Groupons are popular everywhere — and yes even here in HCMC.  It’s been here awhile but since most groupon sites are in Vietnamese, I haven’t really cared to check ’em out.  Look at my Groupon from Cung Mua.

See?  It’s all in Vietnamese!  Difficult to buy a voucher when you don’t understand a thing about the terms and conditions.  Clearly, Groupon companies in Vietnam haven’t tapped the expat market and I don’t understand why.  There has been a steady stream of foreigners coming in to Vietnam to live and work (although there’s also a steady stream of people moving out) and I’m pretty sure they have families with wives who love to shop ON A DISCOUNT. 😀

I was only encouraged to try Cung Mua because of the TOMS shoes that I’ve been wanting for months.  For those who don’t know a shred of Vietnamese, better have a Google Chrome browser that automatically translates pages in English.  But even then, there are some parts of the site that are in Vietnamese — especially the images with text.  If you’re wary about the payment system (credit card, bank transfer, and cash on delivery), try the cash on delivery first.  It’ll take 3 or more days for the voucher to reach you using  this process though.  Mine arrived in 2 days after purchase.

But I have one complaint though.  I don’t know what delivery service Cung Mua has hired to make deliveries but the guy who delivered mine didn’t want to come up to my apartment to deliver.  Isn’t that his job?  He insisted on waiting for me buildings away from my apartment.  Since he arrived before noon and I was in the office, I told him to leave the voucher with my nanny.  He said to tell my nanny to come down to meet him.  Of course my nanny couldn’t coz my son was sleeping.  So what happened was, he decided to wait for me until I got home in the evening and met him at the place where he wanted.  WEIRD!  I even gave him an option to deliver to my office in District 1 but he said he only delivers to District 7.

So anyway, I’m not sure if it will still be the same experience if I paid via credit card where it’s an instant payment.  Does Cung Mua send the voucher by e-mail?  But I’m too scared to try my credit card here.  I have faith in PayPAL but sadly, this option is not available.

Oh and another thing — even without these vouchers, I was still able to get my discount in  the shop selling TOMS.  Odd!  Don’t the Groupons get a percentage of the sales?  Now if the shop sells the product at the same price without the customer going through Cung Mua, then Cung Mua doesn’t get any part of the sale WHEN Cung Mua did all the marketing for them.  Hmmm… curious.