My experience using Buyee to shop stuff from Japan

 

I've been using proxy service to buy things from Japan for years and there are many and they seem to continue to grow. Especially since the yen to cheap compare to the US dollar. I wasn't satisfied with Zenmarket so I wanted to try Buyee out. I find their service fee cheaper since it doesn't charge per item but per order. You have options to just pay the basic fee or pay more for inspection. 

When I looked up Buyee to see other people experience with it, there are quite a few who were dissatisfied and it seems to they misunderstood what a proxy service is. They would buy and item and get it but aren't happy with it so they try to demand a refund. And they get angry when Buyee doesn't refund them. So here's a BIG warning on proxy service, you can't return items! They are just a middle man and aren't going to go through the return process over your items that you want to return. please keep in mind this risk! Don't go using it to buy something expensive or rare on the auction site or mercari since it might be a scam. Mercari now offers listings directly from Japan now and Mercari may be more willing to give you refunds. 

What I find useful with Buyee is that they have discounts. Before mercari opened up internationally, I would use Buyee to buy from Mercari. And would take advantage of their discounts for Mercari as well as Rakuten. You can order from within their site or use their extention to add things to your cart from the shopping site itself. I personally like going through the actual site to shop since not everything gets listed on Buyee when you try to search for it. 

Buyee has a separate page with all the items you put in your cart and it divides them by store. It also tells you how much it will be in your currency. This price does change with the exchange rate too. 

Once your complete an order, the order will move to a different page with status bar for when they buy it to when its in the warehouse. Once it reaches the warehouse it will start a countdown timer on its free storage days. It will also tell you an estimated weight and price for shipping it internationally.

And once you paid for international shipping your order will again move to a different page to track your shipped items. So far I have good experience with Buyee. None of my items arrived damaged or missing. I do wish they had DHL as a shipping option. Most of my packages were shipped by EMS which is pricey sometimes.

You can also have them order from a shop not supported by their extension which I have done. Even on sites that have a competitor proxy service pop up on it. But there are some shops that don't allow proxy services. I tried to order from TORCH TORCH and it was canceled because of that. This process does take longer than buying from Mercari or Rakuten. And it put into its own cart page separate from the others. But it will go to the same Ordered and Shipping page.

Customer service so far I've had a good experience with. They mostly contacted me about my order that I'm missing a detail. Once was a shirt that had a personalized option that I didn't fill out. And another time was about chocolates I wanted to buy but since the weather was warm it required ice packs. 

Overall I am liking Buyee and will continue to use it!

I tried Laudree macarons shipped to me. Here's how it went

 


For my birthday I wanted to treat myself to macarons since its been awhile since I had them and I was craving them a bit. I was glad to see that Laudree can ship their macarons nationwide since I've been wanting to try them and there are none near me.

The selection on what they ship is limited. There are different boxes with a set number of macarons. I think the most disappointing is the lack to choose your flavors. You are just given what they have available. Their flavors are pretty simple and elegant. They don't really tell you all their flavors on their site. 

I chose a box of 15 which cost $61 which makes each macaron $4.07 which is rather high. Plus they only have overnight shipping so you have to add $25 to the total which came out to $86 that I got charged for my order. Which makes each macaron cost $5.73 each! Luckily you can choose a date of when you wanted it to be delivered. 

Since my birthday is during the holiday season I had to order a few days in advance. I chose my birthday but with the delays its not guaranteed. They ended up shipping it out on my birthday and I got it the day after. They use Fedex and since it was raining my box was wet when I got home. They packed it in a sturdy shipping box with a big label saying "perishable" by the address label. The macaron box was in a insulated foil mailer and a ice pack was packed with it. It was tightly sealed and packed thankfully that my macarons and the box arrived undamaged. 

 


I got the green box and its nice. I will definitely keep it and use it for storing small items. It came with a folded paper with the flavors they have. It didn't listed out all the flavors their website had listed. For example there isn't any Almond or Orange Blossom. They gave me a nice enough variety but its not all the flavors. They even listed some seasonal ones and they labeled which were vegan which is nice. 

