Yet Another Review: Online Shopping at Taobao (淘宝)!

Since my previous big loot using Amcon, I made a few more purchases using different methods and different agents and forwarders. So I will be doing a quick review on their services 🙂

Peeka SHIP4U
Shipping cost: $49.20
Calculated by actual weight: 13.7kg
Type: Sea
Delivery type: to home address
Duration: 20 days (paid shipping on 22nd Oct, received on 10th Nov)

This shipment was the largest, most expensive and took the longest, Peeka’s customer service is getting lousier by the minute and I would suggest to avoid them at all cost from now on.

65daigou Buy-for-Me
Shipping cost (inclusive of agent fee): $22.26
Calculated by volumetric weight: 1.12kg
Type: Express Air
Delivery type: Self-collect from Tai Seng Warehouse
Duration: 4 days (paid on 26th Dec, collected on 30th Dec)

This was a very small shipment and I needed it quickly. The small box contained a replacement LCD screen for my Samsung Galaxy S4. I used them because I had some points leftover that could offset the agent fees. However, they are not as trustworthy as they claimed they are. They actually packaged many of my small items in a large box and charged me the volumetric weight of their item. BUT, they have good customer service so they refunded me the extra shipping cost after I lodged a complain. I believed they didn’t repack the items to save space, they did not help me check the item nor did they take more care with my fragile item. It was more to the credit of the taobao sellers’ packaging that my items arrived undamaged. Their service was equivalent to a forwarder even though they charge an agent fee.

4PX 国际转运

Shipping cost: $10 (43RMB)
Calculated by actual weight: 0.97kg
Type: Express Air
Delivery type: Self-collect from Popstation
Duration: 4 days (paid for shipping on 12th Jan, collected on 15th Jan)

No more trying of other forwarders for experience, this is by far the best one! There are two delivery options for this, either via Speedpost or Toll. Most people have mentioned that smaller packages are handled by Speedpost and they process things faster than Toll. The best thing is you can now choose to deliver it to a POPStation; no more time wasted waiting for your package at home. I was once again shipping a LCD replacement screen, this time for my Note II and the seller packaged it really well. I personally reminded the taobao sellers that the item was being forwarded to Singapore, I believed that’s why the items were packaged extremely well this time round.

Hougang Parkview: Review of Taobao (淘宝) Loots!

A quick update on how some of the buys from taobao have been doing 🙂 If you would like me to review the items, please leave a comment and I shall get to it.

First up, the correct legs of the study chairs have finally arrived. It was a SUPER long wait. The packaging was beyond lousy. Luckily nothing was damaged in the process. The workmanship was not the best, however after we fixed everything together, the chair looks pretty decent! The chairs are quite comfortable and sturdy. The material of the chair is just what I wanted; there are small holes in it that makes it more cooling to sit on, the material is water-repellent so it doesn’t absorb sweat and it is easy to clean!

I am loving the robot vacuum that I bought in my first loot. It is really the greatest helper at home! The amount of dust it vacuums is beyond belief. We purposely bought furniture that can be shifted around or had legs that were long enough for the robot to get under. So whenever I can, I clear the floor of anything that can be cleared and just let it roam. It uses about 70-80% of its battery life if I want it to clean the entire house. The only problem I have with it is sometimes it doesn’t charge properly; it will show that it is 100% when in fact it has only been charged 20%. But the problem is easily solved by removing the robot from the dock and putting it back to charge again. The dustmite vacuum is quite pointless and under utilized, plus the supposed ‘vibrating’ function it had spoiled after the first use.

The lights are all working well, except for the service yard light and kitchen light. Please do not buy LED lights from this shop: 度尔家居专营店, both the capacitor for both light fused, one within a week of installation and one within 6 months of installation. My sister’s light from them also had the same problem. Although the sellers usually are willing to send a replacement, but this just shows the quality of their products are just not good.

Magic bullet is working very very well! I use it mainly for chopped garlic, grinding sugar and the ocassional smoothie. The many many cups that they provided really helps as I can store the processed items in them without being afraid that I would run out.

