Friday, November 21, 2008

Favored Catalogs for Overseas

With the holiday season rapidly approaching, I thought I would post my favorite catalog ordering sites. Please be sure to list your favorites below as well. We are almost running out of time being overseas, so order early to keep from being disappointed.

In no particular order (and be sure to add your favorites below):


Land's End - I get on their email list and order only if I can get free shipping AND discounts on whatever I'm buying.

Kohl's - same goes for this store.

Woot - A new item everyday and sometimes a Woot-off, where they sell an item, til it's gone and then quickly put up another item...deep discounts sometimes up to 90%, mostly electronics, but totally worth it to download the Wootalyzer to catch new items as they pop up (it runs in the background and also monitors a few other similar sites...gotta love the alarm...I jumped out of my chair the first time that thing came up)...This site is a big adv The only downside, shipping to us over here takes about a month!

Lakeside - This is mostly a gift items kind of catalog, but the stuff is so inexpensive that I sometimes get my volunteer gifts out of here (probably all made in China), and be prepared for very long shipping times...I think they ship everything by boat.

Amazon - This is an old standby...you can find almost anything here. Be sure to check their Goldbox deals, in fact, you can add them to your Blogreader, so you can keep up on their best deals as you read your subscribed blogs. I also like to put items in my shopping cart and check that every few days, as your cart will tell you if the price went up or down for each item in the cart. So far, in the five orders I have had shipped overseas, they all arrived within 8 days. I also used Amazon.de to get my cat a new litterbox, a little faux fur slumberhouse and a $10 cell phone with 5 Euro worth of minutes on it for my son. Be sure to know the terms and conditions of your credit card, but the stuff was inexpensive with free shipping and my VISA's fee was only a few cents for each item...totally worth it. I just used my German address for shipping and my CMR address for billing.

eBay - I always check to make sure they specifically ship to APOs and when not, I always ask. Everyone I've asked has always responded in the affirmative...that's yes. Just check seller feedback. I stick with sellers who have a 99% feedback rating or higher.

LL Bean - I sometimes get it confused with Land's End, but again, get on their email list and always use a coupon. It is very hard to find a free shipping coupon for them, but I try anyway. I just bought a $20 pair of heavy snow boots with faux sheepskin along with a matching bomber hat...the boots are like walking on pillows..they're great... I never would've found something at that price over here.

For all online orders, always google the name of the store and coupon and sort through all the results...I've sometimes found the best coupons on the third and fourth pages. Always save a copy of the receipt. I keep my email confirmations in a "Receipt" folder and before I leave the site, I do save that page in a receipts folder in My Documents. Lately, with all the holiday shopping, I've been printing each one out and posting it to my corkboard.

What are your favorites? What have been your best deals overseas?

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