I've tried 1/3 of the box and I do like it! They are soft and chewy and not too sweet. Are they worth nearly $6 each? No. But I did enjoy everyone one them. Even the basic flavors like Vanilla are better than I thought they be. The only disappointing part of this experience as the price. Would I order from them again? Yes!

Dyson Vacuums. Worth the price?

 For awhile I didn’t think a vacuum is worth $1000. And I have read stick vacuums with rechargeable batteries without bags are expensive because it’s a newer technology compared to the bag canister types which makes sense to me. I try not to take “branding” into account since it’s mostly marketing than actually quality of the product. Something a home inspector agrees with me on. But I recently tried out a Dyson vacuums and it does a pretty decent job than most of the vacuums I’ve owned. 


What impressed me was the suctions power. It was able to get sand off my floors and also not spit it back out. I have medium length hair so I was also glad that hair rarely gets into the brushes. And the noise level wasn’t bad at all. I like the ball joint on the head attachments that make maneuvering such a breeze. Attaching and removing heads is pretty easy to do. Sometimes it needs to be at the right angle so it can take me a minute to get it on. 


The bad is the weight. I got one that has a bigger canister which is rather unnecessary for me so I wish I had exchanged it for a smaller one. The canister doesn’t rather dirty from the sand and fine dust. It’s an awkward thing to clean too. I like the design of pushing it out to empty but often times hair will get stuck inside and I’d have to reach into to pull it out. Also I have to remove the attachments to empty which is a pain. 


So far I am pretty pleased with it but I personally don’t think it’s worth the full price. If my salary was more then maybe it’s worth it but there are probably other brands that could do as good a job at a cheaper price. 

Trashie Takeback Bags. Is it better than donating?

 Been curious about ways to handle old and unwanted clothes that aren’t fit for donations. So I found out about Trashie which you buy a big poly bag to fill. The bags have their own QR code and a unique number. When I bought my bags they had USPS as a carrier option but now they changed to only UPS which is pretty inconvenient for me. 


Each bag is about $15 which isn’t cheap. They do multi packs and subscription service if you wanted more. I would definitely wait for a sale or deal if you wanted to try them out. If you get more than one they send them out individually. I got a 3 pack and I got 3 Kraft envelopes with a bag each. This doesn’t seem cost effective to me as having them shipped together. My third one came later. 


So each bag gives you Trashie bucks that you use to redeem rewards. These rewards aren’t great. They’re not giftcards to stores most known about either. A lot are expensive small brands. The money you spent on the bags doesn’t equal to how much you can get back on discounts

I redeemed a discount for Neiwai and tried to use it during Black Friday but it didn’t work since it’s not like a gift card but a discount code. It won’t let me use multiple discounts. 

I also redeemed a discount for Blueland but I didn’t realize it was first order only so that is wasted. So far I’m not having a great experience with Trashie. I don’t know if there’s another like it though where you can send clothes and blankets not fit to be worn to.

Dating Apps

 So I’ve delve a bit into dating apps and want to compare them on how they work and what I’ve noticed. This is from a perspective of a woman. I’ve been on these apps out of curiosity and have tried to match with people but nothing too serious. I also haven’t given any of these any money


Bumble So not only can you find a date on this app but they also have separate parts for those wanting to look for friends or career opportunities. You can’t have these active at the same time. What I mean by this is that you won’t get any new likes in your friends or career profile modes if you’re in the dating mode.

I like the prompts they have and other bio features. I feel I can really show who I am the best with Bumble. And each of these others can leave a comment on. If someone leaves a comment they will show up at the top of your Liked You page and it will ask you if you want to reveal their profile which is all free but I think there’s a daily limit. I feel this feature is a great way to stand out compared to the paid SuperLike for just being shown at the top and being able to reveal you with no extra cost.

As I swipe I noticed usually the first person shown is attractive as hell or someone who has Liked me. But if I keep swiping I no longer come across anymore people that have swiped me. The app doesn’t tell me if they like me until I swipe. If I swiped left it will notify me that I missed a match and I will have to pay to go back. When I get SuperLikes they don’t always come up asap. But once they do it will tell you they have SuperLikes you. But again you have to keep swiping until their profile comes up. Sometimes it can take a long time to even find another person that have liked you but this may be due to the allowed distance. My pool of Liked Me people just keeps increasing because none of these people are coming up as I swipe. I feel this might be a design choice to make you pay to show these people to you.