Corkboard was quite easy to put up on the wall. It is now our travelogue!

Hougang Parkview: Another Big Loot from Taobao (淘宝)!

I recently made another purchase using Amcon Express. I didn’t like this experience as much as the previous time. I felt that this time round, communication with May wasn’t the best and she also insisted that I told her the wrong information. It was not totally her fault, perhaps due to the fact that there were much more items this time round, I came across some really crappy taobao sellers.

So what happened exactly? I did the usual thing, buy all my items from taobao using my credit card and having Amcon’s address as the shipping address. I was quite happy actually, cos’ I got some discounts from my tmall 积分 and 淘金币. However, two sellers took very long to ship the items (books and cork board) and by then 90% of the items have already arrived in the China warehouse on 21st June. Without my knowledge, May decided to ship these items to Singapore (装柜) first, then she shipped the other batch over on 23rd June. Normally, this would not have been an issue but there were more bumps in the process this time round.

1st problem: number of boxes (箱数)
This problem is arise when I purchase more than 1 bulky item from their stall, some of them were not able to tell me how many boxes these items would arrive in. So the number of boxes Amcon received and the number of boxes I thought I should receive didn’t match up;  because some of them told me that the items (study chair and weighing scale) told me that they will ship the items in two boxes but ended up shipping it in one. How to avoid this? Keep on checking with the seller, generally if there is only one tracking number (订单号) there should only be one box.

2nd problem: seller not taking note of instructions (备注)
This problem only happened with the seller which I bought the study chairs from. There were lots of options for the study chairs I bought; you can choose the height of the back support, the type of legs and the material of the chair. With this, most sellers will cater to this my having you select them during the purchase process. This seller did not cater to this, so I had to choose some other similar option while the seller adjusted the price and put a note down. However, even after extensive communication with them, they managed to send the wrong legs to me. So after I made noise about their irresponsibility, the seller send me the correct legs free of charge. So now I had to have another batch of shipment coming in.
Furthermore, May suddenly said she receive another package at her warehouse which I have no idea came from which seller (initially I thought it is from whom I bought the cork board from). So I won’t be able to pinpoint the crappy seller until I receive the item.

3rd problem: below average service from Amcon
Somehow, May was not as prompt as the previous time. The last time I shipped my items, it arrived in Singapore in 8 days. This time round, it took 13 days. I mentioned it to May, not to offend her, but just wanted to know if it was due to a holiday or something. She was very offended and became defensive and started insisting that I told her certain things which I did not, and I have my Whatsapp to vouch for that. It was only at this point did I realize I had 3 shipments coming in – 21st June, 23rd June and the final batch in 1st July (the items arrived on 28th June, but somehow she did not ship them over immediately). This 1st July shipment will only arrive in Singapore on 13th July.

One of the reason why I chose Amcon again was because it took the shortest time to arrive in Singapore from China and also the service from May. I didn’t mind paying more (shipping is more expensive plus the $35 extra admin charge) for better service but after this round, I shall try Oops.sg for my next shipment.

Unhappiness aside, at least I got my items! My shipment was HUGE (1.3 cbm) this time round, made me think that I didn’t utilize the 1 cubic metre fully the previous time. I barricade myself from the entrance after unwrapping all my items!

I don’t have the pictures for all the items as I was too tired and excited with the unboxing process, plus I was doing it alone, but this are the significant ones.

