Delivering books within China

[missbrokensmile]

I'm completely new at having products delivered to my home so I'm hoping someone can help me out.

I want to order 3 books from amazon or dangdang. I live near guangzhou - it's a smaller city/town.

I have a few questions.

How long does it normally take (the items are in stock)? Especially since I don't live in a major area.

How much would shipping cost?

Is it safe to order through credit card? I'd rather not lose my products on the way.

Is payment upon delivery available in smaller areas? If so, approximately how much extra does it cost?

I'd greatly appreciate any answers to these questions!

[kellys]

i have bought books from dangdang many times. it's safe and convenient, because i choose to pay after i have received the books. going into this page,http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/29973-delivering-books-within-china/ and choose your city and district, see which delivery service is available for your place.

[gougou]

Probably this is the page kellys meant: http://support.dangdang.com/helpcenter/api_cms/helpcenter/question_sort/2240/180088.shtml

Whether payment upon delivery is available you can also check on the above page (it is the districts marked with an asterisk). It is free (at least in Beijing), and even shipping is in many cases (when ordering above 29 yuan).

[roddy]

Credit card ordering should be safe, but as payment on delivery is probably an option, I'd just do that. Hard to say how long it'll take - I think I waited about a week for a delivery to Dalian, but it might have been over a holiday. It depends where your stuff has to come from, and they may wait to have a full van load before heading out. You can track your package, but not sure how effective that is once you get outside of major areas - once it gets passed on to a sub-contractor it might not get updated.

That's all for amazon.cn, never used dangdang but I don't expect it's very different.

[lordnikon]

If you go on amazon.cn it will list the expected delivery time, given that you are logged in and have your address setup, if you are used to using Amazon.com Amazon.cn is identical except everything is in chinese. If you live in a major city like beijing or shanghai you should get your book the next day but end of year is busy season so maybe take and extra day. Also i should not mention it because I work for one these companies (guess which one), but Amazon, dangdang and 360 buy are in a price war now because 360 buy is trying to start selling books now so everyone is trying to undercut everyone else so you should be able to get a good price on books now

standard shipping is free most of the time on amazon.cn but if you live too far in the sticks it has to be sent by EMS or other courier which is not free you have to pay a fee, if a courier is used i dont think you can pay by COD, you should have no problem paying by credit card on Amazon.cn, if you pay by COD there is no extra cost you just pay the same price that you would pay on your credit card, COD is really common in China because credit cards arent that popular and most people dont like using them on the internet