Friday, October 31, 2014

A race against time - The quikr-blogadda free shopping fiesta!


Blogadda.com is always coming up with something new or the other. After participating in almost all their contests and activities for about 2 years now, I am game for anything now!

October being the festive month, I was in no mood to write about anything, whether for work or for contests. When blogadda came up with their quikr.com contest, I signed up for it anyway. I received a mail from them a few days later telling me that I have been selected! I was overjoyed and I decided to get to it after all the Diwali festivities were over. I put some money aside as well because this activity required me to buy something from quikr.com at Rs 5000. And yes, blogadda was going to reimburse me for the item bought making it free, free, free!

Exciting, isn’t it? Yes, it was….until the time came when I completely forgot about the activity. I got very busy with my work after Diwali got over and completely forgot about blogadda and quikr. Thanks to their reminder mails which I received a few days ago, I suddenly remembered that I was yet to participate in their quikr activity! And there was no time! There were probably only a few days left!

However, I still couldn’t get to writing the blog or even to quikr.com because I had a huge backlog of work left because of the holiday I had taken during the Durga pujas. I managed to get to quikr.com only on the 29th of December, with just two days to go for the activity to end!

I was worried and excited at the same time. I was worried whether I would find anything to buy at all! Quikr.com holds a special place in my heart because I had adopted one of my dogs, Brownie, from there. She is a precious sweetheart who came to my life only because this website had made it possible. 
However, I still wasn’t confident about buying anything because I had never really bought any “item” on quikr.com before.

Anyway, I had to quickly decide what I wanted to buy. Looking at my own weight which was increasing day by day, I decided to buy a treadmill. Quick and easy!

I logged on to quikr.com and checked through the listings for the right kind of treadmill at the right price. I found only two listings offering treadmills at Rs 5000. One of them had a phone number and the other one had an email address.

http://kolkata.quikr.com/Home-Lifestyle/w923



I decided to email the concerned person right then because it was already midnight. The location was okay with me as I intended to go check the treadmill before I buy. I sent the email, went off to sleep and hoped for the best.

Next morning, I woke up and quickly checked for a reply to email. There was none. It was already the 30th! I went to quikr.com again and called the one other person who was selling a treadmill for Rs 5000. He told me that he had already sold it.

With a heavy heart, I decided that I wasn’t going to get a piece of this activity after all.

I went back to work.

At midnight, I suddenly received a reply to email. The person who had posted the ad turned out to be Sneha Kejriwal, a 13 year old girl! She had sent a long mail introducing herself, her location, condition of the treadmill and why she wanted to sell it. I quickly sent her a reply that I had to go check the treadmill the next morning itself and asked her whether she was okay with it. The simple task of asking for her phone number didn’t even occur to me because I was so worried about the deadline!

This morning I woke up and checked my mails even before I brushed my teeth. There was a reply from Sneha, asking me to come to her house within 1 pm. I cancelled all other work I had and went to her house located at Chakraberia, Bhawanipur.

Sneha was really nice to meet with and she turned out to be a very internet savvy person. On meeting her, I had a quick recollection of my own 13 year old self and how clueless I used to about everything. This girl, on the other hand, was selling her treadmill all on her own!

I checked the treadmill and even walked on it. It was quite good to buy. The display showed the time and amount of calories I have burned in about 3 minutes. I was impressed. I paid her Rs 5000 and she happily told me that she was going to buy a tablet with it.

Now the real worry was to get the thing to my house! I had already informed the mini truck driver at my locality that I might need his services. I called him and he told me that he would manage to come only at around 5 pm! I decided to wait and hang around at the nearby “Homeland” mall which I had never been to before.



Now finally, as I am writing this, the treadmill is sitting pretty in my living room. My dogs are very curious about this monstrous looking thing and are busy sniffing it from top to bottom. All thanks to quikr and blogadda.com.


This post is a part of Quikr.com activity at BlogAdda.com