Food slicer very useful! No more tears when slicing onions or being afraid of chopping of my own fingers. The blade is very very sharp, so the handle should be used all the time.
Knife stand it is made of bamboo (hopefully its true). Fits all our knifes well, good quality.
Magic bullet cheap alternative to the Shimono food processor that my mum has. Works just as well so far and the plug is compatible to our sockets.
Toolbox better quality than the ones in Toyogo, however you don’t have to specially buy this since Homefix also has comparable ones.
Motorised ‘unicycle’ this is for a relative, who is thinking of selling it, contact me if you are interested (item has been sold)! Very good quality and packaging but requires some practice to learn how to ride it.
Wall clock good quality and it looks great!
Toilet roll box very happy with the quality since I had a hard time finding a decent seller. Many of the other sellers had a lot of complains about quality and broken items.
Tanita weighing scale bought two of them, both arrived in original tanita packaging, Japanese words and all. It is so much cheaper and the quality is comparable.
Dining chairs love the design, but the chairs came with scratches on all the legs, indicating that their paint job is quite lousy. the seller said that I should have told them that it was meant to be shipped to Singapore so that they good package the chairs better. However, some of the scratched areas have already rusted, so I am pretty sure it was scratched a while ago and not only during the shipping process which the seller kept insisting that it was. I got a 20% discount though after I made noise.
Corkboard definitely cheaper and extremely good quality! I bought the 80 by 120cm one.
Kitchen rack no pictures for this, but the quality is really really good! Furthermore, you can shift the height of the rack. I was initially kicking myself for not buying something similar in Daiso but I gotta say that I was greatly consoled when I un-boxed this.
Study chairs no pictures yet as I am waiting for the damn legs! So far the quality seems pretty good and it was packed well too.

Check out this post for reviews of the items.

Hougang Parkview: I Want My Internet!

This post is on behalf of the man. He shall show you how you can get a LAN point in every room even though initially, HDB only installed telephone points for all rooms.

If you look at your electrical plan you will see a multimedia box:From there, you will see many lines leading to different rooms and the location of the telephone outlets which are represented by a triangle:So all the cables from each outlet have already been laid underneath the concrete flooring and they all terminate at the multimedia box. You can’t see them because they are all covered up by this square plate. Pop it open and voila!

There are a total of seven cables terminating in the multimedia box, they come from the bedrooms (3), household shelter (1) and living room (1); plus 2 extras cables which we have no idea where it leads to. The additional data point below the cables lead to a data outlet next to TV point in the living room.

Removing the telephone outlet
The telephone points can be modified to LAN points with the steps shown only if it is an RJ45 outlet. Purely telephone outlets are known as RJ11.
Use a screwdriver to pop the side panels of the wall plate.
Remove the rectangular panel by loosening the screws.
You will see that only the blue and white wires are connected to the wall socket. Snip the two wire to remove the entire rectangular panel.
(Keep the RJ11 sockets in case you ever want to reverse the process)

Connecting the LAN outlet
Since we were not buying our items locally we bought this, which essentially replaces the entire face plate and socket with the correct one, eliminating any incompatibility in measurements that we may encounter.

(The item we bought did not require us to have any additional tools that are normally needed)

Trim the cables to the same length and insert them into the matching color slots.
There are 2 color conventions, A and B. Choose 1 and stick to it for all the sockets, including the ones at the multimedia box.
Using convention B, from left to right the wires to be placed in are orange, orange-white, blue, blue-white, green, green-white, maroon, maroon-white

After inserting the cables into the slots, push the clear tab to press the wires in. This is a permanent process, so make sure the correct wires are in place!

After which you just need to screw in the rectangular panel and pop the side panel back on. Repeat this process on all the RJ11 outlets you would like to change.

Wiring Up the MMB
As mentioned previously, there are 7 cables terminating here but only 5 outlets in the house. In order to find out where these cables lead to, we had to connect them to RJ45 sockets, this is what we bought.

Connect all the cables to the sockets (the steps are similar to that illustrated above).

Now comes the tedious part; you would either need an existing ONT and router or a cable tester to figure out where each of the cables come from. The general idea is to transmit a signal from the MMB and manually go to each room to determine which outlet will receive the signal.
With an existing ONT and router, I would connect a lan cable from the router to any of the outlets in the MMB, then connect a laptop to each of the outlets to see if you can access the internet. Once you know where the cables lead to, remember to indicate with a marker or equivalent.

Making Things Neater *Optional*
You have the option of placing 4-hole face plate like this to neaten things up. You just need to pop the sockets into the back of the face plate.

We are currently putting this part of the project on hold because we intend to use all 5 cables (with one remaining as a telephone line).

