Check it Out: Not so Lucky With Lucky Chic
Luxury items at 98 percent off? Ninety-eight percent off? It can't be true. But it is. There has to be a catch. There is.
Lucky Chic has "pioneered e-commerce gaming" with its new luxury item bidding business. It's new site, LuckyChic.com, allows customers to buy "Lucky Chips," then use those chips to bid on luxury items — at up to 98 percent off retail price.
I'm automatically skeptical of these kinds of deals, but I signed up anyway. Who wouldn't want to bid on an Apple iPad for $1.80? iPads on eBay are going for a low price of $450, so why not? By signing up, I earned five Lucky Chips, worth 60 cents, and when used, LuckyChic.com ups the bid on an item 10 cents. But then I thought to myself, can I really get an iPad for $1.80, with free money just for signing up?
Usually I don't gamble and I don't like the hassle of signing up with retail sites. I want my e-commerce experience to be as easy and stress-free as possible. To help make the sign-up process as easy as possible, all I had to do was click the Facebook button and the information from my Facebook account was imported. Hooray!
I was then prompted to invite my friends to join Lucky Chic, and if they did I'd get more chips. I've done things like this before and none of my friends ever join. I'm not impressed being used by a brand to promote itself. I'm also not a fan of pestering my friends online for something that only benefits me, if it even benefits me at all. If I like a brand, I'll tell my friends in person, not online. What's more, it tells you to invite your friends as step one — before you find out the catch.
Lucky Chic also offers a unique feature called "My Concierge," which it's named Emily. Emily will bid for you while you're away from the site, so in a sense you can have Emily do all your dirty work. You just enter a high dollar amount and the number of times and chips to bid.
I watched the last-minute bidding war take place for the iPad, hoping I could leverage some kind of strategy with my chips to win. Problem is that last minute turned into an all-nighter. Each bid adds 20 seconds to the total bidding time, so that last minute went on for 12 hours! And, with the help of Emily, there didn't even need to be a person placing the bids. The last-minute bidding war was between two Emilys — and it went until 2:48 a.m. When all was said and done, the iPad went for $212.40, which is still a great deal, but nowhere close to the $1.80 it was advertised for.
With Emily and Lucky Chips, I feel this site is a misleading rip-off. Because you have to purchase the Lucky Chips, add that price to the cost of the item you've won for your total investment. That's not factoring in all the chips that were purchased and used in a losing effort. With Emily, you'll lose your chips to a robot. And does anyone really have a spare 12 hours to try and get a heavily discounted iPad, only to lose out to a robot?
This whole process stressed me out. I'm not a fan of auction sites to begin with, so I'm not so sure why I wasted my time. Auction sites, for me, are too time consuming and stressful. This is why eBay works best. It offers a stress-free "Buy it Now" option or you can bid. And if you choose to bid, the last-minute bidder will beat you in the last minute — not 12 hours later!
