The Trials and Tribulations of Online Shopping

We’ve all seen photo’s online of ‘why not to buy cheap clothes online’, whether it be the mum who thought she was getting a bargain pair of leggings, only for them to be come and be for a Barbie doll. The endless girls who’ve bought their prom dress online and it be a complete disaster, or the girl who bought a desk chair and it was for a dolls house. We’ve seen them all, but I bet majority of people who see them think

“How often does that actually happen though” 

You’ll be surprised.

I’m not ashamed to say that I do the majority of my shopping online. There’s something I just love about sitting in bed and shopping without having to actually speak to people. What I love more is a good bargain.

There have been times when I’ve bought something online for a stupidly low price and thought, I best not get my hopes up. Then it arrives and its great, if not better than what I was expecting.

The best example I have is my Prom dress.

There were three of us in my year who all wanted the same dress, the differences? The one they wanted was £200, the one I found was £25. Exact same dress, just one on a fancy dress site, mine on Ebay.

I had already bought my dress when the other two girls were saying they wanted it/were going to buy it that night. Thankfully, my friend noticed it was the dress I had bought and told them before we had the same dress.

My mum had warned me not to get my hopes up, it was so cheap and we really didn’t expect much but when it came I almost cried.

It was PERFECT.

As you can see from the photo, it was just as good of a quality as the picture, it was amazing material, fit perfectly, it was exactly how I imagined it.

Fast forward two weeks later. I’m getting ready for school and my mum comes into my room and asks me what I’ve ordered. I was incredibly confused when she passed me a really big parcel. Turned out they had sent a second dress!!!

We messaged the company but we agreed that it would cost more to send it back to China than it cost to make the dress, so my mum sold it to her friend who had a daughter the same age as me at a different school.

So basically, my prom dress that was originally supposed to be £200 was free!

I’ve had so many amazing, yet very low priced products I’ve bought off Ebay and I will continue to shop there whenever I want something for a great price. I’m not going to lie to you though, not all of it is hunky dory.

I’d say it’s every one in twenty things I buy that arrive and literally make me laugh out loud.

The most recent was a white swimsuit. The picture showed a stunning swimsuit that looked so flattering, and would have been perfect for the water slides in Teneriffe.

It arrived and I thought it looked awful, but hey, maybe it will look better on.

I put it on and showed my dad and he was laughing hysterically. It’s not often my dad laughs like that, he usually just smirks.

Then I showed my sister and her friend and they found it so funny.

The padding was so visible as it was really thin material with thick cream padding.
There were lose stitches eveywhere, such bad quality,
The sizing was so off, it was a really short body so was incredibly high rise.

But worst of all… IT WASN’T EVEN WATERPROOF!!!!!

Yup, a non-waterproof swimsuit.

The second was a Santa suit I bought for a Christmas fancy dress party. The picture was a simple red dress with white fluff around the edges, what arrived was some kind of cheap sex costume. It’s safe to say it didn’t leave very much to the imagination.

Obviously, It would be incredibly inapropriate of me to put photo’s of them on my blog. But then we have the last one.

This one I have the ‘what I ordered’ vs ‘what I got’.

Instead of explaining, I’ll just show you…

One word… AWFUL.

So yeah… online shopping can be a blessing and a curse. The biggest curse being how much you can spend without even realising, but it’s definitely not fun getting all excited waiting for something you buy to come, for it to just look absolutely awful and nothing like what you expected.

My best advice, probably obvious, but always read the reviews!!! On ebay, look at at seller reviews, not the product, as you can get a better vibe of the overall quality of the sellers items.

Have you ever had a bad experience with online shopping? Be sure to let me know in the comments.

Bye for now