Update! We found this and will be purchasing it to try. The best part about the panel is that is customisable, so you just need to tell the seller that you want 5 RJ45 sockets and 1 RJ11 socket. We finally fixed it up! And it looks so much neater compared to the previous mash of wires. The man also drilled a hole at the bottom of the media box so that the wires can be gathered together. We have very good news too! The telephone cable can be plugged in a RJ45 socket and it works; so there is no need to customize the plate. So convenient!

 

Hougang Parkview: My Biggest Loot from Taobao (淘宝)!

So after lots and lots of reading, procrastinating and discussions, we finally made the decision to purchase all our lights from Taobao! From my previous posts, you would know that I am not a stranger to this amazing online china website. However, I have never purchased such big ticket items from them before.

We were torn between two different forwarders: Oops.sg and Amcon Express. We are looking at their service for sea shipping which is calculated by volume. Oops.sg is pretty popular with Hardwarezone member, do check out the thread here. Amcon will be more expensive than Oops.sg as they have an additional charge of $35. You would also be able to opt in for a 3% insurance to protect your items against damages during shipping for Oops. However, after speaking to May Ho (representative of Amcon) on the phone, I was reassured by her honesty and sincerity, plus many Renotalk members have shipped items through her too.
Updated post here and here on Amcon Express services, please read before deciding on them.

Name: May Ho
Contact number: 93862818
Shipping charges: 550RMB/cubic metre + $35 (documentation fee) + 7% GST
Shipping duration: 8 days
Note: get seller to write your name or nickname (麦头) on the outside of the packaging of your items

I have nothing but praises for May’s and Amcon’s services. Take note that you have to tell the seller to write your name or nickname on the outside of the packaging of your items, this is so that the staff in the China warehouse can identify your items and sort them out. After you have ordered your items, you will have to fill in a form with shipping information (运单号码，物流公司) plus declare the prices of the items.
IMPORTANT! After your items have been shipped out by the seller, check the number of boxes you will be receiving. Especially with bulky items, some sellers might send them in separate packaging and different tracking numbers. It doesn’t necessary mean that the seller will pack everything into one box. This will also need to be indicated in the form so that the warehouse will ship all your items to Singapore.
When the tracking system indicates that my first item has been received by the warehouse I will get May to double check. After which, she will then update me daily with the list of items the warehouse receives. The exchanges with her was usually done through Whatsapp and she is always prompt in replying.

And you can really pack A LOT of things in one cubic metre (1 m by 1 m by 1 m).

How did I choose my items? I bought my lights and the vacuum from Tmall. The rest I just went with the store with the highest sale (销量).

living room

living room

master bedroom

kitchen

service yard

study

corridor

Tv console workmanship isn’t superb but flaws are not noticeable, still a good buy compared to the price in Singapore
Dustbin quality is not bad, simple mechanism that works well
Flipclock looks super nice, timing is very accurate, however quality is not superb
Dustmite vacuum and Robot vacuum have yet to use it, take note that you need to change the plug or use a converter
Soap dispenser and toilet roll holder great quality
Handspray good quality, quite heavy
Living room, kitchen and service yard, master bedroom and household shelter (free gift – not LED), study and spare room, toilet, corridor lights all the lights arrived intact. Phew. They are all well-packed to avoid breakages. The lights are bright! The only problem I had was with the study and spare room lights. The seller sent me the wrong color but they are sending extra replacements for me and May is nice enough to help me ship it over at no cost.

Check out this post for reviews of the items.

*Upgraded Version* Online Shopping at Taobao (淘宝)!

Exciting updates! Now it is easier than ever to buy stuff from Taobao.
There is a FIFTH method to getting things from taobao and I have already tried it twice.
I must say I am very happy with this method!

This method is similar to the 4th method I mentioned previously, only this time instead of a friend, you look for a official forwarder. What you get is a warehouse in China where you can ship all your items to, and the forwarder will pack them together and ship them to Singapore for you. I like this method because I receive my shipment faster (3 days!), I get to earn points through taobao, I don’t need to pay service fee to a third party and I get to charge it to my own credit card for points.

