[review] My Taobao Experience III

Update:
Taobao Experience I on Lequgou
Taobao Experience II on PRouter
Taobao Experience IV on Skycart
65daigou and feedback section

In my previous post, I talked about my experience with PRouter and I mentioned I will talk about Peeka and 65daigou. I understand that 65daigou has previously asked bloggers to promote them, I am declaring here now (after the Xiaxue and Gushcloud dispute lol) that this is not an advertorial for Peeka or 65DG. 

For Peeka and 65DG I have chosen to use sea shipping. 

Peeka provides express Air shipping which is shit expensive and 65DG also provides normal and special air shipping, but I didn't use that. 

There are a couple of reasons why people will opt for sea shipping:

1. They can afford to wait. Sea shipping will take approximately ONE MONTH to reach Singapore. So for people who are epic impatient DO NOT choose sea shipping otherwise your friends will go deaf from your whining and complains.
2. Because of the long wait, sea shipping is much cheaper than air shipping
3. There are special goods/ sensitive goods that cannot be shipped via air. Another forwarder, Oops have provided an explanation for special goods:

Post by Oops Singapore.

By the way I have not used Oops before because there's a need to fill 1cbm of stuff before I can ship stuff out and I don't have so many things to buy, so I doubt I will be using them any time soon.

Moving on!

Take note that both Peeka and 65DG have buy-for-you service ie. they are acting as agent to buy the stuff for you online. This is good for lazy people because as I have mentioned previously, Taobao accepts Singapore cards already. So if you are too lazy to make your own payment or add details to either 65DG or Peeka portal, then choose that option. Please note that they charge agent fee for that. A plus point with this agent service is that they will check your goods before sending it out. Not sure how stringent the checks are as I have seen complaints that Peeka doesn't check the goods properly.

I did not use this service. Instead I use the 'ship-for-me' service. 65DG does provide screenshots of the goods $1 for 3 photos I think, if you want them to do so. So in a way you still can 'check' your goods with Ship-for-me service with 65dg.

Below is the screenshot of my orders I have with Peeka. As you can see I have several sensitive items: leg massager, pen ink refills and watch. Yes, even the batteries for the watch are considered as sensitive items.

It took about three weeks to reach Singapore, within the expected date of arrival provided by Peeka. Peeka also sent an SMS saying that the courier guy will be coming on Nov 6 before 6pm and I remembered it was raining very heavily on the day of delivery. Despite this, the courier guy came on time! 

Below is a screenshot of my orders with 65DG. There were no electronic goods per se, but I have sought advice from PRouter and LQG. Both stated that my paper binding machine is a sensitive good, so I decided to ship it with 65DG. Shipping with 65DG was slower by a week (i.e. 1 month exactly), the goods came within the expected date stated by 65DG and they notify me via SMS as well to collect my goods. 65DG also provides a 30% discount if your goods do not arrive in time which is a nice offer.


The reason why I chose 65DG this time round is because Peeka has a base charge of $10 and a 7% GST. I didn't want to pay that again. As you can see 5.2kg with Peeka cost $35.92 but 7.29kg with 65DG cost $28.90 (before discount). The reason why I used Peeka before was due to the leg massager. Peeka calculates shipment cost via weight for its ship-for-me service while 65DG uses weight or volumetric weight (whichever is heaviest), for the leg massager, the volumetric weight was much 'heavier' than its actual weight, so using Peeka was more cost-effective.

Take note that 65DG only deliver to your house for an additional $5 or $8 depending on your parcel weight, I picked neighbourhood pickup instead since that's free.

For ship-for-me services by Peeka and 65DG, it is up to the customer to fill up the details of the items they are shipping from China on their respective portal. Both Peeka and 65DG will update the system if your items have reached their warehouse (pretty much like Vpost) but sometimes they may miss out, so it is up to the customer to do their own checks and see if all items are declared and are in the warehouses. Some details you will need to fill in include: item description, courier company name, tracking number, cost of goods. Because of the hassle, that's why some people will opt for their 'agent' service.

Delays

As with air shipments, sea shipments are subjected to delays as well and I was lucky not to 'kena' them. Note that NONE of the forwarders be it 65DG, Peeka, Oops etc can control which sea container to place your parcels in. If you have seen our Singapore ports, you will know how big these sea containers are. So if there is one bugger who ordered prohibitive stuff like drugs, everyone's parcels within that container will be subjected to stringent customs check and this will result in delays. I have seen people who complained about these delays blaming the forwarders, and as a spree- organiser who has to explain the reasons for delay to my spree-er, I can tell you this is very frustrating.

In conclusion, after my experience with both Peeka and 65DG, I am more likely to use 65DG if my items are small (both in vol weight and actual weight), if my items are light but has a higher vol weight then I will use Peeka.

Hope this review helps you in deciding which forwarder to use and happy Taobao-ing ~
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