Should you buy from Wholesale-dress.net

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I’ve been hearing so many things about Wholesale-dress.net, some good, and a lot bad. I’ve been ‘window' shopping their site for a few months, now, wondering whether it was worth ordering from them or not. I mean the prices are fantastic, and the pictures of products are very promising. Finally I decided to just take one for the team and test this seller out for all my readers who might be indecisive as well!

Before we begin, it’s important to note Wholesale-dress’ own product disclosure statement:

2. How is the quality of your products?
Our product quality is good relatively to many our rivals. Around 70% of our products are the same as the photos, other 30% imitate from fashion magazines.
Our products are suitable for price-competitive, non-high-ended market. Suggested selling price see question 4.
3. How can I know whether your photos are100% exact with products?
Most of photos of our product are being shot by our own camerist. Only a little part of photos are from magazines, you can easily distinguish them.

With this in mind, and the fact that they will not tell you when the item is ‘the same as the photos’ and which are ‘imitate from fashion magazines’, don’t be surprised if the item  you receive from them is slightly or even entirely different from what you expected! I’ve seen a lot of complaints about this point, but really? You are paying $5 for an item you would usually expect to pay $50 for, so can you really be upset when it’s not great quality?

My order:

1.Fashion Button Embellished Lapel Blouse Light Green $5.14
2.Western Style Half Sleeve Blouse Rose $6.76
3.Korean Fashion Wave Pattern Skirt Orange $6.22
4.Individual Nail Pearl Paillette Chain Decorate Vest $11.35
5.Sexy Slim Style All Match Vest Leopard $4.00
6.Fashionable Stripe Hip Wrap Skirt Green $3.78
7.New Arrival Single Breasted Grid Embellished Blouse Turquoise $5.14
8.Slim High Waist Pencil Pants Sapphire Blue $8.11

I received 5 out of these, and then an extra something I didn’t order…

‘Korean Fashion Wave Pattern Skirt Orange’

Yes, that’s actually the name of this item.

Product picture:

Actual product

Overall this looks like the picture in terms of design, but if you want to be pedantic like me, there are 6 ‘waves’ in the skirt pictured, but the actual skirt has 5 ‘waves’ at most, so this is clearly not EXACTLY the same skirt. But all I really wanted was a fitted mini skirt, and that’s what I got. The colour also seems to defer slightly. The quality also wasn’t too bad – it was actually lined. The thing I didn’t like about this was the material it was made from. It has that shiny thread woven into it that gives it an instant cheap ‘Barbie clothes’ feel.

 

‘Sexy Slim Style All Match Vest Leopard’

I threw this one in as it was only $4!

Product picture

Actual product

Overall, this looks pretty much exactly like the picture. but it has one tiny problem. I think it was made for someone with breasts of a 12 year old! I’m by no means well endowed, being a C cup on my best day. To give you an idea of how small the cups of this top are, have a look at it against one of my *ahem* bras! I literally can’t wear this top for this reason… … AT ALL.

‘Western Style Half Sleeve Blouse Rose’

I really wasn’t sure what they meant by ‘western style’, but I liked the way this shirt looked in the pictures.

Product pictures

Actual product

I figured, can you really go wrong with an oversized/slouchy shirt? All you have to do is make it big. But apparently you can go wrong. When I put this on, I realized it wasn’t oversized or slouchy at all, but a pretty run of the mill slim fit. The length however was as pictured, and reaches down to my hip. Here I’m wondering just now much skinnier is this model than me that it hangs off her, but clings to me (I’m an Australian size 8)! Looking at this up and down, it does look like pretty much the same shirt, so I’ll just have to assume the old rule that Asian sizes are tiny. But I’m Asian so…I guess I’m way overweight by their standards!!

Finally, this checked shirt. I have no idea. I didn’t order this, and I can’t wear it because of how freak’n tiny it is! I actually can’t even get my arm in the sleeve!

 

Now onto what I did like!

‘New Arrival Single Breasted Grid Embellished Blouse Turquoise’

Product picture

Actual product:

Again, looking at the picture, this is represented as an oversized shirt, but when I put it on, it was not by any measure oversized. It was unfortunately perfectly sized. Looking at the details though, this does look like the same shirt as pictured.

Despite it being a different fit than expected, I still quite like this shirt!

‘Individual Nail Pearl Pailette Chain Decorate Vest’

This is my favourite item of the haul.

Product Picture:

Actual product:

While I really like this vest, worn in my outfit earlier this week, it’s clearly not the same product as pictured. The beading, chain positioning and the buttons are all different. But I’m not too fussed, as the vest is pretty cool in itself. It’s actually one of my favourite items at the moment. Unfortunately, I checked again and this now appears to be out of stock. However I’ve seen this exact vest sold on ebay if anyone is interested!

 

Shopping on wholesale-dress can be very confusing. They have thousands maybe even hundreds of thousands of items listed (80% of which already say ‘bulk order’ which I take to mean they are out of stock), and while their catagorization system has improved a lot in the past few months, it’s very difficult to find something specific and you have to resort to browsing page after page. There is a search function, but Wholesale-dress are often inconsistent in naming the items, so this is fairly unreliable. My personal complaint is you can only display 60 items per page. 

