Online Shopping Reviews

Coupon Codes for 2012 Black Friday or Cyber Monday from China-based Online Shops

Days ago I published an article introducing the 2012 Black Friday deals offered by Chinese shopping sites (read the post here). Now the two great shopping events are approaching fast and I am trying my best to dig out more useful promotional information on Chinese stores for my readers. This post is going to share about the coupon codes exclusively released for Black Friday or Cyber Monday by two popular China-based online shops.

Lightinthebox.com

This famous Chinese site have released two coupon codes respectively for their 2012 Black Friday Flash Sale and 2012 Cyber Monday Flash Sale. By using the coupon code “BLACKLITB” or “CYBERLITB” at checkout, you can save extra money as long as your order value reaches the thresholds specified in the banners (as seen below). Note that the Lightinthebox Black Friday coupon code will be valid for 48 hours only (through November 23 to November 24) while their Cyber Monday coupon can be used on November 26 only.

Get $10 off $85 when you purchase any product available at Lightinthebox.com. Fashion (especially wedding apparel, formal occasion dresses and casual dresses) and electronics are their major fields. See the Black Friday offer HERE >>

Get $7 off $60 when you purchase any electronic products for sale at the site. In particular, cell phones, tablet PCs and related accessories are among their bestsellers. See the Cyber Monday offer HERE >>

Dinodirect.com

The store launched their Black Friday sales series early and the following one is their Season Two promotion for the holiday. With the code “BLACK02”, you can get 15% off anything when your order value reaches $100. The code will be valid through November 23. So far I haven’t spotted any Cyber Monday deals or coupon codes released by the site yet.

You can use the code to shop their clothing and accessories for men and women, outdoor sports gadgets or apparel, home supplies, health & beauty, toys & hobbies and a lot more categories. See the Black Friday offer HERE >>

More Black Friday or Cyber Monday discount codes will be updated here when they are available. Please check back here for extra savings on your purchases with Chinese stores!

TRIA Beauty Coupon Codes, TRIABeauty.com 2012 Discount Codes for Skin Products

Below you can find the latest TRIA Beauty coupon codes, discount codes and TRIA Beauty promotional codes. Save money for Hair Removal System and Skin Clarifying System.

TRIABeauty.com offers the at-home light-based skin care treatments such as TRIA Laser Hair Removal System and TRIA Skin Clarifying System.

If you are interested in buying from TRIABeauty.com with discount price, come back regularly to see if any TRIA Beauty coupon code is available!

Coupon Code:

SHOP100

Discount Description: $100 Off the Tria Hair Removal Laser, Skin Perfecting Blue Light or Skin Rejuvenating Laser (Canada Only).
End Date: Nov. 27, 2012

Discount Code:

FIFTY

Discount Description: $50 off Tria Devices. Hair Removal Laser – $50 Off, Skin Perfecting Blue Light – $50 Off, Skin Rejuvenating Laser (CANADA Only*) – $50 Off.
End Date: Oct. 9, 2012

Continue reading TRIA Beauty Coupon Codes, TRIABeauty.com 2012 Discount Codes for Skin Products

Chinese Singles’ Day (11 November): The Biggest Sale Day in China

While Black Friday is traditionally the busiest shopping day in the United States and many other American or European countries, 11 November has become the biggest sale day in China since 2009. As a tradition, Chinese people who are still single get together to celebrate their singlehood on 11.11. But the day turns out to be universal shopping spree day for all Chinese, no matter they are single or not.

As the online payment terminal belonging to Alibaba Group, Alipay.com is widely used in Chinese domestic or international online shopping sites, including their own sites Taobao.com(domestic), Tmall.com (domestic) and Aliexpress.com (international). The payment service provider is the best example of 11.11 Singles’ Day carnival sale. This year, a total of more than 19.1 billion RMB was paid through Alipay on that single day, with 13.2 billon at Tmall.com and 5.9 billion at Taobao.com, both of which are Alibaba’s domestic online retail sites. Based on the report, about 6 million orders are placed that day on a wide variety of products at the two sites, from apparel & accessories, electronics, toys, luggage & bags, furniture, home & garden, sporting goods to everything else. How crazy are the Chinese shoppers!

11.11 Carnival Sale Turnover Trend of Alipay for Tmall.com and Taobao.com since 2009

While Taobao.com hosts mostly small and medium-sized sellers, Tmall.com is the truly shopping channel exclusively open to genuine brands only. For the Chinese, it is easy to shop for cheap products at Taobao but the risks are higher as well. There you may encounter dishonest sellers who sell you crappy quality products which are not as described at all. Although Taobao provides payment protection service, when problems are incurred, it can be a real headache to get a satisfying solution sometimes.

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How Do We Review Chinese Shopping Sites Here?

This post is composed as a response to a comment left by a user of our site, who argued that he couldn’t understand why the reviews we posted for Chinese shopping sites here are mostly positive or neutral. As he claimed, he had an unhappy shopping experience with Aliexpress.com and he believes the site is not genuine as we review. To help more readers understand how we rate the Chinese online wholesalers or retailers, I think it necessary to make the points clearly disclosed so that you can have a better decision.

