Shipping times from Chinese gadget sites

I like buying cheap novelty items from Chinese gadget sites. I have bought hundreds of items from various sites so far, and have had a surprisingly good experience with them overall. Incredibly I have never had an item lost thanks to AusPost.

Most items are as described and satisfactory as long as you have done your research and know what to avoid. In general, I try not to buy gadgets involving flash memory chips and batteries, because most times, you are getting inferior stuff. Lower tech items are generally OK eg. toys, phone/tablet accessories, houseware etc.

The sites I have used so far are DealExtreme, DinoDirect, Lightake and Focalprice. I am eying a few others like TinyDeal and TMart. The only problem with buying from these sites is the long shipping times. I am using this post to keep track of the delivery times of various purchases to Melbourne (Australia):

DinoDirect: Printer Ink Refill
Ordered: 9 Sep
Shipped: 13 Sep
Received: 26 Sep
Time taken: 18 days

DealExtreme: Novelty Candy Dispenser
Ordered: 2 Oct
Shipped 3 Oct
Received: 16 Oct
Time taken: 15 days

DealExtreme: Pocket Illuminated Microscope
Ordered: 1 Oct
Shipped: 3 Oct
Received: 17 Oct
Time taken: 14 days

More to come...

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