Products:	$54.82
Shipping:	$33.94
Refunded:	$25.01 ($17.03 products + $7.98 shipping)
Total bill:	63.75
Cost per item:	$7.56
Shipping per item:	$6.59

More about shipping later, but you can see that shipping is the same price as the item on average.

One great thing about Wholesale-dress is their great communication. I received 4 emails. The first was an order confirmation, on the day I ordered, 16 September. Then I get a second email on 17 September saying ‘Your order is being prepared’. Five days later, I get another email saying ’Order have been refunded partially’. Basically they have confirmed which items I’ve ordered is actually in stock. When they say refund, they actually mean store credit. Then I get another email on 22 September saying my order was shipped.

Wholesale-dress offers an extensive range of shipping options. All the fast ones are very expensive! My order ranged between 13.74 (shipping by sea taking 50 o 80 WORKING DAYS) ,and $49.92 (UPS shipping in 1 to 3 days).

A lot of people comment that the shipping cost is arbitrary or nonsensical, but I think that it probably makes sense. Most postage services offer postage at a flat rate up to something like 250g and then a higher incremental price relative to weight. This is consistent with how wholesale-dress calculates postage. I have had the same experience with postage from sellers on websites like Ioffer.com, which uses fast shipping services like FEDEX or DHL. With shipping, you get what you paid for. I received my order from Wholesale-dress within 5 working days of them shipping it (but I was not impressed that it took them almost a week to get the products ready for shipping).

Some of your might be thinking now, ‘but Chinese sellers on ebay often ship for free.’ I’m not sure why this is. I mean you would think that businesses who ship a lot would get some kind of shipping savings they can pass on to the customers. Retail giants like ASOS, for example, ship for free no matter how big the order. I’m not sure why wholesale-dress doesn’t give customers a break on shipping. I would not immediately assume, however, that they are simply trying to make more money by setting arbitrary or inflated shipping prices. It could be that they are just charging you exactly what shipping costs them. It’s difficult to know unless you’re in the business.

One piece of good news is that Wholesale-dress lets you easily calculate mailing on each item’s listing page, so you know what you’re in for.

Wholesale-dress has an extensive refund policy, as follows:

Return
If we send wrong item to you or the item you received has quality problem, then you can return it to us. You should report the problem in 3 days after receiving the products and return it within 7 days and the item must be in original condition when returning to us.

When the returned package arrives, we will examine the item, check the problem, then we will ship the correct items back to you without extra cost. We will be responsible for the returning shipping fee (from Wholesale City to you but you have to pay the shipping fee from you to Wholesale City).

If we discover nothing wrong with the items, we will promptly ship them back to you. In that case, you have to pay the shipping fees in both directions.

Refund

Wholesale City offers partial or full refund on most items within 3 days of receiving your goods. The first step in the refunds process is to contact our Customer Service.

Full Refunds
We offer full refund on any items that are found to be faulty or damaged due to our fault. Damage caused because of the fault of the third party or customer’s own fault cannot apply for refund.

Partial Refunds We also offer partial refund on returned items which have some original parts missing. In such a case, the customer can only get partial refund.

I see a lot of complaints about wholesale-dress’ unique system of allowing you to order items that are already out of stock, and then altering your order later when this is confirmed. While this might be fine if they just gave you a refund, but their default position is to give you store credit. This policy is listed on there ‘About Order’ part of the FAQ.

7. What will happen if there are out-of-stock items in my order after payment?
Usually there are 5% items out of stock. We'll contact you for the out-of-stock items in 1-2 days since payment received, and you can make replacement, or just ask us to send out the ready items. We'll recalculate the item prices and shipping fee. All excess payment would be credited to your balance account for latter use. If you want, we can also refund to your Paypal account.

8. Can I confirm stock status with you before payment?
Yes, you can contact us before payment, we’ll check and inform you which items are out of stock. But as you know, our stock status is changing every hour, so we can’t promise that the items will be still in stock when we prepare your order.

So remember you CAN ask for a refund to your paypal account. I didn’t as I do plan to order from them again, just for kicks.

 

 

So should you buy from Wholesale-dress.net? I would personally order from them again, but I’ll probably be more careful with what I order. I am not willing to give this place the ‘tick of approval’ as I feel this shop is not customer friendly. You’re never sure if you’ll get what you ordered or like what you get. That said there are clearly a lot of repeat buyers out there who are quite happy with them.

The stringent consumer protection laws/policies in western countries encourage the attitude that retailers have to meet all the customer’s expectations while the customer should have all the rights to restitution should anything go wrong, even if it was their fault. This is not necessarily the case online, where buyers have to take responsibility for their own decisions. If you are going to order online, it’s up to you to the right purchase choices and that if anything were to go wrong, you options may be limited. Also remember that if you can’t sort any disputes out with a seller, paypal and also your own credit card will usually have a service to pursue a refund for you.