WIN! with TAKEALOT.com and 6000 miles…

Incoming email from TAKEALOT.com, voted (when I used them, in their previous guise as Take2.co.za) South Africa’s favourite e-commerce website in the 2010 SA E-Commerce Awards. You’ve probably seen their recent adverts persuading you to “take shopping online” rather than heading to the mall.

For those of you who like facts and figures (that’s me), over the past 12 months they’ve delivered over 400,000 items to their 45,000+ customers, with orders totalling in excess of R75,000,000.

“Boom”

But this is the dealbreaker for me: Simply paste the link for any product you see on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk and they will give you an instant quote on the product and the option to buy it online, with prices INCLUSIVE of all duties and taxes – no hidden nasties here.

To celebrate the launch of TAKEALOT.com, they’ve kindly given us a R200 voucher to give away to one lucky reader.

To win, all you have to do is to:
1. answer a simple question (it takes the minimum of detective work) and
2. be a fan of the 6000.co.za page on Facebook.

The question is: On TAKEALOT.com, how much is the DVD of a-ha’s last ever concert?

Please send me your answer by CLICKING HERE.
Note that you’ll also need to give me your facebook name if it’s different from that on your email.

Some few rules and regulations:
Competition is open until 0100 CAT on Saturday 16th July 2011.
One entry per Facebook name.
Winner will be chosen randomly from all correct answers from fans on the 6000.co.za page.
Winner must be 18 years or older and SA resident: TAKEALOT only ships within SA borders.
Judge’s decision is final.

6 thoughts on “WIN! with TAKEALOT.com and 6000 miles…

  1. Hope you are not getting paid for comment 6000. Would enter the comp, but fall foul of the rules and regulations.

  2. Stan (and anyone else who is interested) > See, here’s how this works.

    I get approached (usually via email) several (or more) times a week and asked to promote things. More than 95% of the time, I turn these down. However, there are those times that I sometimes take them up on their offer – here are a few examples of when that might actually happen:

    1. Something comes along that genuinely interests me – the Nokia #mobiblog promotion, for example. They gave me a cactus, I wrote an Ovi app for my blog. Everyone wins.

    2. They pay me to do it. Yes. *shock* This actually happens.
    It still amuses me that I’m seen as an “influencer”. 6000 miles… is not my work, it’s my hobby, and I don’t foresee any point when this will change. Occasionally, I run ad campaigns for various businesses. They get publicity, I get some pocket money. Everyone wins.
    It might surprise people to learn that I could fill the blog with garish ads all over, but I choose not to -I’m picky. I enjoy writing the words. I don’t enjoy having to try and find them amongst adverts.

    I’ve run google ads for a couple of years now and the money came in very useful when I was over in the UK last November/December. Not, as you might (wildly) imagine, to pay for flights, but more to pay for coffee while I was stranded at Gatwick airport. That’s the sort of scale we’re looking at here.
    I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations and I reckon that the TOTAL amount of money I have made from this blog over the last 3 1/2 years is less than I make in 3 days in my job. And I’m a scientist, not a lawyer, not an accountant, not the CEO of Eskom.

    3. I see no harm in wanting to support local businesses. Especially ones I have used and who have done a good job. Here’s a good example. I don’t get paid to do that, I just think that there’s too much negativity in SA. So sure – complain when you get poor service – but give a helping hand when you find something that’s good. Everyone wins.

    This very morning, I spent 15 minutes with two kids (aged 2 and 5, who didn’t want to be in a post office) queuing in the local post office (oh dear) to pick up a DVD that I had ordered from a large Brazilian river in the UK, about 4 weeks ago. Once we got to the front of the queue, I coughed up the extra R57.65 in duties before I was allowed to take it away. Even then, I had to check that the contents were ok, because the package had been mysteriously “opened in transit”. Not fun.

    Quite by chance, TAKEALOT got in touch (after my DVD order, but before my DVD pickup) and offered me a R200 voucher to give to one of my readers. I have used them before, but I didn’t know about their Amazon thing. I will certainly be using it. I would have used it earlier if I’d known.
    So:
    It’s something that interests me. Tick.
    There’s a voucher involved. Tick.
    It’s a decent local business. Tick.

    And what an opportunity to give something back to my readers. Other blogs run daily competitions/weekly competitions/daily and weekly competitions etc etc etc. But this one doesn’t, because I very rarely get given anything to give away.
    And let me tell you how much of a pain it is.
    1. I have to abide by Facebook competition rules. Know about them? Rather Draconian.
    2. I have to abide by TAKEALOT competition rules.
    3. I have to set up a method of collecting competition entries.
    4. I have about a billion billion people (*cough* – Ed) accusing me of “selling out”, bad mouthing me on twitter and having a pop via email.
    It’s more than enough to put you right off doing it again, believe me.
    This isn’t 2OV, this isn’t iMod. I am not the Parlotones.
    I got offered a voucher to give away to my readers by a local business which I have used, which gave me excellent service and which I will be using again.

    S’all.

  3. I can’t actually get on board with their new name and they will forever be known to me as Take2. That being said, they’re still the only place I CHOOSE to shop. \o.

    Psst…I know it’s not me chirping you about selling out lately so who is it? O_o

  4. PS though if I could have figured out how to put a smiley on my original question I would have.

  5. T > I have no comment.

    Stan > And I bet you wish I had no comment.
    Sorry if that rant seemed to be aimed directly and solely at you. Not my intention. Just seemed like as good a place as any to explain stuffs.

    Stan> Just draw a smiley face with a semi-colon, a hyphen and a bracket: 😉 (or 🙁 )

    Leave a Reply