What is nice about Bumble is preventing the men from messaging you first. But if you’re not great at talking like I am it can be a challenge to figure what to say first. 

What I find confusing about Bumble is how there’s a separate Bumble app for just finding friends. This seems separate from the BFF mode in the dating app as I had to do a new profile and none of my Liked Me is transferred ver. 

I didn’t seem to come across scammers or bots on there as much as the other apps. Bumble does require your location and will publicly show the town you’re at in your profile. They do have a Travel mode which requires money if you wanted to change your location but it will make it big and obvious that you are using this mode which is is a nice way to flag people who aren’t there locally 


Hinge This app I get the least amount of pool of people. I do not get as many likes on there. And the weird part is that the people I swiped left to can come back. So it seems your profile will get shown to people you swiped left to again. Even in a big city! 

What I like about Hinge is that you can reveal the people who liked you. The newest one will always be the first one you can reveal and you can only reveal one at a time. They can also leave comments. 

You can manually enter your location. I’m so if you wanted to see people from out of town or even in a different country you can! At no cost! I wish Hinge had more people as this is the least greedy app. Filling out your profile is nice too. I like that you can add a note under what relationship you’re looking for. 


Badoo This app is interesting. It requires your location on the app but on PC you can manually add a location if you denied it access to your location. 

What makes Badoo unique is having a separate page for people nearby. This page shows everyone without a blur which is great! You can tap on a face and it will bring up their bio. You can also send a message and start a chat right away without any swiping or matching. This can be annoying if end up getting spammed but so far I haven’t thankfully. 

Another unique feature of Badoo is the notifications. It lets you know when someone just liked you or even looked at your profile from the nearby page. 

Something wild about Badoo is that it auto gave me a free trial of their paid features. It didn’t notify me until over a day later that it gave me a free trial. None of the other apps have given a free trial. But now that I could see the list of people who liked me, it does help a lot but it does show the kind of people using it which aren’t my cup of tea.


Tinder Signing up was a pain. It’s takes awhile to get started and if you want to get verified this can also take a bit. I thought I was getting banned because nothing worked. I had to close and reopen the app several times to check if it’ll tell me if I was banned or not. I think this is due to that I did try to make an account before and it recognized me? I did look it up and it does seem like that if you got banned it’s possible to make a new account easily by using different photos and different phone number. There’s a ID verification too which I’m not sure what this really proves other than having your name and age the same. 

What I notice right away is bots. Super attractive people with nothing in their bio. If you swipe on them they will match with you and it was easily to detect they’re a bot from just chatting with them.

This app is obviously the most known and there does seem like a huge pool of people and more attractive too. I do like that it does tell you if they liked you if their profile comes up. What is weird is that I have to do taps on the sides to pull up their bio instead of scrolling up and down which every other app does. It shows multiple colored icons on the bottom which aren’t explained. There’s a superLike which is the blue star and the purple lightning which is the boost which I’m not sure what it does. Tinder also has profiles that are not only empty but used photos that had no people in them. It will tell you if they’re nearby or active. 

Writing your bio is a bit limiting not as many opportunities to really express yourself. I do like that it has an option to say that you’re looking for friends but this probably not a popular thing on Tinder. There is a neat Explore page where you can choose the kind of vibe you’re going for and show you people who they think falls under it. One is Gaming, another is Free Tonight, and quite a bit more! Not sure how they determine who falls into what since it’s not something you can choose to be in.

One of the benefits of Tinder is that since it’s well known there are extensions that can unblur photos. Sadly Tinder doesn’t let you scroll through the whole list so you can’t see everyone. 


Oats Overnight

 

 Oats Overnight ads popped up on Instagram for me and thought it seemed like an easy breakfast. I'm not the type to like sweet breakfast but I thought I try it out just for the summer season. The cold would be refreshing in the heat. 

