Heat, Boredom and Tips for Online Shopping.

The heat of summer combined with El Niño's wrath is definitely making me crave for a cooling breeze or an ice cold beverage. The increase in temperature is going into my head, making me hallucinate white sandy beaches and blue azure waters while basking in the sun with my Prada shades and my Vitamin A swimsuit while having an ice-blended Piña colada, complete with a cocktail umbrella.

Poof!

There it goes again! My daydream bubble aka hallucination vanished into thin air, revealing a whitewashed room, with a laptop and mobile phone in front of me. In spite of these gadgets and internet social pages, I am currently bored to mental degradation and the heat is already having a killing spree of cells in my body. I have already harvested my imaginary plants, fed my binary coded fishes and cooked make-believe food. What else should I do? The heat! The boredom! I am slowly withering away...

The sudden visualization of myself, getting older in front of my laptop, hairs turning white and skin getting wrinkled, made me jerk out of my chair. Then I remembered I have something left to do! Shop online and blog about it.

I have been an avid online shopper for years since the boom of online and internet stores. I have my own eBay store as well and I occasionally post my barely used stuff up there an for online garage sale. It generates cash for a new online shopping spree! I think online shopping has its benefits. For me, it saves me money because I don't have to go out and spend on gas or fare and online stores have the best bargain offers that you can't see in malls! Even the hard to find branded stash are in online stores, with less the price! Another benefit is convenience. Just a few minutes (or sometimes hours) and you could buy the stuff, pay for it online and wait for it to get shipped right to your doorstep. However, the down side is, there are a lot of scammers out there in the online world. So you just have to know who to trust.

As I have said before, I have been in the online shopping biz for quite a while so I already know how to buy, what to buy and who to buy from. I recently bought a new pair of Old Navy bikini swim wear, Bath and Body Works foaming wash and cologne, Mary Kay brow gel and a Smashbox O-bronze intuitive bronzer all for a bargain price, almost 75% off if i bought them from retail stores!

So for you newbies on the internet shopping world, here are some pointers:

1. Before online shopping, open a Gcash account or have someone in your household or your circle of friends with a globe number have a gcash account. Most online transactions are done through this. If you don't have any access to a gcash account, you could pay via Globe center: Just fill out the gcash forms, know the seller's full name, address and globe number.
2. If you are shopping from eBay, check the feedback score of the seller and his or her feedback messages. If  he or she is a power seller or with feedback scores greater than 50, you could really trust the person. But sometimes, even accounts could get hacked.
3. Depending on the value of what you are buying (ex. Electronics, mobile phones), the payment method and delivery mode should also be secure. If you are just buying small toiletries amounting to less than 500 to 1000 bucks, then it is okay to have the transaction via Gcash and have it shipped via any courier (Air21, Xend, 2Go, LBC). But if you are buying valuable items like electronics or items with values 1000 up, then a bank deposit is a more secure transaction or a Cash upon meet-up or delivery is best.
4. Know the authenticity of what you are buying (ex. bags, signature items). If the seller could not provide you   a proof of authenticity and he or she is selling it dirt-cheaper than the actual price range, then it must be a fake or a class A item. You could always ask the seller.
5. If you are buying through eBay, some items are sold through bidding from a lowest bid price. So know how to bid. (I will post bidding tips soon.)
6. And Lastly, if you are in doubt during the transaction, do not continue. Some online shopping sites like multiply do not have a feedback score and rely on comments posted on the page. So just use your instinct and read, read, read. 

Well, hopefully, I could help you with these tips. For any questions and concerns about online shopping, just feel free to message me here! 

With lots of drama,