Hi XXX (name hided to protect our user’s private information),

Glad to see that you come back again to share your comment here. With regard to the doubts you shed on us, we admit that as a review website we are not perfect and have so much to improve. Thank you for your valuable suggestion.

It is true the reviews we post here of the Chinese sites are basically positive or neutral. The major reasons are as follows:

1) Although we are trying to post reviews of as many Chinese shopping sites as possible, we can’t do the job now as we have planned because we are short of manpower – 99% of articles published here are written by one author only.

As a result, we put the sites we believe are better in terms of credibility and service at the top priority. While we understand that all these sites also have much to improve and negative reviews against them can be found easily on the Internet, we also know that they have tons of happy customers who have been trading with them for years. We emphasize the good sides of these stores or marketplaces simply because we are ourselves Chinese and it is our mission to popularize and promote better Chinese sites to the world. However, we never intend to overstate their advantages or spread any fake information.

All information we revealed here about them is based on our research and knowledge. To dig out information that can add values to our readers, we read Chinese newspapers, visit Chinese forums or social networking sites and communicate with Chinese friends who are working for the companies. We have good reason to say that Aliexpress.com is a legitimate and genuine site: they belong to Alibaba.com, the most famous and biggest e-commerce company in China, all foreign trade people here know this site. In fact, many e-commerce talents jump from other companies in order to join them for better career development, including a good number of my old colleges who like me worked for another famous wholesale trading platform before.

In addition, their site visits and customer quantity have been soaring since they were founded in 2010. You can search Alexa or Google trend to check their website ranking or interest trend (see the graphs below). As a young site they are developing very, very fast. I think this at least well proves that they are a serious business, not a scammer. They have defeated many powerful Chinese competitors in a short time. So despite that they do have flaws, can we say they are not genuine? Certainly we can’t.

Aliexpress.com’s three-month global traffic rank is 279! This shows the site has a large number of visits. Only big and legitimate sites are able to attract so many visits. See details here >>

From the web search interest comparison between Aliexpress.com, DHgate.com and Lightinthebox.com, the most famous Chinese international shopping sites, we can see that though Aliexpress.com is founded years later than either of the two sites, its search interest quickly leaps to the highest in 2012 (see details here). What does it mean?

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How to Get Suitable Christmas Gifts on a Budget

The 2012 Christmas is approaching fast and it is time to plan our list of Christmas gifts for people we love. While adding gift receivers to the list can be easy and quick, many people find it a lot more tricky to prepare suitable Christmas gifts that fit each person we are going to gift, especially when we are on a limited budget. That’s why we always see people scratching about best Christmas gift ideas ahead of when the holiday season arrives every year.

I totally agree that selecting gifts for our family or friends should be a pleasant experience instead of a painful one. Anyway, I also understand that searching for the right gifts is time-consuming and can be quite a stress when we fail to find out gifts that meet our expectation as well as the gift receivers’ styles and preferences. Here I would like to share my personal advice on how to dig out the great gifts for Christmas 2012 and buy them home with a happy wallet.

Based on my own experience, for whatever holiday or festival, as long as we stick to the most popular shopping websites, it will be completely OK even if we have no gift ideas at all. All mature online shops would launch their holiday shopping promotions with neatly sorted categories of gifts that fit different needs in time. As for Christmas 2012, I have checked out a good number of shopping sites across the world and noticed that some have been offering Christmas deals with deep discounts. In particular, some Chinese wholesale or retail stores or marketplaces have been releasing sales for this Christmas one after another (see the sales listed at the end of this post).

Image courtesy of Ahappydeal.com

As we know, Western local stores start to launch promotions for Christmas from Black Friday, which follows Thanksgiving Day and is regarded as the traditional beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Unlikely, as lots of Chinese online shops serve both re-sellers and end consumers, they tend to start their Christmas promotional activities much earlier. It takes more time for an order to arrive at a destination in another country. And what’s more important, merchants need to stock up for their inventory in advance so that they can seize the best turnover-boosting opportunities and make more profits.

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Facts about AliExpress Scam

When I came across the so called “AliExpress scam” complaint in one forum, I couldn’t help laughing. The angry buyer claimed that AliExpress sent him a wrong item he never ordered. Based on my knowledge about AliExpress, it is no way possible as AliExpress is only a wholesale transaction platform – it does not sell any item, not to mention ship out any item to any customer. Obviously, this buyer was either ripped off by a seller doing business on AliExpress.com or encountered an unprofessional operation carried out by the seller.

In this case, the buyer should report the problem to AliExpress for mediation or contact the seller first to solve the problem. Given such misunderstandings about AliExpress, I think I should share all of my familiar facts about AliExpress, which may help you more clearly identify whether AliExpress scam is a reality or not.

Facts about AliExpress.com
1. An express wholesale channel of Alibaba.com, which was founded in 1999;
2. Officially went live in April, 2010;
3. Mainly serving small businesses, including Chinese small suppliers and global small re-sellers.
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