I got the box that came with a free shaker. They're oatmeal mixes are drinkable but you can use less milk to make it a more traditional oatmeal bowl which is what I wanted. The shaker is bigger than I expected but it serves well to mix the oatmeal with milk. There are oz labeled on the bottle. The 6oz is clearly labeled but the other numbers aren't painted so its hard to see the numbers since I need 4oz for the traditional way to make it.

Each pack has about 1/4 cup of powder and oatmeal. Its mostly powder than rolled oats. I feel I could add my own oats to it but obviously the flavor would get more diluted. The flavor is rather moderate so its not too intense to make it seem like a desert. I got one pack for each flavor to try them out. So far there's more flavors I didn't like than ones I did like. 

Personally I feel it is a bit overpriced for some powder and oats but its not bad. Some do have that protein and vitamins taste so definitely find the flavors that you like the best.

Zenmarket review on my experience with using their service

 

 I have previous mentioned Zenmarket as a proxy service option. Now I want to write a post on after using it for several years. I’m doing this because they recently changed some things which isn’t good in my opinion. 


One change that I think makes sense is increasing the fee from 300 yen to 500 yen. The inflation and current exchange rate between yen and usd, I can’t hate them for increasing it since everywhere else is increasing their prices. 


The change I don’t like is their rewards. Before the change, if you ship packages from them within 12 months they will give you a certain amount of credit that you can use to buy something through them. The credit is the same idea as a credit card  you will have to pay the amount back. But they have changed that from 12 months to 3 months! I don’t buy that often enough so I’ll never get that benefit anymore. 


This company also has branched into selling certain things themselves  even subscription boxes. I even bought a ramen box from them but sadly customs has taken 5 out of 7 of the ramen in the box! Leaving me with only 2. I contacted both zenmarket and customs. Customs says it contained meat products prohibited in the US. Zenmarket won’t take any responsibilty and won’t help give me any of my money back. They don’t list full ingredients for these ramen either  their website only lists the warning of meat products that could be prohibited on their FAQ page  


I find services like Blackship to have a much clearer information on what is allowed and what isn’t. I would highly advise going there to research what is allowed in your country before buying anything outside your country  


Another time I tried to order a product that had a limit of one per customer. I asked Zenmarket to check if they could buy it before I give them money. Unfortunately they couldn’t even do that  they have to try buying the item before knowing which is weird to me. 


Zenmarket is still one of the easiest and cost effective proxy service but I fear their quality in customer service has decreased. 


Cook Unity

 


 I decided to try this out since I've been getting their ads rather often as well as other meal delivery boxes. What got me to subscribe was their selection of asian dishes. I had a 50% first order offer but this was sadly only on the first box. I decided to just get a 8 meal box just to try them out. I didn't want to get their largest box since I didn't know if I'd like their food enough to get that many even though it be a better deal.

 

Price

The prices are a bit high! Each meal is around $11-14 depending on how many you get in a box. And they add on a $15 fee to the total. So its not much cheaper than eating at a restaurant or getting doordash. And you don't get a lot. Its probably about 1 cup amount of food so its not going to make you feel stuffed.


Taste

This is by far the most delicious ready made meals I've had! They do taste like restaurant quality meals. They're not frozen either and the sleeves do say when they are packed, but not when they were cooked. Most of the meals I've tried are on the salty side. One Thai dish I had even has MSG as a ingredient. I don't mind salty, but it is weird how these are suppose to be made by different chefs and yet all make it salty? 

You got about one week to eat it, or you can freeze it! They freeze fine, but I would advise not freezing dishes that have sauces like sour cream that don't freeze well. I frozen a burrito that had sour cream and I think salsa which didn't thaw or reheat well so I had to throw away the sauces. Do be sure to read the cooking instructions since some may contain a sauce that needs to be taken out before microwaving!! I do feel foods like burritos or anything with a tortilla should be cooked in a oven or else the tortilla will be soggy. So do pick your meals carefully if you don't have access to an oven when you plan to eat these meals at. So for me I eat these at work so I would need to eat the burrito at home.


