(niche posting) apparently it's possible to buy directly from 1688 using foreign credit cards now.... interesting......
but ofc there is still no international shipping so I would still need to use an agent for forwarding. so maybe there's not much point vs just using a full-service purchasing agent
it would be nice to deal directly with sellers instead of using a middleman, but then that also means i would have to deal with the language barrier myself, and any other issues that might be harder to solve from out-of-country...
apparently the CC option has issues so i have been setting up alipay and worldfirst instead. i still don't know if i'll actually go through with a purchase but i had to do a ton of verification to get this far. the alibaba group now has pretty much every piece of identifying information about me
today's stupid problem: wanted to install 1688 android app which is available in Eng but only on google play & it is region blocked in the UK. Versions from other sources are Chinese only. I tried installing the eng version through Aurora but it refuses to launch if not installed from the play store
well I did it I placed the order
after all the pissing around setting up worldfirst it simply did not appear as an option at checkout and I have no idea why so i used credit card anyway 🤷
let's hope this all works...!!
The seller messaged me saying their store was temporarily unavailable due to reasons & could I please buy from this other one instead so I had to cancel the original order and get a refund
Apparently refunds were an issue with foreign CCs before but it seems to have been processed so... we go again
One thing that's kind of unfortunate tbh is that Chinese business hours align almost perfectly with UK sleeping hours so if they contact me at the start of their work day I can only really reply at the end
it has been shipped..!! now the nail biting part while I wait for it to arrive at the agent's warehouse.... it literally only has to move between two neighbouring cities in Guangdong province.. what could possibly go wrong
looking nervously at the tracking which seems to indicate it is being sent to completely the wrong city
well it arrived safely in the warehouse after all... phew
the agent's QC actually flagged up one of the items having a small physical blemish on it (I was surprised they even checked that closely tbh) but I can't be fucked with complaining to the seller so I'll just accept it
@lion i had to make a purchase on the google store after coming over to the uk to transition my store to uk region otherwise i couldn't download the fucking bus timetable app
@mavica_again god forbid someone from outside the country can see when the bus is coming?????
i'm still on the verge of doing this... still kind of "aah what if things go wrong and my shit gets stuck in China and i can't do anything about it"
but then what's the worst case scenario I suppose. I might lose 50 quid. It still wouldn't be the stupidest way I've lost 50 quid