Buying Chinese Books Online and Shipping to the US

[Kenny同志]

Yes, but it's not OCR scanning, but more like photocopying.

These books of mine are 掃描版.

[Silent]

The problem with those is that the pop-up dictionary doesn't work. Also, does books won't flow so they may be hard to display properly on an ereader (depending on size of book, reader and character size you want)

[edelweis]

I tried to place an order in Dangdang, but I could not get past the 确认订单信息 stage... there is a field where I'm supposed to input my cell phone number and a 获取短信校验吗 button, but it says 请输入正确的手机号 and I never get the SMS. I'm using my French cell phone number, and tried both the +33 and 0033 prefixes.

Has anyone else succeeded or had issues with this thing?

[roddy]

That wasn't there a few weeks back when I put my order through! Can't see a way around it either. I've emailed customer services, will let you know if I get a response.

[yialanliu]

I've always had the SMS verification for dangdang. I only use it in China though so entering it was never a problem. Might be they don't do international numbers for sms verification which might make sense since international texts are rather expensive.

[edelweis]

Thanks for the answer guys! So it looks like they changed the interface for international orders...

[roddy]

Might be they don't do international numbers for sms verification which might make sense since international texts are rather expensive.

I can't see how they're rather expensive when you're an ecommerce giant sending gazillions of texts a day and charging hefty international delivery premiums. They could afford to phone me up personally, check my order, and ask after my well-being. They've just messed up. The question is - do they care enough to fix it or not? Hopefully they do, as I was planning to order more.

Has anyone had any experience with any of the 代购 services?

[roddy]

Been checking every now and then, and it looks like they've removed the phone number verification (perhaps only when you put in an overseas address) so anyone's had an order on hold might want to try and put it through now.

Nine days till my February order is officially late.

[edelweis]

thanks roddy.

I tried just a moment ago, but got stuck at the payment stage with international credit card. Mastercard send a code to my mobile phone to confirm the payment, which made the process a little less nerve-racking. But afterwards there was an error message with "[05] do not honor". I guess I have to call my bank next week to sort this out, but then I'll have to rebuild my order from scratch.

Another method is depositing money into a Dandang account, but I can't figure out how to fill the beneficiary in my bank's online form from the info on Dangdang.

[edelweis]

Regarding shopping cart management on dangdang: to avoid losing your command's contents, go to 我的订单, open the order, cancel it, you will be asked whether you want to send the list back to the shopping cart.

Regarding Mastercard: after clicking on various links I got to this page where it says:

国外信用卡支付 Visa Card、Master Card单笔限额500元人民币；American Express 无限额

Does this mean mastercard payments are limited to 500RMB ??

(I confess I went a little overboard, my order including shipment was 825RMB. But I can downsize or split it )

[Shei]

Nine days till my February order is officially late.

It took exactly two months for my January order to arrive.

But afterwards there was an error message...

I also got an error message when I payed with Visa, but the payment went through and everything was ok.

[edelweis]

thanks for the info Shei.

However I actually got an error right after inputting the Mastercard confirmation code I received on my mobile phone, and a few seconds later the Dangdang screen appeared saying my payment did not go through and I had one working day to make a successful payment.

I think I'll wait a few days and monitor my account (although it's an immediate debit card, payments often appear with a one or two days delay) and then retry with an order inferior to 500RMB. If it still fails I'll contact my bank directly...

About direct deposit: my bank's online form requires a name (not sure it supports unicode), a bank ID, counter(branch?) ID, account ID, and a key (which I understand is some kind of checksum to verify the IDs are correct). From the Dangdang direct deposit info, the two first account numbers have enough digits to fill all the IDs but the key is missing.

[OneEye]

You could also use books.com.tw, which, when I used it from the US, had fast, cheap shipping. I don't know how prices compare to the mainland, but it may be worth a look. They have a lot of simplified offerings too, if you're into that sort of thing.

[Shei]

When my order arrived from Dangdang both the package and book were a bit worn, but it was quite cheap so it didn't matter. Total order value was only 63 RMB (book 13 and shipping 50).

[edelweis]

thanks for the details Shei.

Well, I didn't see any ill-effects in my bank account since last Sunday's issue on Dangdang.

And I got impatient and tried again tonight with a more reasonable order (448 RMB, below the 500 RMB limit for mastercard).

This time, after inputting the mastercard confirmation code (which I received on my mobile phone), there was no "[05] do not honor" message. Instead there was a "[00] Approved" message.

So, the 500RMB limit for mastercard payment seems to be enforced.

However Dangdang still claims my order is unpaid.

您的支付遇到问题！请查看您的银行交易记录。

如果您确认已完成支付，请在一个工作日后查询订单状态或联系当当网客服，谢谢！

I don't know whether that is due to my stupidly forgetting to switch to IE as indicated in the international credit card payment interface, or to my bank nixing the payment.

Next attempt on Saturday during my bank's opening hours... I just hope tonight's payment really didn't go through...

[edelweis]

oh it appears Dangdang sorted things out with their proxy for intl credit card payment

Now they say they have sent the parcel

But I didn't get a tracking number - did you get one Roddy and Shei?

[edit] also I find these a little strange:

预计04月20日送达 (that's tomorrow!)

配送公司：北京华诚 (??)

[roddy]

The tracking number will probably show up once it's in the mail system. I've got one, although I've not bothered trying to track it. I also have a similar 送达 date. Now you just settle in for the wait.

Thinking I might put in an order for some DVD box sets...

[edelweis]

hmm roddy, how exactly did you get the tracking number?

was it in an email? or did it appear on the Dangdang order page?

I received 3 emails from Dangdang:

订单nnnn已收到，正在处理中

订单nnnn支付的货款已经收到

订单nnnn中的商品已发出，请注意查收

but I didn't find a tracking number in these, or in my order webpage, did I miss it?

and have you received your previous order? are you quite sure it was sent to the right continent (well, island)?

[roddy]

It's (well, mine is) on the order page (ie http://order.dangdang.com/orderdetails.aspx?orderid=xxxxxx ) under the timeline graphic. 邮寄包裹号

No sign of mine yet. I figure I give it another full month before I try and get my money back.

[edelweis]

Thanks for the info, I hope you get your package soon.

Well, my order doesn't have the tracking number the only extra info under the timeline graphic is the name and phone number of some Beijing company. I'm having a bad feeling about this...

提交订单 / 网上支付 / 款项到达 / 订单审核通过 / 北京发货 / 收货并确认

配送公司：北京华诚 电话：010-61237095

收货人信息

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