Delivery

I've seen comments on reddit saying that their food arrived with broken seals. Luckily, all my food arrived safely and undamaged. These were shipped from NYC and I live about 4 hour drive from there so it usually takes one day for packages to arrive from there. They used Fedex, and somehow it got delayed. I picked Tuesday as my delivery date, but it came in on Wednesday instead. It still arrived cold-ish and I was home when it came so I was able to put it all in the fridge right away. The seal on these tray are pretty easy to remove so I can see how they can be damaged. But my box was packed well. The insulation is thick and the meals fit snug inside the box. They used cardboard to layer in between the meals and ice. I don't live in a city and they delivery folks in my area have been pretty good at handling our packages well. I don't think I ever had them deliver anything that came broken! So this may depend on your area and how the delivery drivers handle packages.


Overall

I would like to keep getting CookUnity because it is tasty and they have SO MANY OPTIONS! There's hundreds of meals and add ons that you can choose from. However, it is out of my budget. When I go to cancel my sub, I put my reason down as Price and they did offer a 30% discount for the next 4 boxes, but still its a bit too much, There's also a expiration date on the offer which I don't like. I like being able to pause/skip as much as I can and not lose that deal! Perhaps if they ever do a come back offer, I may use it to order again. But right now, 30% isn't enough as its still nearly $100 for 8 meals. I sadly do not make enough money to justify this! So I would recommend this meal service IF you can afford it!

I recently got a Come Back email offer and its only 30% off the next four orders so its still the same as the canceling offer sadly. Wish it was a bit lower!

Amazon VIne Program

 I've been fortunate enough to be invited to this program to review products on Amazon. Why or how I got invited, I honestly don't know. I have reviewed some products and there was one that seem to get a handful of helpful votes so that could be it? This program is invite only and it seems they invited quite a few people, but they could also kick you without a clear explanation.


Free??

If you're interested in this program or are new to it, its a program where you can "order" items and you review them. 

Do you get paid for doing this? No.

Are the items free? Sort of.

To elaborate, most of the items have ETV (estimated tax value) which is usually the price of them item. This gets tallied for the tax year you ordered it on, and will be filed to the IRS. You will get a 1099 if you have $600+ in ETV so you will end up having to pay taxes. So in a way, the items are discounted! 

Good news is that there are items with 0ETV which are usually stuff like food and certain beauty items, etc. But these go FAST since they're 0ETV.


Tiers!

At the moment there are 2 tiers: Silver and Gold.

The difference is the # of picks you get per day and the product cost. Silver gets 3 items a day and items $99 and under. Gold gets 8 items a day and see all products above and below $99. 

To get to Gold, you must order and review 100 items within your evaluation period which is 6 months. So yes, you do need to order 200 items a year to stay Gold. It is a lot of items. Its definitely something you will need to talk to about with your spouse or whoever is living with you about this. It can get addicting and it may cause problems!


Queues

There are multiple queues to look for products. Items get added at random times during the day. One queue is "tailored" to you and you can only see it. In truth they're not really "tailored to you" as you may get items for pets or babies when you don't have even have them! Also these items are also shown in other peoples' recommended so it could disappear from your queue if others have taken them up. These items are usually shown in these queues first before before they offer it for the rest. Most of them items are from third party sellers than from Amazon. So most are small business or resellers. You will mostly see stuff you don't like since its stuff thousands of others aren't ordering. So yes, this will feel like a job if you want to get something useful to you!


Community

There are several places you can find other Amazon Viners!  These are usually Viner members only so do not join if you're not part of the program. People in these communities can help you with questions you may have. There's reddit, Facebook groups, and Discords! 



Keep in Mind

Do not treat this program like a store. It may be part of Amazon, but they will not make it easier for you if you do not like getting certain items showing up and you want to filter items. 

Use the Contact Us link on the top right if you have an issue and need customer service. Regular Amazon customer service may not be able to help with your vine orders!


 

Are foaming hand soap tablets worth it??

 So lately I've been trying out foaming hand soap tablets that are advertised to be more eco friendly and such. I got the Blueland glass foaming hand soap bottle and their tablets as well as another brand I got from Amazon. Normally I don't use foaming hand soap but gel hand soap so I'll be comparing both.

