Chinese Books Purchased from 65daigou.com

Having had no news from dangdang.com for my 4 orders (the delivery time is getting longer and longer I heard), I was introduced to the service for 65daigou.com who helps others to buy from stores in China and delivers to Singapore. Much like what vPost (vConcierge), Comgateway (buy for me service) and Borderlinx (concierge service) is doing for US shopping.

I figured that if we use airmail, the shipping time should be significantly faster. Also, for sites like dangdang.com, where only books available in their Beijing warehouse can be shipped overseas, we have an added option for books available in Shanghai warehouse to be shipped to us (as 65daigou.com‘s warehouse is located in Shanghai).

So I placed my 1st order with them on the 21 Feb 2011, mainly on books that are available in dangdang.com‘s Shanghai warehouse and not the Beijing warehouse. 65daigou.com‘s website is simple, but the information is (just) enough. Everything I believe is very manual in their backend.

Placing the order is fairly simple, you copy and paste the link of the books you want, and they will charge an extra 10RMB for the first item (10 RMB is what they charge for local domestic shipment per retailer regardless of the number of items from the same retailer). You than add to the cart and keep repeating till you got all the books you want. There after when you checkout, they will let you know the total you need to pay them for this 1st transfer (the cost of the books). They will charge you in Sing dollar. You can pay by bank transfer (various bank options) or paypal (which incur a fee).

After payment is verified, they will proceed to place your order. In my case, the payment receive acknowledgement was on the same day (21 Feb 2011) and the order is placed on the 23 Feb 2011 (they did mention order will be place 24-48hours upon payment receipt).

It took a mere 4 days (27 Feb 2011) for the items to reach their Shanghai warehouse. They will auto-ship all the items to Singapore. In this case, the items left Shanghai to Singapore on the 1 Mar 2011 and arrived Singapore on the 2 Mar 2011. On the same day, we are able to proceed to check out the 2nd payment info (delivery charges to Singapore) which in my case, it cost S$14.55 for the shipment charges. I’ve check and dangdang would have charged me S$8.45, but the wait would be eternal (ok, not that long, but still a neck stretching 8-10 weeks by recent report).

All in, I feel the extra $6 is well worth it. Than again, this may not be the case for all, especially for book-set. Reason is 65daigou.com charge by weight whereas dangdang charge by 50% of the original book cost. So in certain case, if the books are heavy, expect to pay much more for shipping on 65daigou.com.

After payment you are able to select when and where you want to collect the books. There are 3 locations, Yew Tee MRT (where their Singapore warehouse is), Woodlands MRT and Jurong MRT. Not the best locations for people who stay in the east unless you want to pay extra for local delivery. I selected to collect it on the 3 Mar 2011 evening (only 1 timing to choose) at Yew Tee MRT and saw about 10-12 packages there waiting for people to collect (I was the first).

So all in all it took me 11 days from order to receive. I believe they should expect more orders from me