Happy 2016 everyone!! I’m still working on that proper year end reviews post so just to take a break from it, I decided to write something I haven’t written before…. unboxing! I see people do this on beauty / tech blogs (I’m sure they do so in other types of blogs but that’s just what I read LOL) so here goes nothing!
*NOTE – I used my crappy phone camera for these photos so they are pretty bad sorry!!
I may have mentioned in my NIF love fest that I was ordering the novel. (Because I want to relive all the pain and angst obviously…) There’re a few editions floating around, but I was looking for the Traditional Chinese version because my Simplified Chinese reading skills is pretty poor, at about 70% at best. So there were only really 2 choices to buy them from. YesAsia or Books.com.tw. I’m sure there’re other online bookstores but these were the two I’ve bought stuff from before so I trusted them.
The books are divided into 3 parts and of course I want to buy the version with the drama cast on the covers!!!
Pricing
Although YesAsia has free shipping their list price was $21.49 USD per book, so $64.47 USD in total. Whilst Books.com.tw had them listed at $299 TWD / $9 USD each (huge difference right!!) and if you buy 2 books, there’s an extra 25% off! But they charge shipping and that’s always a killer. When I bought magazines from them, the postage always cost like half the value of the item itself. >_< (I live in Australia.) So in total, it was:
($299 TWD x 3) x 25% off + $520 TWD (postage) – $30 TWD (I had a member discount accumulated from previous purchases…) = $1,162 TWD / $35 USD!
I’m shocked by how overpriced YesAsia is even with the extra shipping. o_O
Delivery Speed
So based on price, buying from Books.com.tw is a no brainer. I sent my order on the night of the 21st December (Monday) and they despatched it on the 23rd December (Wednesday). I didn’t think I will receive it in 2015 because there’re 2 public holidays in between (25/12 & 28/12), plus the postage times are usually around 7 to 10 days – that’s the official numbers anyway.
That didn’t stop me stalking my mailbox everyday though! And to my surprise, they arrived on the 30th December (Wednesday) so it only took a week! 😀
Packaging
Honestly, I’ve never received a parcel from books.com.tw where the box isn’t damaged in some way. It’s like they only use really old cardboard boxes or something! Luckily, the contents are always still in tact. Phew.
They didn’t put much protection inside either. There’s seriously just 1 padding thing and a small bit of bubble wrap. Although that’s great for the environment because I never know what to do with these stuff anyway. Plus the books are already sealed so there isn’t any damage. It doesn’t look so great, but no harm done.
On the parcel itself, there were $645 TWD worth of stamps so they charged me less than it cost. 🙂
The Books
The front of the three books used the same picture, but the colouring of the font were different. I wished they used different pics! On the back however, they did use different pics and the blurb were different. The spines also used 3 different pictures, part 1 is Hu Ge, part 2 is Liu Tao and part 3 is Wang Kai.
Now they advertised these books as having a “poster” with 10 x character cards. However, the poster and cards were just part of the cover for the book, so you can’t really use them separately. Why can’t they have the character cards as something separate?! I would’ve loved it if they were actual bookmarks or something. So yeah, nice to have, but not practical.
Part 1 has 416 pages, part 2 has 400 pages and part 3 has 432 pages.
The books without the covers – they all look the same so I didn’t take photos of all of them.
Luckily I already saw some pics of these before buying so this was what I expected…
I haven’t started reading them so no comments on that yet!!
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