 The biggest difference is that foaming hand soap has to be used with a foaming hand soap bottle. A regular pump bottle that gels are used won't work at all. Since foaming hand soap is basically watered down soap, that's what you're getting in a simple pump. The bottle also has to have a big enough opening to fit the tablet inside. Not all tablets are the same size either so this is why I got the Blueland bottle since it has a big opening.

 Second biggest difference is longevity. These foaming hand soaps get emptied much faster than the gel hand soap. Of course this all depends on how many people are using it and how often. But so far I would say that foaming hand soap has been emptied faster since I've only emptied the gel one once and refilled the foaming soaps 3 times now. On the plus side the tablets are cheaper, but overall I think it even outs in price from how often I had to refill them. 


Overall, I don't think the tablets are any better than the gel ones or any already made hand soap. I do think it is better to not have to throw away plastic bottles, so I think its worth it for that only.

The Conqueror - The Shire

 



  I've heard about The Conqueror from an influencer and when I checked it out they started a LOTR series! As a LOTR fan it greatly interested me. The Conqueror is an app that provides distance based challenges and uses locations to determine the distance amount. It gives you a map and the route and shows how much you progress along the route. Once you finish they provide you a medal that is mailed to you. The medals are huge and come with a neck strap so it looks rather similar to a Olympic medal. For the LOTR they give you the map of Middle Earth. These challenges are about $50 per challenge which isn't too bad but not cheap. You can walk, run, or anything else you'd like. You can link fitness apps like The Health app from Apple to automatically input your daily steps, or you can input distance manually. So its possible to "cheat" if you're only interested in the medal than the fitness challenge as you can't buy the medal outright.


 I'm not a big fan of how the medals look personally, but I do like The Shire's medal a lot enough to buy it. You can't buy it through the app but rather through their website. Be sure to right your email correctly and it will give you the code to put into the app to start the challenge. 


The app experience is relatively simple. As you progress it gives you a simple recap of the movie. The recap is just a screencap with a simple panning or zooming animation with a line from the movie from that scene. There's no music or any other sound. You also get digital postcards that also gets emailed to you. You get a choice of planting trees or removing bottles as another kind of milestone. The map doesn't just show you where you are but other people as well. So overall its pretty simple and not the most exciting thing. I wish it was a bit better!


Since the Shire challenge is 145 miles its going to take me awhile. I will have to update this when I finish it and get the medal!

HOKA Bondi 7

 


 I’ve heard about how good Hoka shoes are but they are rather expensive so I never took the plunge to buy them until now. My job had me in a position where I have to stand all day full time when I’m usually sitting all day. So after the first couple of painful day of standing I bite the price bullet and bought the Bondi 7. 

 I even had expedited shipping and for some reason it still took a week to get to me. It was free shipping so maybe the “expedite” was a lie? I don’t know but it was painful waiting for it to arrive. But once it got to me, thankfully right before I had to go to work, I tried them on and they were comfortable enough that it didn’t need to be broken in! I did get a wide since my feet are a bit on the wide side and would like the room when I have thicker socks during the winter. 

 These helped so much! It may not make standing all day pain free, but it lessened so much pain and soreness that it’s tolerable. After getting use to standing sometimes it’s pain free. 

The soles on these are quite thick and it kinda feels like I’m stepping on a mattress at first. It did put some pressure on my knees due to how the soles are designed but after getting use to it it feels like walking like a normal shoe would feel. To me at least. Their page has said it’s has feet health benefits and someone with knee problems says these have been helped with it so I feel these shoes are legit. I don’t have knee problems and I’ve heard standing all day isn’t healthy for you. I feel wearing these would help me health wise from all this standing. I don’t want to develop health problems because of my work! So I feel paying $160 for these shoes is worth it. I’ll definitely be bringing these for travel! And I do hope to maybe get a 2nd pair. 

Sadly Hoka shoes aren’t in big box stores so these isn’t one near me for me to try other shoes. The only time I've seen these on sale was during the holiday season on Black Friday so I suggest waiting till then if you're interested. Its not a huge sale so I wouldn't expect these to be 50% off.

