Have you shake it yet??

After I saw a weibo (Chinese version of twitter) said someone got a free whopper from hungry jacks, I start to shake my iphone every now and then. The app called "Hungry Jack's Makes it Better". Everyone can download it for free from your app store (Click me if you'd like to try)

 

 

Basically, you need to be whthin 1km from any hungry jacks' store and when you check-in with either facebook or twitter account, you can shake your iphone and reveal the prize. There are 20 minutes you can redeem it before the prize expires. 

Actually, I downloaded the app month ago and the first prize I got is 25% off on any orders under $10. Well, I was not impressed enough to redeemed the prize and never shake it afterwards until I saw someone got a free prize. Then I tried couple of times and I got a LOT of free prizes, sweet corns, whoppers, hashbrowns, frozen cokes and so on. But I didn't actually redeemed all of them as sometimes I just got bored and shake it at home. 

One time I went to redeem my free whopper, I found most people have an iphone on their hand with this app on the screen. And most of them are FREE prize. Wondering how much free stuff hungry jacks give away every day. Maybe their strategy is to attract people come into stores and buy something with the free prize but as far as I can see....No one pay for anything with free stuff. They just took it and leave including me =)....How about you guys? Have you shake it and get anything from hungry jacks today?

Did you ever fall for a scam???

I think most of you got similar SMS before and maybe more than one. I got one couple days ago. Can't believe someone would still fall for that now. As a manner of fact, one of my friend did fall for one of these kind of scams two years ago. I don't remember the details. But he deposited like 4 or 5 thousand dollars to their account. And he was a student of Melbourne University!!!! 

Speaking of scams.....Recently, I fell in love with a online shopping website called Vitacost. You can get $10 coupon once your friend refer you to register. And if you refer to another friend, you and your friend both get $10. And if the order is under 3lbs, you only need to pay $3 delivery fee. So I placed like more than 10 orders which most orders didn't exceed $10. 

However couple days ago, one of my friend found out that about 2-3 years ago, Vitacost was involved with online scams. I was a bit scared and then I googled it. I fould that Vitacost was indeed involved with some scams for illegal credit card charges and misleading investors with their sale. Fortunately, it's all passed. I checked resellerratings.com which the article mentioned , past 6-month rating is 9.41 out of 10 instead of 3.5 out of 10 in year 2010 when the scams happened. I don't know what Vitacost went through to achieve today's success, but it's not easy for sure. What we can learn is, customers will always know if you are a good business, NEVER CHEAT ON CUSTOMERS!!!!!!!

Actually, my credit card from CBA was stolen, so did my friends'. I lost $300 and my friend lost $2000. Luckly, all the money were reimbursed to us but there was a lesson. DO NOT use your credit card on small or unknown website. Use Paypal as long as you can!!!!! I cancelled my CBA credit card and jump into ANZ's embrace.

Do you have any experience on this? Share with me =)

C2C in China

I've been in Melbourne for 4 years and 6 days now. I absolutely love this city and planning to stay here. But one thing I miss most back in China is Taobao. Taobao is a C2C (customer to customer) online shopping website where individuals or small business can open online retail stores for all kinds of things. I was addict to Taobao when I was in China. You can find almost everything on it and they are very CHEAP!!! After I came to Melbourne, I can't resist my online shopping addiction and try to find some website like Taobao. And I found ebay.au. I heard about eBay long time ago but never used it as I have Taobao in China. But I was a bit shocked the first time I open a product page on eBay. It was sooooo simple. Many products don't even have much description, not even mention pictures. Here is a store I picked from Taobao.

http://store.taobao.com/?spm=a1z0k.1000783.2.7&shop_id=60205158

The store mainly sell women's clothes and some accessories. Each dress or accessories have detail descriptions and pictures. The length, chest, waist and shoulder for each dress and size. And it is not only in clothes but also home & garden or any other categories.

And the PRICE!!! Well, it may not be fair to compare the price as China is the world's factory. But still, I miss the price on Taobao sooooooo much. With same amount of money, I could get probably 3-4 items from Taobao rather than 1 in Melbourne. Even in China, with maybe 300 RMB, I could only get one t-shirt from shopping mall but 4-5 t-shirts from Taobao including delivery fee.

And then the delivery issue. Most package of mine are delivered by post. But there are whole bunch of express companies in China. Most of them are very cheap and fast. And they work on WEEKDAYS. You can get your package on Sunday!!! Isn't that wonderful? On the other hand, deliveries on eBay is killing me. If I want the cheap price, the product will never be within Australia. It will be in Hong Kong, or UK, or USA, but never AU!!!! And it takes forever to get those deliveries.

And last but not least, communication issues. There is a software called Wangwang provided by Taobao for instant communication between customers and sellers. You can always get help once you need it. But I always need to wait AT LEAST half hour to get in touch with eBay's seller. Sometimes it took me days before the owner realise there is a email from customer!!!! I even need to contact the seller just for combine orders where Taobao has the shopping cart function. And it is not that high-tec. I don't understand why eBay doesn't has it.

I use myshopping.com.au sometimes to compare prices from different australian online shopping website. And I did find what I need is cheaper than shops. But those website are B2C and I may discuss it in later blogs. As I don't own a car, it is much easier for me to shop online. I think it makes me stay at home a lot more than I used to and I love it!! If you know some awesome online shopping website, share with me :D