Online Shopping 1

I want to talk about online shopping cos a few people knowing that I shop and sell online for quite sometimes had asked me regarding online shopping. Some are still scared of doing shopping online so I hope to write this post as a guide for all online-shopper-wannabe. The guidelines are purely based on my experience for my loots which mainly are apparels and cosmetic. I will post different parts on different topics of online shopping cos a lot to say... lol

First of all there is a few different kinds of online shopping, I will focus on the 4 main kinds, that is

1. Online Website (E.g. www.gap.com, www.coach.com, www.jshoppers.com etc)
2. Auction (E.g. Yahoo auction and eBay)
3. Blogs (I will recommend a few blogs later)
4. Forum


For the online website, mostly is overseas website. You can buy brands that are not in Singapore. Things that I recommend to buy from overseas webby are apparels, accessories and cosmetics. Avoid purchase expensive stuffs. For brands like coach, ralph lauren etc, you can get it cheaper at the website(for coach is about 20% cheaper which is plus shipment to sing). But the problem is.. some webby do not send internationally and some do not accept credit cards that is issue out of U.S. For this problem, you can easily solve it by using Vpost or Comgateway which they also provide concierge service. For webby which do not send internationally, you can use Vpost or Comgateway service which they will provide you with a U.S address which you will enter during your online purchase when the seller send the item to the U.S address then the courier will send to Singapore to your address. Google yourself to find out more about Vpost and Comgateway. As for concierge service that they provide, they will pay on your behalf on webby which do not accept Singapore issue credit cards. For more information on this, go google youself.

As for auction, auction provide a wide range of stuffs. New, used, apparels, furniture, liquor, computer stuffs etc... For auction, always remember to check the seller ratings, as long as their ratings are above 97% positive you are mostly safe to buy from them. Always ask question before you bid or 'buy it now'. Ask as much as you like since you are a customer unless the seller do not want to sell to you. For local auction, always be wary on lady apparels. Some sellers sells overseas auction item with a high turnover profits, DO YOUR RESEARCH! Always do research before purchases. You can get overseas auction items by purchasing directly from overseas seller. If overseas seller have minimum quantity of let said 30 then gather you friends or the easier way is to join a spree BUT again be wary of some spree organiser who charge you handling fee or quote the shipment fee higher than it is to earn a profit. Some kind soul spree organiser, organise the spree cos he/she want to buy stuff as well and want to save on shipment so he/she will organise and let said initially she asked you to pay $3 for shipment but after that if shipment is only 2 bucks, she will return you 1 bucks. The down part of purchasing overseas auction is the quality of the apparels so be smart and do your RESEARCH! For overseas auction, if you purchase directly from example Taiwan auction, the trouble is on communication as you need to write email in Chinese, some seller although they indicate they don send overseas but you may try to email them and ask cos some will send if you purchase in bulk.

For blogs, this is the recent craze... Singapore seller setting up blogs selling their own pre-loved stuffs, handmade stuff and stuffs from overseas supplier. I normally shop for blogs that sell unique stuffs. The pros are the quantity of each design is limited so the chance of wearing the same as others is pretty slim, quality tends to be better than stuffs from taiwan auction and if anything wrong you can ask for change or refund easily depends on the policy. The cons are the price tends to be higher than stuffs from auction and nice items tends to be sold out pretty fast so when you see something you like you need to tag or email the blog owner fast.

For forum, quite similar to auction. Seller start a topic of what he/she want to sell and set a selling price which is the amount you will pay if you want to buy from him/her, normally they sell stuffs that they do not want or do not need. For forum, they also offer sprees where some people will gathers order from forum members to buy stuffs they want and share the shipment. Recently I bought a coffee table from a fellow Singaporebrides forum member for just 15 bucks. It is a glass coffee table which condition is pretty good and has that contemporary look and I saw someone selling the exact same table on yahoo auction for $100.

To be continue... ...