The first time I tried it, I ordered some wedding stuff. The forwarder I used was 4PX. Go to this link to learn how to use their in-house forwarder (国际转运).
It is pretty simple though; you type in your normal SG address in taobao and during the checkout process you choose the option of 国际转运. Taobao sellers will ship the items in a warehouse in China and once all your items have arrived, you consolidate them into one package and ship it to SG!

Update (5th May 2014) Tracking can be done on a third party website as the automated on taobao will stop updating once the items arrived in Singapore. 4PX ties in with two delivery companies in Singapore: Airpak Express or TGX Asia /TCK Express (TGX actually gets TCK to deliver items from taobao so check with the latter when you have questions about the delivery of your item). If your tracking number starts with 8100, it will be delivered by Airpak; if it starts with 2009, it will be delivered by TCK.

I spent around $20 for shipping and bought the following stuff (plus a scarf). 4PX charges by actual weight, my items weigh about 3.3kg, rounded up to 3.5kg.

I didn’t really like the way they packaged my items, plus the 快递 amount was always wonky as they capture the item as going to 海外 and not the warehouse in China. Also, certain 套餐 items cannot be bought conveniently.

The second time I tried with another forwarder, trading one.
This time round, you use the address of their warehouse in China during checkout. After you have bought all your items, complete and send an order form so that the people in the warehouse can pick out your items. Once all your items have arrived, you inform them to package it and ship it to SG!

I spend $19 for shipping this time round. My items weigh 3.3kg but was rounded up to 4kg. So I lugi abit, but that was also cos’ I can’t think of anything to buy anymore! I could actually add more items to make the shipment more worth it.

I like the way they packaged my items and the shipping is slightly cheaper than 4PX. However, they charge by volumetric OR actual weight, depending on which is heavier.

So there you go! A new way to shop at taobao 🙂

Online Shopping at Taobao (淘宝)!

I used to buy stationery from taobao through livejournal sprees. But as wise up, I realized I could shop more freely and whenever I want on my own. I don’t have to wait for sprees to start and I can have the items delivered directly to my place.

There are basically three ways you can shop on taobao:

1. by participating in a spree
2. buying directly from the seller
3. through an online buy-for-me service
4. have a friend that stays in China who can help you bring stuff that you shipped to his/her place over

I don’t like the first method as there is usually a limit to what you can buy and you have to wait for someone to start a spree. Plus the shipping is not always cheap and you have to self collect the items.

The second method has recently been made more convenient as they now accept DBS/POSB credit cards but you would be at the mercy of bank exchange rates. You must also have a good command of Chinese and know how to use the 阿里旺旺 chat. The seller must also be willing to ship to Singapore and you have to bear the shipping charges which should be pretty high.

I don’t have a close friend living in China; if not the fourth is actually the cheapest method.

Therefore I usually go with number 3. The service that I frequent is Peeka. I tried this one and also 65daigou before. This two are the more established and popular ones amongst Singaporeans. There are many many more of such services available. You just need to google.

I wanted to ship some bulky items that will be stored in a box measuring 50 by 50 by 70 cm. This item costs 858 RMB and costs 80 RMB to ship to 深圳 (Peeka) and 30 RMB to ship to 上海 (65daigou).

• With sea shipping Peeka costs 210.11 + 70.50 =  280.61 SGD
• With sea shipping 65daigou costs 204.06 + 104.30 = 308.36 SGD + 8 SGD (if I want it to be shipped to my doorstep)
• Direct shipping to Singapore is a crazy 2500 RMB (estimated 680 SGD)

I actually tried both services before and I preferred Peeka because I feel that it is cheaper and faster. I also prefer the Peeka interface as I have a clear idea of what I ordered, how much I paid, how much I have to pay, how long the order is taking and so on. 65daigou was a little confusing and they even calculated the amount that I had to pay wrongly.

There was once that Peeka forgot to ship one of my items from the China Shipping Centre to Singapore and they waived the shipping fee for that item. It was a 65 litre Esky cooler and would have cost quite a bit to ship. They also helped me expedit some book orders from 当当 and they are always prompt in replying queries. PLUS, they always have this 1-for-1 luggage promotion that I love. Thumbs up for customer service!