Online Shopping

Online shopping is becoming more and more popular as it not only provides convenient shopping right at your fingertips and you get to buy stuff that may not be so widely available in the stores of your country. For eg., if you shop at US websites, you will not find anyone (very low possibility at least) wearing the same clothes as you!! I love that feeling!! (Simply hate to wear e same clothes with so many other people, like different sizes of clones walking on the streets!!)

Me and a fren initially started online shopping, mainly at eBay sometime in 2004. As we need to bid for most of the bags as its an auction market (goods are new though, alot of eBay sellers do real business online!). Its really fun when you learn the tricks of bidding and win what you want, the sense of satisfaction is overwhelming! The craze was just on buying a US brand bad - LeSportSac. As they are not selling in Singapore then, they are selling like hot cakes in eBay. Gradually, we buy less coz we have almost collected all the nice designs and out of a sudden, Singapore started selling. Obviously we din want anyone to carry same designs as us.

In the meantime, I also started selling some of my stuff on Yahoo and eBay. Managed to sell some stuff through both and earned abit! However, its pretty time consuming to post an item, especially those with special terms and conditions. Bad thing about selling in eBay (international not Singapore) is that there is charges for posting an item and when receiving payment through Paypal (an online payment "middleman"). eBay Singapore has little or no traffic so dun waste time there. Yahoo Auctions (Singapore) is therefore more popular website for good buys. You can find all kinds of goods here, whether new or 2nd hand, and its a good place to get rid of old stuff and earn abit too!!

Other than auctions shopping, there is also overseas online shopping (using secure credit card transactions) which I also do. Most of the sites I buy from are in the US, which I will use vPost (a paid service by Singapore Post for handling shipments from overseas merchants who do not ship directly to Singapore). The disadvantage is that you dun get to try on the clothing or touch the materials before you decide to buy. However, you do get a wide range of products to chose from, most of them with well-taken photos for reference. The only hitch is you might end up getting the wrong sizes, as they differ from different websites. I have a few experiences whereby the clothes purchased were either too small or too big. You have an option to return for a refund or return for an exchange at your own cost. This is one main advantage of shopping in US sites. They take customers satisfaction seriously and allow any returns or exchanges within a certain timeframe (mostly ard 60 days) should you decide you do not like the clothing or in the case of wrong sizes. Of coz, the goods must still in good conditions (common sense). I think you can never get these kind of services in Singapore (we only have within max. 7 days to exchange any products - based on specific terms and conditions).

Online shopping is fun and hassle-free (most of the time). I feel good when colleagues or frens commented on my clothes bought from US (nice, unique, good change etc). I seldom shop for clothes in Singapore (even KL or HK)coz the sizes dun quite fit me (too fat la) and I dun like to wear same clothes as others so online shopping is definitely for me.

Well, within this week, I just spent quite alot (including some clothing for a fren) on online purchases from 3 different websites (with one more to come). Treat it as a reward for my hard work (from my bonus-to- come in March's salary payout)!!

Here are some sites I surf for nice clothings:
1. Old Navy - cheap and nice casual wear
2. Lerner Catalog - colourful options, nice suits
3. La Redoute - modern and chic clothing
4. Lane Bryant - nice casual wear
5. BCOutlet - good bargains (up to 70% off regular pricing)
6. Avenue - matured wear

Happy shopping!!