Sunday, September 8, 2013

Shopping: Tmart.com - Haul and Review

As I enjoy shopping (both online and in person) I am always on the look out for new stores.  I recently heard about Tmart and thought I would have a look.  Tmart.com is an online shopping site that is based out of Hong Kong - some of the reviews that I read and watched on YouTube were favorable and it is cheap with the added bonus of free worldwide shopping.  I thought I may as well give it a go and see what they were all about.

Tmart offers a wide range of products such as electronics, clothing, makeup and toys and they offer Drop Shipping also. According to the website Tmart claims to have a comprehensive Customer Service including pre and post sale service and they say that they offer an 100% safe shopping experience including adhering to e-commerce safety standards and encrypting all payments. They have a lot of deals and offer a points reward system and there is a 90-day money back if there are problems with the merchandise according to their refund policy which is listed on the site. Tmart has websites based in different locations such as USA, Germany and Russia and also different warehouses. There are warehouses in America, Singapore and in Hong Kong so depending on where you live you can select the closest warehouse and presumably get your items quicker.

I chose a range of items - most of them under ten dollars with the most expensive item being NZ$11.95. I chose items across a few different categories so I could do a review.  I ordered some iPad cases, some camera gear and some jewelry.  I figured this would give me a good indication of the quality and service of the site.

Everything went well at first, the site is all in English as it's based out of Hong Kong so is marketed to an international market.  Registration was straightforward, they ask you to sign up for email marketing and promise discounts and coupons for this. You can pay through a few different means such as paypal, Webmoney or Credit Card. I used my New Zealand credit card for the purchase and again it all seemed pretty simple and worked as well as can be expected from an online store. Worth noting here that although I could see everything in NZ dollars the site charges in US dollars so my credit card was charged a small foreign exchange rate along with the charge.

This is where my experience with Tmart went downhill. My order was placed on the 31th July 2013 for about 12 items. Then on the 3rd of August I received a 'Back Order' email from Tmart informing me that the items I had selected were out of stock.  I was informed I could wait 2-3 weeks for the stock to be refilled and if they did not hear from me this would be what would happen.  On the other hand I could choose to cancel or change my items.  Now I would not have been bothered by this if one or two items had been out of stock but the fact that all of them were really irked me.  I think that it should have been noted on the website if something was out of stock, I did see some other things that had this note on them so they must do it but it seems that they were not up to date which for a big organisation such as this just seems ill-managed. So I decided that I did not want to wait for these things and spend money at a site like this so I cancelled most of the items - I did keep a few of the purchases because I did want to do a review on them and see what the site was like.  

The cancelling process was a bit more difficult that the ordering process, I was not sure if it had even gone through and I had to try twice to get it done. They did send me an email after that to indicate that my items had been cancelled. I also just noticed going back into my order history that all the items still show on my order history and there is nothing to indicate that they were cancelled so this gets marks off in my book.  It should clearly show that these items were cancelled and not shipped.

So I then got two emails on the 6th of August 2013 - one to say that a partial package of items had been mailed and the other to say that a partial refund had been made. The package eventually arrived to my apartment in South Korea on Monday 26th of August - that's about 20 days later so it was quite a long wait. The refund came through on the 7th of August 2013 and it was refunded back to the original credit card.

Well all that aside lets get down to it and see what I got:


1. 14mm Ball Shaped Rhinestone Pendant Necklace (pink)
Price: NZ $5.28 (discounted from NZ $6.81)

I did not really think about the size of this and find the ball a bit big for my taste, but that's more my fault.  I bought it because I got some earrings as a gift that are similar and thought they would go nice together.  It is of medium quality, it looks a bit tacky and just not quite up to the standards of something I would wear.  I will probably give it as a gift to a young girl.





Price: NZ $7.57 (discounted from NZ $9.77)

I bought this one because I liked the design, it looked really nice in the photo but to be honest it looks really bad in real life.  It looks cheap and plastic and the back of it has some kind of glue in patches that is sharp on the edges so would scratch if you wore it.  I still like the design but the materials are horrible, very poorly executed, I will probably just give it away as costume jewelry to someone.




Price: NZ $2.95 (discounted from NZ $3.81)

For the price these are what they are, they look a little cheap but the design is pretty. I would not wear them myself but I will probably give them away to a younger girl again. One of my tween cousins will probably wear them.







Price: NZ $6.50 (discounted from NZ $8.39)

These earrings are the pick of the bunch and I was more than happy with them. If everything had been this quality I would not have had a problem. They look really nice and seem solidly made. They don't look cheap at all and I will be happy to wear them. It was nice to have something wearable out of the lot but I ended up paying a bit for this one good product if you add it all up.





Price: NZ $3.68 (discounted from NZ $4.75)

Hair styling tool, makes a bun pretty quickly and seems to be secure.  I have not worn it out for a day yet only tried it out at home.








Price: NZ $2.26 (discounted for Free Gift with purchase)
This was just a small free gift that was included with a certain amount purchased, you could pick from a few different items.  I certainly would not want to pay for it. It does not work very well at all.

Overall Thoughts:
I thought Tmart was a well executed site, easy to search and maneuver around. It was quite simple to register and purchase from and I liked that they have free world wide shipping. Their communication was very quick and my refund went through when they said it would.

The overall quality of the goods was very poor, I realize everything was cheap but I can buy jewelry cheaper than that in Korea and still have it be nice enough quality to wear as an adult.

I probably won't use this site again, they don't have anything that I can't get off Gmarket here in Korea and it comes a lot quicker (mostly).