Every day we are bombarded with offers by email and social media for great deals and promotions. But as some are finding, it's only a great deal if you receive it.
Stephanie Ng is standing in the spot where she pictured her dad in his new hammock.
"I was going to probably put it right here," the Los Altos resident said.
She's one of more than 14,000 who ordered this travel hammock from Cautivadora through LivingSocial. It's unknown how many of those received their hammock. But the internet is full of dozens of complaints of both Cautivadora and LivingSocial from those who say they didn't receive the hammock.
"There were people asking questions about what had happened to their hammocks," Ng said.
"Cautivadora LivingSocial fail to deliver merchandise," wrote one on Ripoff Report.
"Buyer beware! Horrible company! Zero stars," warned one Yelp reviewer from Alameda.
"DO NOT ORDER FROM THEM!!!," another simply stated on the consumer deals site, Maven of Savin.
We asked LivingSocial to explain what was going on.
They sent us this statement instead, "We are aware that some of our customers have experienced a problem regarding the redemption of this deal and are currently working with the merchant in order to resolve the issue."
Ng isn't taking any chances.
"So I reached out to LivingSocial about four times, asked them several time for my money back," she said. "Each time they said no."
We reached out to Cautivadora on Ng's behalf. But our phone calls and emails were not returned.
LivingSocial told us in a follow up email it hoped "to have the issue resolved very soon."
We scheduled an interview with Ng in preparation of a story.
"And I made contact with LivingSocial via Twitter and mentioned that I had reached out to ABC7," she said. "At that point, they immediately contacted me back and there was money refunded into my account within the hour."
For Ng, this is about more than getting her $59 back. It's about all the other people waiting for their hammocks as well.
"Are they just not going to get their money back?" she asked. "And so that's a huge concern."
We received one other complaint from a Bay Area resident about her hammock order. She was able to get a refund through her credit card company by protesting the charge.