After wearing these for a year now, I do enjoy it as my everyday shoe. It hard to go back to my other shoes since Hoka just makes them feel uncomfortable. So far it has held up pretty well! I would definitely like to get another pair.

PF Candles

 


 I/m not a smoker but like the smell of tobacco and regreted not buying one tobacco candle I found in a store. I searched for others since that one was discontinued and PF Candles came up. I ended up getting a few of their candles for their scent and to be useful when we get blackouts. So far their candles are a hit or a miss.

 Since there's no PF Candle stores here I have to blindly guess what these candles will end up smelling like. Most often than not I am wrong on what I imagined them to smell like. None of them are bad smelling, but some I enjoy more than others. And none of them have caused any issues or gave me any headaches.

Some scents like Golden Coast and Amber & Moss are very light that I can barely smell it while it burns. Other scents like the Teakwood & Tobacco, and Electric Surf I can smell. None are very strong smelling even in a small room so sometimes I don't notice the smell. The candles do last awhile but I'm not sure if it actually lasts 40 hours.

They do have sales and a rewards program. The rewards isn't the most generous as you have to have to a $50+ order to get any. I do like their Teakwood and Tobacco scent even if its sweeter than I would've liked, but its still a great scent that I would definitely order again.

My experience with Superbuy

 

 I have previously made a post about my experience with trying to preorder a fanmade merch on taobao. And Superbuy was what I used to help get it from the seller to me. Since then I've used them quite a few times to get more preorders and I have some things to say about it!


FIRST you don't really get emails for updates. I've only gotten an email when there's a "shipping deferment" so if you're waiting on replies from your agent you may have to check the site yourself.


SECOND if you're preordering somethings that's going to take awhile you may have to babysit it. The stuff I wanted to get can take as long as 6 months and understandably your agent may end up forgetting about your order. Its good to try to check the item's page or seller's page to see any developments. Do check the reviews section and see if there's any with photos which is an obvious indicator that the product is ready to be shipped. You can also message your agent to ask for any updates from the seller. 

I do recommend messaging at least once because I've had an order that was marked "complete" despite it wasn't and the agent's name was gone from that order. If its gone I can't message them to fix it! Luckily I did message them before and was able to go back to that message and mention this mistake. 

This has been the most annoying part to babysitting your orders! But so far the agents have been able to correct it and helped me get the products promptly.


English The agents English is pretty good! I would still advise keeping your messages to the point and as politely as you can. 


Shipping They have a huge selection of shipping options! They even have their own shipping called Superbuy Air mail which is rather reasonable. I searched for it and people said it took about a week, well for me it took over 2 weeks! They only give you an estimated weight and price. They will adjust the amount once it shipped and any refund amount is sent to your balance. This is annoying since it will make it that you're always have some money left with them. You can Withdraw it back but I haven't tried that out yet so I will update this once I do!


FEES Fees are only applied to shopping in stores outside the popular ones. So taobao and weidian I can order without proxy fees!

Ritual Essential Multivitamins and Symbiotic+ Gut Health

 

 Thanks to so many influencers taking sponsors from this vitamin company, I thought I check it out when I was getting discomfort. I decided to try out their Multivitamin (ad link your support is appreciated!) and their Gut Health Supplement (ad link). Both cost $80 together! Rather pricier than I would like. While they are one Amazon, you can get them on their website and use any promo codes you can find to get a cheaper price. Also if you try to cancel your subscription they will give you a half off offer! So I got my second bottles for about $40 instead of $80!! Kinda hard to say no to that.

 So the big question is did I feel any different from taking these? No, but my health has been good so I may be normal to not notice anything. Before I would take multivitamin gummies I would get from cvs and those were much easier to eat. I'm not a fan of swallowing pills and these ones are a little big so I will have to take them one at a time carefully. I don't take these everyday either. The expiration date are printed on the bottoms and they can last awhile! I just got my second bottles on November and the expiration date isn't till May of next year! 

 I've seen some reviews say they didn't like the "mint" or rather menthol in these pills but I honestly hardly notice it. I don't know if I would recommend these supplements or not since I don't every feel any different but if you want a multivitamin and have the money then it can't hurt to try these.