LivingSocial Selling Trips to Colorado Disaster Zone
After pushing stale meme-themed packages and offering up its own property for weddings, we've now maybe reached the point at which they just stop caring about everything: today's featured deal is a trip to a part of the United States ravaged by one of the worst floods in history.
You've got to get rid of that extra vacay inventory somehow, so keep hawking tickets while the place is in the news, I suppose:
To say that Estes Park, Colorado, is "picture-perfect" doesn't do it justice—no glossy print, no matter the resolution, could capture the breathtaking mountain views reflected in ice-cold, tree-lined streams the way an in-person visit can.
Sure! Except, disastrously, that's not really the case these days. Take this report from The Weather Channel:
ESTES PARK, Colo. — The worst of the rain had stopped by Monday afternoon, but staggering numbers continue to come in after Colorado's disastrous flooding. The Colorado Office of Emergency Management confirmed at least seven people had died as a result of the historic flooding. Although the bodies of two of those seven remain missing, the state says the victims are presumed dead.
This "deal" was beamed to subscribers yesterday, and is still a featured LivingSocial trip, indicating the complete absence of oversight—almost as if the entire thing is just being automated, because everyone else is looking for a job elsewhere. In the meantime, that deal-sorting algorithm is doing a pretty piss-poor job:
@LivingSocial just sent me an email featuring flasks & a http://t.co/PH4poHWhrZ membership. They think I'm a very sad single shut in
— Haley Sedam (@halesya) September 16, 2013
A tipster also reported an tempting package of weight loss pills and an online dating subscription, which would pair well with a flask, too. We're told a "handful" of LivingSocial employees in Seattle—where a main office has already been shut down—were let go this month. So, maybe there's just no one left to tell the robot that no one wants to visit a flood zone, and that weight loss pills are an insulting discount.
Emails sent to LivingSocial regarding layoffs and advertised trips to underwater Colorado have not been returned.