Three Interesting Unreported Notes About The LivingSocial Whole Foods Deal

Last night Deal Hunter level 9′s (I am one of them) were notified that today Living Social would run a deal with Whole Foods. The deal, which is running right now, provides for a $20 gift card to Whole Foods for $10. Several tech blogs reported on the deal but there are three very, very interesting tidbits that none of them seemed to mention.

And a quick sidebar: for those that reported that LivingSocial sold “millions” of Amazon gift cards earlier this year, I call phooey on that. LivingSocial never reported a final number of gift cards that were sold. And any number that may have been reported needs to note total actual dollars because there were plenty of conga lines and many reporting buying hundreds of gift cards using all sorts of complex spreadsheets and user account models. I heard it took a very long time for LS to go back through and figure out which customers bought multiple cards. I do think both LivingSocial and Groupon have got a much better handle on the multiple order issues and I haven’t heard many boasting of ordering hundreds (or even tens) of Whole Foods certs.

Note #1 – Some of the talk with the deal hunters is that LivingSocial is sponsoring (or at least partially subsidizing) today’s deal with WholeFoods to be able to acquire new subscribers. I have emailed LivingSocial PR and will update this post if I hear back.

Note #2 – LivingSocial’s referral system is not currently available. The page where you pick up your referral code was removed yesterday afternoon. This leads me to believe even more that LivingSocial is in some way sponsoring today’s deal. You can still refer people to the deal and if you send in 3 referrals, your deal is free but this is not the same as their general referral system which would pay out nicely for some who share their links on Facebook today.

Note #3 – Deal Bucks, the system that LivingSocial uses to pay for referrals, cannot be used to pay for the Whole Foods deal. In speaking with some other experienced deal hunters, this may also indicate that LivingSocial is partially sponsoring the  deal. The last time they either partially or fully sponsored a deal many believe was the Amazon deal earlier this year.

The piece of info I want as an analytics nut and former auditor is how many conga lines took place today and how many customers were able to purchase multiple deals. I am guessing we will never see these numbers  but boy would they be interesting to see.

Here’s a link to the deal – ignore whatever city is listed since the deal is nationwide. (note: if you use the link in this last sentence, I get a referral credit towards my purchase which is appreciated. The other link above does not carry the referral link.)