The Hermes Addiction Begins...

I was fortunate enough to receive my very first Hermes item as a gift for my 21st birthday. I realize that I'm very lucky to own Hermes at my age and I probably would not have (aka could not afford to have) gotten into the brand until I finished grad school and had a steady job. However the bracelet was not my style....so off to Chicago I went to exchange it. I thought about whether I should exchange it or not since I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings but I figured in the end, I wouldn't really wear this and it would be better to exchange for something that I really love and would wear a lot. 

Meet Cocoa Puff the Chinchilla :D

What is a chinchilla, you ask? Besides being a ball of furry cuteness, chinchillas are a class of rodent that are native to the Andes. Just a little bit of background courtesy of wikipedia (hey, I found it interesting lol):

Chinchillas are named after the Chincha people of the Andes and are mostly known for their dense, incredibly soft fur. In the wild, they ate mostly fruits, nuts, etc and were prey to a lot of animals. They are often killed for their fur due to the softness. In fact, to make a full length fur coat, it would take 150 chinchillas. Awful, right? As domestic pets, they are very friendly and very easy to take care of. Like most rodents, they need chew toys in order to wear their teeth down since their teeth grow continuously throughout their life. Also, because of their fur, they are very prone to overheating and should not be kept in rooms with temperatures about 80 degrees C. They are very agile and love to run and jump around however they have to be watched since chinchillas are very curious animals and tend to chew anything and everything. If scared, they are capable of urine spraying and fur slipping. They also don't make much noise; just the occasional indignant squeak and sometimes squeaks when they sleep. (chin nightmares?) Oh, and did I mention how fun and cute they are to play with?

Gnawing at his stick

Play with me!

Penny Auctions: Great Deals or Total Scam??

I used to think penny auctions were all scams. Even if they weren't, I never felt like it was worth it to pay money or a bid pack just for a chance to win what you want. That all changed the day I decided to try out luxenotlust.com. I followed a link through twitter and signed up for an account. At that time, I think the site was still pretty new and they were offering 1 free bid when you signed up. I figured, what can it hurt? So when I saw a $50 Tiffany & Co gift card up for auction, I waited until the very last second and used my one free bid. And I won! I think it was by sheer luck because it just to happened that the one other person bidding bid a millisecond before I did. So I paid $5.99 for shipping and $0.07 for the actual auction and the gift card was mine! A part of me still thought it was too good to be true however when I actually received the card in the mail and redeemed it, I was convinced. Ever since, I have visited the site regularly and purchased bid packs.

Printscreen of an email I received saying I won

Now, I'm not at all getting paid or compensated to talk about this website. I was never going to blog about it until an incident happened with another penny auction site. I saw an ad for another website similar to luxenotlust.com, which has high end, luxury items like Bloomingdales, Saks, etc gift cards and LV bags and accessories. This website is called scoreluxe.com and they have similar items, but a wider variety and more items such as Tory Burch flats and iPads. 

Now, I naively bought a bid pack right away, without even doing a google search on reviews of the website like I did when I initially stumbled across luxenotlust. (Even though I didn't find reviews on luxenotlust at the time, because I had won the auction I was convinced of it's validity) With scoreluxe, I saw they had a Tiffany gift card auction coming up so I prepared for it. When the time came, I started bidding. And kept bidding. And bought more bid packs. In total, I spent about $120 because I kept thinking I'd put so much money in that if I just kept bidding and won the gift card, it would be kind of worth it. However after 120 bids and I still hadn't won, I was angry with myself and stopped. Now, you may be thinking that I'm just a disgruntled customer or a sore loser. Call it whatever you want. But let me explain my reasoning:

With luxenotlust, I only spent about $50 tops on bid packs and to date, I've won $200 in Tiffany & Co gift cards (clearly my top choice based on my preference and the fact that not many other people seem to want them so in my opinion, it's fairly easy to win) With scoreluxe, I spent $120 on bids. And still didn't win. Red flags were going off in my head. I'm not saying scoreluxe is a scam. I don't have the proof to say that. However, it's pretty improbably that I placed about half the bids and still did not win, especially since I placed  so many bids. It could just be bad luck. But the way I see it, it would be fairly easy for a penny auction to be a scam . With the anonymity of the bidders, I feel anyone with a decent knowledge of computers would be able to rig a penny auction website. All the owner or admin would have to do is make a fake account and grant bids to that account. I'm not saying this is what scoreluxe is doing, for all I know there could be many regulations for penny auctions websites. (not that I found any info on that end but *shrug*) All I'm saying is that it's pretty fishy. 

I guess all I can do now is chalk that experience up to bad judgement and stubbornness and call it a learning experience. Even with the $120 I spent on scoreluxe, I guess I still came out on top since the gift cards I won from luxenotlust even it out. Kinda. Sorta. At least that's what I will tell myself...

Now I'm going to stop speculating about scoreluxe and just forget that website entirely. All I can say for certain is that I would highly recommend luxenotlust.com based on my own experience. Their customer service always responds quickly and I've had no issues redeeming my gift cards. Again, I have no affiliation with this website, I'm not getting paid or compensated and they don't even know I'm reviewing it. I just wanted to warn people to be careful, particularly with scoreluxe, and with penny auctions in general. 

Now to go cheer myself up by picking out my next piece from Tiffany's!

Image from: http://www.utahburden.com/Blog/Tiffany-Co-is-Opening-in-Market-Street