Preface#
I bought glasses from Jacques Durand, a well-known eyewear store in Japan called PonMegane. As for why I didn't use a purchasing agent, first, the black color is limited to Japan and there are few agents with stock; second, I thought the agents were too expensive and wanted to save some money. However, later I found that the cost of overseas shopping was almost the same as that of purchasing agents.
Placing an Order#
Filling in the Purchase Information#
To be honest, the ordering interface of PonMegane can be said to be very rudimentary, which makes people feel insecure. By filling in contact information (phone number, email), address, and the model of the product to be purchased, the order is generated in the background.
Second Confirmation#
Shortly after submitting the order, the customer service will check the inventory status and confirm the order again by email.
Payment#
Received Payment Email#
After the second confirmation of the order, the customer service will send another email with the previous order information for the customer to verify, along with a payment link.
In addition to PayPal, PonMegane also supports WeChat Pay and Alipay, which are very user-friendly for Chinese users.
Second Confirmation#
Shortly after the payment is completed, an email with the order number will be received. I won't include the screenshot here. However, the email did not inform me whether the payment was successful, so I sent an email to PonMegane with a screenshot of the order number, asking if they received the payment and the subsequent process. Each email exchange usually takes several hours.
Shipment#
In the screenshot above, PonMegane has explained the whole process in great detail. When placing the order, PAQUES-506 happened to be out of stock, so they had to source it from France, which meant waiting until the end of October. To make matters worse, when it was close to the end of October, I received another email stating that due to force majeure, the scheduled flight was forced to be postponed to the end of November. However, I received an email notifying the arrival of the goods on November 11th and received the logistics link on the same day.
Logistics#
The logistics used was international EMS, which took 13 days from shipment to receipt. The transportation time was not long, but it stayed in customs for several days.
Customs Duty#
The actual payment, including shipping, was about 2350, and an additional 430 yuan was paid at customs, making a total of 2800. The purchasing agent on a certain online platform was close to 3000, so in this case, there is not much difference.
Actual Product#
Conclusion#
2022.10.01 - 2022.11.24 was actually a very long journey.
The next steps are: optometry and lens selection.