How I spent $1799 at LivingSocial.com and didn't even know it
danfitch.netBummer! I'm assuming you didn't set up any "one-click" option, and if that's the case they should go the Amazon route and only enable One-click if you say so first.
Eliminating the payment confirmation page to optimize the funnel seems shortsighted. If they want to do one-click purchase, they should clearly label the buy button to indicate this, otherwise, show a payment confirmation page. I was also surprised by this the last time I bought something from LivingSocial.com.
not really sure why this is hacker-relevant
True but it goes to point out that user interface flaws/features that are not expected.
I would be very surprised if this sort of thing was not intentional.
Most of the sales I've seen coming through from Groupon and Livingsocial feel like they could be impulse purchase material. Eliminating the second thoughts of a "confirm your purchase" page probably adds a nice amount to their sales, even if it's hard to quantify how much from the outside.
This goes to "instead of giving a 'confirm' option, give me an undo button" mentality.
P.S. The transaction was likely not batched until much later in the day, from what I remember with credit card processing. Thus, undoing it would be trivial, if LivingSocial wanted to do it.
Even Amazon allows a 30-minute cancellation on one-click orders. I've hardly used it, but it does exist, and it's kind of scammy for LivingSocial to not have this kind of feature, even if it's limited to 15 minutes or less.
They let me cancel the trip so there is no issue with LivingSocial having that as a part of their flow, but it would be nice to have a confirmation page between purchases over a certain amount.