Singapore Expats

Have you tried buying in AMAZON or bidding in EBAY? Could you tell me your experience and any tips on how to make a good deal? Thanks!

1. Research the item so you know what it's worth.

2. Make sure you read the fine print and understand the shipping charges.

2. Promise yourself not to exceed your price and bid that amount, forget about it until you get an e-mail saying you won or lost.

4. Avoid buying from the sellers with less than 99% positive feedback (ideally above 99.5) and less than few hundreds transactions. For the negatives, check what people say and how the seller reacts.

Buy from Amazon regulary and find it OK. Just try and resist the urge to pay extra for the fastest delivery option.

I've made over 250 purchases from eBay in the last 16 months. So far I've never had a problem (well, I did once but that wasn't Ebay's fault but the USPS!) One thing for certain, if you can and the purchase is worth more than US$50 you would be wise to purchase shipping insurance. Like any auction though, you need to read the fine print, and look at the pictures carefully. Caveat Emptor. And like rnt said, do your research, bid the maximum you are prepared to spend and walk away from it until the auction is over and you receive an email to "please pay for your item" or "sorry you didn't win".

Of course, most don't do that and neither do I, but I do do my research and often snipe at the end of the auction (my bad!).

I use Amazon around 4 to 6 times a year and have done for a number of years now. Never had a problem. The last time was last month (Feb.).

I used to buy often from Amazon. Only DVDs... great value.

Heard of stories however of people losing their orders if they purchased too much. Custom's seizes it and sends you a tax bill.. or something along those lines.

Not sure what it's like when buying from Singapore, however. Some dvd's fall into different classification than what they do overseas, so I have always been hesitant to test the waters and find out whether Sg customs seize dvd's, on top of sending you a bill for screening your collection.

regarding eBay. Haven't had issues, but I mainly pay on pickup, or buy stuff that I simply can't go wrong with.

I have bought a number of CRT monitors (all paid for after inspection), as well as a computer desk. Even laptop ram.

Oh, and if something listed sounds too good to be true, it probably is a scam.

Yeah, like 64GB Kingston Thumbdrives for rediculous low prices from Hong Kong. They ARE Kingston Thumbdrives but they are only 2GB drives that have been programmed to appear to have 64GB of storage. When you save to them, you can see the file structure of those saved things along with some other crap. But you cannot open anything cause it's not there. All Kingston thumbdrives are colour coded for size so if you are curious, check out the Kingston Site.

No, I didn't get burnt, but my boss did on his last trip to China (bought them for the equivalent of SGD5 each for each of his kids and me. Hated to tell him he'd been had.

Bafana wrote:Buy from Amazon regulary and find it OK. Just try and resist the urge to pay extra for the fastest delivery option.

I made an order on Monday, three DVD boxed sets (one of them quite a big one), and postage was just 6.86 GBP. They wanted almost 30 for the quicker option, which makes little sense since regular postage arrives here from the UK within a couple of days anyway.

Remember that if you order from Amazon.co.uk , don't go through vpost or anything like that. Just order direct, the postage is peanuts, and on top of that the prices you see on-screen will be discounted by 17.5% upon checkout... as the delivery adderss is outside the EU, so you get an instant VAT (GST) refund.

Great for DVDs, but they won't send video games outside the EU. Which is the only time I would use vPost with Amazon.co.uk.

sundaymorningstaple wrote:Yeah, like 64GB Kingston Thumbdrives for rediculous low prices from Hong Kong. They ARE Kingston Thumbdrives but they are only 2GB drives that have been programmed to appear to have 64GB of storage. When you save to them, you can see the file structure of those saved things along with some other crap. But you cannot open anything cause it's not there. All Kingston thumbdrives are colour coded for size so if you are curious, check out the Kingston Site.

No, I didn't get burnt, but my boss did on his last trip to China (bought them for the equivalent of SGD5 each for each of his kids and me. Hated to tell him he'd been had.

Check out http://fakememorysentinel.wordpress.com ... nterfeits/

I'm already familiar with it. That's where I got the information from when I found the Thumbdrive was suspect in the beginning.

i purchase stuff from ebay quite often but some us seller does not ship to singapore.

bought books from amazon couple times a year for the last three years, the last was dec last year, and so far no problems at all. if you are working during day time and nobody at home, use the office address as the delivery address since the courier does not have 'pick up yourself' option like normal package (Singapore Post) does.