Merchandise Ordering Part 1
When I first became a fan of S.I.N.G. I wanted to purchase the official merchandise and albums to support the girls. Unfortunately, I do not live in mainland China. There is very little available for sale outside of China. I have only ever found one album and a few singles available on iTunes. There is an official S.I.N.G. store in China, but I was told it was impossible to purchase from it and have the merchandise shipped overseas. However, I was able to successfully purchase their 2020 calendar and have it shipped to me. It was by no means an easy process to figure out, but it did work. In the following posts, I hope to document my second attempt at purchasing an item from the store so that others can purchase items if they wish to.
Disclaimers:
1. This has worked for me once. I can make no promises that it will work for you. All I am providing are the steps I used as an aide to help you if you should like to try.
2. There were a couple of times where it looked like I might have hit a dead-end and would not receive the product. I would not recommend trying this with money you can't afford to lose if it fails. Similarly, I would suggest ordering one item at first to make sure you can do it.
3. I live in the United States, if you want it shipped to another country these steps may help you but I can't give you a step-by-step for your country since I have no experience with that.
4. I do not speak/read Chinese.
5. I have no affiliation with S.I.N.G. or their store. They could change how it works at any time and this could all be meaningless.
Notes:
1. I used the Chrome browser to do this. This is important for a couple of reasons. One being the ability to right-click-Translate. Do not turn on auto-translate though, there are some times where you need the original text and may have to copy and paste it out to another tab that contains Google Translate.
2. Since this is my second time through, I already have an account. I can't easily show the steps of registering for an account since it is tied to my mobile number and I only have one mobile phone. This is true of both the store site and Alipay (the payment site that processes your credit card).
3. So far I have not been able to tie my email address to the account. So I receive no updates at any steps in this process. I have to go back daily to check on the status of the order.
4. The prices have a symbol next to them that resembles the Japanese Yen symbol. These prices are NOT in Yen. They are in Chinese Yuan.
5. I have not found CDs available in the store. Just fan merchandise. This was highly disappointing.
The first step: Go to the store. https://shop390505445.taobao.com/
You can use the Translate function to try to help you navigate. But keep in mind that it will not translate text that is in images. So that black bar that contains the categories to shop by won't translate.
For this order, I am going to try to order the 4th Anniversary Photo Album.
I clicked the All tab, and it opened in a new tab:
At this point it will prompt you for a login. You can close the login window, but every time you try to see products it will prompt again.
Translate does not work on the popup.
Click the four Chinese characters under the big orange button.
Click the "Agree agreement" button.
Pick your country from the dropdown. Fill in your mobile number in the box next to the drop down. Click and drag the verification bar to the right (I think this is one of those "I am not a robot" things). Click Next step...
Unfortunately, at this point I can't walk you through much more of the registration process because I did it a month ago with my first purchase. It sends you a text message with a number, you enter it on the next screen and follow the prompts from there. The auto translate got me through this part fairly painlessly.
Once you are done with the registration, you can go back to the second tab and login. Refresh may also work.
Clicked on "By new products"
Clicked on the product image "[Spot] SING Women's Group Limited Four-Year Limited Photo Album SING's First".
Below the first orange bar you'll see "Delivery". You want to change that to "overseas".
Then choose "overseas" again
Unfortunately, at least for me, at this point the Add to cart button did nothing. If you click on the icon at the end of the browser address bar with the G in it, a little dialog appears and you can tell it to 'Show Original', which will put the text back into Chinese. At this point, the dark orange button that used to say Add to Cart will work.
If you have created an account previously, like I have, it will now prompt you to login.
Either way, you should end up at this page:
Click the check box next to the item so it highlights and puts a total at the bottom. It is important to note that the price is still in Chinese currency. Why it has the US dollar symbol? No clue.
Click the dark orange button next to the total.
Note: It defaulted in my address. You will have to enter your address at some point:
This screen resists translation. The grey bar at the top is the country where you live. Those two characters in black are for United States. The blue text is a link to a popup to pick your country. Click the blue text.
First off, the letters across the top may or may not have anything to do with the first letter of your country in your alphabet. You have two options, you can either go to Google Translate, put the name of your country in the left (in your language) and pick Chinese for the output, then go through the tabs until you recognize the same symbols, or you can select the text in this box, copy and paste it into google translate and match them up.
Below is what I mean for the second option:
That was probably the second hardest part I had when I made my first order.
Once you've picked your country, you'll need to click the dark blue bar at the bottom.
The first dropdown back on the address screen is state and city (at least for the US).
The next box is your address under 'Detail'.
The next box is your postal code. The next box is your name. It is not your user name like it implies, it is the name that would be on your postal address. The mobile number should default in. Click the Make Default button if it isn't already checked. Click Save.
Now you are back here:
Make sure 'Forwarding by air' is checked, or you're flying to China to pick it up. A tempting, but considerably more expensive method.
Scroll down.
Submit order
Now, if you see this page, you've been sitting around on these pages too long taking screen shots like I have.... It's the time out error page.:-(
But if you're lucky, and it works, you should be brought to a page to create an Alipay account. Again, I already did this so it won't let me do it again. It again wants your cell phone number.
An important note: When creating the account, the password is a series of numbers. Make note of these numbers. Don't just let Chrome store them for you. Much later in the process, once you receive your merchandise, you will be prompted for those numbers in a field that Chrome doesn't recognize as a password field, so it won't auto-fill. You'll have to go back to your password management page (remember your google password) and dig up the password. Third most frustrating thing in this process.
Enter your credit card number, click Continue
You should see a screen similar to this:
You should be able to fill this out after it's translated.
confirm payment
Your order is complete. Now what?
Hover over the menu item at the top "1 taobao" and click on "I have bought baby". It is important to note here that for some reason the Chinese word for things you have bought translates to baby. You'll see it multiple times. They are not mailing you a baby. Sorry to disappoint.
Click "Order details" in the right column of your order.
So now you wait. You will need to return to the site on a regular basis to check the status of your order.
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