Online Shopping Just Got Better

I love almost every form of shopping.  Window shopping, retail, groceries and online shopping, I love love love it.  Not everything in Malaysia is cheap and not everything is sold in or shipped to Malaysia.  So in comes the wonderful world of online shopping.

Online shopping is big in the US and looking at the country geographically, online shopping is probably one of the most convenient ways to go these days.  So how'd I get sucked in to this modern day shopping experience?  Well, it developed from looking for cheap finds on eBay and Lelong to international sites that shipped to Malaysia (like Amazon.com) to checking out sprees & blogshops and then to getting so frustrated a lot of the things I wanted to buy were sold on sites that shipped internationally but didn't include Malaysia in their list or shipped only to the US and Canada.

eBay & Lelong

Image from Lelong

This is probably one of the most popular forms of online shopping available.  There are typically 2 types of sales on these sites, auctions (highest bid wins the product) and buy now sales (direct purchases without the need to bid).  Lelong was previously also known as BuySell.com.my and is quite popular locally.  It is used by both commercial users (store owners, small business owners) as well as the regular customers (who occasionally sells second hand goods).  What I like about Lelong is that they offer an option to verify your account with them via phone and NRIC verification so sales activities feels a bit more secure.  Now, Lelong has a few other sister sites to further complement their existing services among which are Superbid.com.my (a 12 hour bidding fest held every Wednesdays) and Superbuy.com.my (an online store offering a host of different products to consumers at sometimes lower prices).

Image from eBay Malaysia

While Lelong is geared more towards the local scene, eBay has a much wider network of sellers and buyers.  You can purchase from sellers abroad who accept international payments and offer to ship here.  There are however a lot of scammers floating around on the site so there are some precautions to take to avoid having someone dishonor the sale.  I'll talk more about what to look out for in another post.


Amazon


I used to buy books from Amazon because they had an amazing collection and well, frankly those days we didn't have big bookstores here.  Book selections were also limited and buying from specialty stores can be quite costly.  Amazon now not only focuses on selling books.  They've branched out to selling just about everything you can think of.  The Amazon Marketplace are also home to various stores (think Target, Sephora, Beauty.com, American Apparel, KarmaLoop, etc) as well as other sellers.  You can pretty much find anything on there these days.  It's still one of my favorite places to shop at.

Sprees & Blogshops


When it came to sprees, there are always sites or individuals conducting them every so often.  Most of them list in the Low Yat forums and have even set up blogs and Facebook pages to interact and update their customers or fellow spree-rs.  Sprees are events handled by a person to purchase items from a certain online (or physical) store whereby they charge a small charge on top of the actual product prices ordered by their fellow spree members.  These handlers will take care of buying, taking care of shipment to Malaysia and repackage everything to be posted to the respective members.

Blogshops are also a dime a dozen these days.  There are so many cropping up every day it is very difficult to keep up with.  Of course you could refer to online directories like emmagem or Google product keywords.  There are blogshops selling clothes, accessories, bags, shoes, plus size clothes, and even imported luxury items.  As prices tend to vary a lot, it is best to scout around before emailing your orders.

US Online Stores


Like I've mentioned earlier on in this post, there are a lot of sites that ship to the US and nowhere else (except sometimes maybe Canada) or sites that ship to a list of countries that didn't include Malaysia.  For these sites, like everything else, where there's a will, there's definitely a way.

Enter, the Virtual Shopping Hub (vsHub):

I've been using this service for the past 2 years and I love it.  Of course there are some minor flaws but they've improved a lot with time.  Presently, the site offers 3 services and ships to 3 countries (Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia).  Signing up is absolutely free and they'll supply you with your US address to ship your orders to.

Services Available

Mailbox - You purchase items directly from the seller/store, pay with your credit card or via PayPal or Google Checkout and enter the US address supplied for shipping (remember, your billing address shouldn't be the same as shipping).  All you have to do is forward the invoice and shipping notification to them and they'll receive your items for you and notify you when it has arrived in their warehouse. 

My Shopper - Previously known as their Concierge service, shop via their My Shopper portal (linked in your Member's Page) and fill up the Concierge order form.  They'll email you the purchase quotation and you can make payment via local Bank Transfer.  You will be notified when the order is placed and received via email or you could monitor it from your Member's Page.  Do bear in mind that there is a small fee involved and their fixed exchange rate is higher than the market floating rate.  This service is perfect if you don't have a credit card or if the site you're purchasing from only accepts US credit card payments. 

e-Fulfillment - This is a new service to help you with your business.  There are 3 different packages to choose from and it's basically allowing you to use their warehouse for storage and they will also deliver the items for you to your customers.

Don't get me wrong, this is not the only one of its kind out there but after trying out others, I must say that I like this one best.  They offer good shipping rates, are quite reliable and I've had very good experiences so far.

For more information or to sign up, click here to visit their website.