20/2011

I'm in the same boat.

[dougbdl]

03:56 PM on 01/21/2011

I got my code emailed to me today. I reckon this is legit. Check your spam folder.

[shutter]

11:29 AM on 01/20/2011

I've yet to see my coupon/gift card in my email. I'm very interested in seeing how this all plays out. It's unlikely that living social will collapse as some comments have suggested, especially after the hefty investment from amazon. However, as of posting this, amazon's stock is falling

[Octomoms Jumpoff]

08:45 AM on 01/20/2011

Seems like a symptom of deflation.

[rmaenza]

09:44 PM on 01/19/2011

That's free enterprise, that's what this country is all about. Making money will always rule over everything else. mainstreethost

[TexanResistance]

11:14 PM on 01/19/2011

SPAMMER!

[Johann Q]

06:55 PM on 01/19/2011

Doubt that they're "making close to 2.5 million" on this - these kind of deals are not new to the Grouponing world (has happened in February or March in Germany with Starbucks-Deals)... and they're more like loss-leading.
They just pay off in the long-term if you acquire a bunch of new customers this way and are able to cope with the logistics etc., dont get your reputation ruined by not processing orders fast enough ;)

[TexanResistance]

11:14 PM on 01/19/2011

It could be LivingSocial's downfall, but it sure makes a statement!

[Johann Q]

04:46 AM on 01/20/2011

Well, I wouldn't go that far. Amazon has invested around 150 million in them already, they won't let it go down the drain...

[Pucker]

12:05 AM on 01/20/2011

Given the (ludicrous) valuation of Groupon......yes, this is a loss-leader. I suppose the million+ of new Facebook followers which they will now wire deals to is what they are looking to gain.

In some way I want this market saturated if only for the schadenfreude of seeing Groupon wither after turning down billions of Google dollars. What's lost in all these social networking & social coupon sites is the wispy nature of viral products. Nothing lasts forever in that world, and none of them see the bubble they are sitting on.

[BigMike75]

06:27 PM on 01/20/2011

I agree with the "bubble" aspect of your argument, certainly when paired with the astronomical valuations of companies like Groupon, and the still unanswered questions of whether these business models(social networking/social coupon type sites), are sustainable in the longterm. I just think it says that these models "might" not be sustainable in their current forms, but rather as paired down models built more on community, social connection, and communication...all central tenets of the internet, and not these money vaccums that are built mostly of icing, and no cake.

[Chauncey Love]

02:48 PM on 01/19/2011

Down with Groupon!

[hulagirrrl]

02:30 PM on 01/19/2011

I am still boycotting Amazon for what they did with Wikileaks. Some people seem to have short memory or simply don't care.

[JeremyKrantz]

03:08 PM on 01/19/2011

Who cares? You're still saving money. I'm assuming you don't shop at WalMart either then for what they do to their employees?

[hulagirrrl]

05:13 AM on 01/20/2011

Jeremy, you read my very old comments or how else would you have figured that I am not your Walmart type of gal? I do however love http://www.peopleofwalmart.com check it out, funny. Aloha.

[VTrebelrocker]

02:30 PM on 01/19/2011

Living social is nothing but living lies! direct form their site:
"We design total experiences that bring an adventurous, loyal new following to local businesses."

deals like these are helping to DESTROY local businesses!

[joebloggs724]

07:18 PM on 01/19/2011

The Amazon deal is clearly an attention getter. But it's a very small amount of money per customer, and every other deal on there I've seen is for a small local business. By getting this sort of attention they will bring more focus on the local businesses they'll feature in subsequent offers. Nor does Living Social so they ONLY bring new followings to local businesses, so what they say is completely true. Not exactly "living lies." Time to tone down the rhetoric.

[VTrebelrocker]

08:49 PM on 01/19/2011

Doesn't there have to be a reason for amazon to take part in this? Obviously they are counting on people spending more than the $20.

If Living Social's tag line is all about local then shouldn't they be doing everything they can to stay away from these places? Or does the amount of money that goes in their pockets more important then in the pockets of the local businesses?

I am tired of businesses, politicians, bankers, etc. of talking out of both sides of their mouths so you'll have to pardon the rhetoric.

You don't happen to work for Living Social? ;)

[InVinoVeritasBC]

02:24 PM on 01/19/2011

What does $20 get you anymore??

[TexanResistance]

11:16 PM on 01/19/2011

It would buy 6 boxes of Chamomile Tea for my stomach issues, a new TOSLINK cable for the bedroom, and I'll still have about $4.50 to throw at something else!

Not bad for $20 bucks!

[cyndie1030]

03:29 PM on 01/20/2011

Two books for my Kindle if I bought popular releases (non Agency model ones) or several by Indie authors.