There are many cheap online stores where we can buy practically anything and one of those stores is Wish. E-commerce at a low price that allows us to buy gadgets of all kinds and in a very affordable way. Headphones, LED lights, clothes, beauty accessories and much more. It is one of the main alternatives to AliExpress and today we explain everything you need to know about buying on Wish, what it is, whether or not it is reliable, and what steps we must follow to try this online store.
Surely you have seen Wish advertised on social networks: Facebook ads with products of all kinds that lead us to Wish. But the website needs registration not only to buy but also to view the catalog, so it is possible that you have abandoned before completing the purchase. For this reason, we explain everything you need to know, how it works, what payment methods it accepts or what the delivery times are to Spain if we want to buy any of these advertised products.
What is it
Wish is an online store with all kinds of products. An alternative to AliExpress available in more than 100 different countries. Wish is not the one that sells its products, but it works as a platform to connect customers and sellers. You can find all kinds of things but it will be external sellers who will send it to you. Wish is based in San Francisco and was founded in 2010 by former programmers from companies like Yahoo and Google. Today, its great success is on mobile phones with iOS and Android applications, but it has more than five hundred million users around the world, according to its own data.
It is an alternative to AliExpress or eBay where we buy from manufacturers and small stores that sell their products through this website. It is totally reliable and stands out for a very cheap catalog but also for having all kinds of “crazy” or unlikely items, gadgets or home accessories… But also clothing, jewelry, shoes, watches, mobile phone cases and much more.
Catalog: What you can buy
We can buy practically anything on Wish. From clothing to accessories for making dumplings, toothbrush holders or mobile phone chargers. Everything stands out for a common factor: low prices whatever the category or product we need. Everything is cheap but there is practically everything.
We can see what is the most popular but we can also go to the “categories” section where we will find the following: men’s fashion, pants, electronics, hobbies, home decoration, beauty and makeup, shoes, babies and children, wallets and bags , phone accessories, watches, blouses, pet accessories, clothing, kitchen and automotive.
As we said before, there is practically everything. In hobbies we can find products such as geolocators for the keychain, blankets for dogs… We can find a bag sealer for one euro or Velcro to organize the cables with forty different colors and for which we only have to pay the shipping. Or a bathroom light with a motion detector that will turn on when you sit on the toilet and you won’t have to turn on the light in the living room, costing less than three and a half euros. You can buy practically anything and we just have to spend time exploring the different categories, recommended, etc.
Features and what to consider
When buying on Wish we must take into account a series of aspects, as in any other online store: how long a product that we have bought will take, what are the prices that this online store offers us or what are the purchase conditions that we can find: what happens if we return something, etc.
Shipping costs and deadlines
How long does a product take? Depends. Wish is a store where there are “stores”, as is the case with AliExpress. Therefore, if we go to the Help Center and the “General Shipping Policies” section, we can see that the delivery dates vary according to the individual processing of each store. As explained in this section, “Delivery dates vary based on individual store processing time, where the item shipped from, the shipping destination, and our own prior shipping data from other customers in your area who have purchased and received items from the same store before.”
From the web or mobile application we can go to the order history to locate or track where it is: we will see the estimated date and the shipping process.
It not only depends on the shipping time but also the shipping cost. As they explain from this same section, the shipping costs are applied per item and not per order and we can see it when paying, when placing the order. It will depend on the size of the product, its weight and the destination of the order placed. In addition, many stores allow us to choose if we want to send it in separate packages or packages together to choose the best possible way.
Prices and payment methods
Prices vary depending on what we buy, the seller. Wish is characterized by very low prices on almost everything we can buy. Also, before you place an order, it’s a good idea to look at the countries Wish ships to. Among them, Spain. But they also ship to Italy, Sweden, Germany, France, Poland, Portugal, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and many more.
And the payment methods are quite extensive. We can use, in most countries, payment methods such as PayPal, Google Wallet or Android Payk, Apple Pay, credit or debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Maestro, American Express…) in addition to payment methods such as Klarna, Ebanx or iDEAL but it will depend on your country that there is one or the other. Of course, there is no cash on delivery option or bank transfers or cash. What is our advice? Always use PayPal to make sure we have our money even if they don’t ship the order.
Security and refunds
We can receive a refund whenever there is a problem with the order or we are not satisfied. We can request a refund within 30 days of the delivery date and it will depend on each case whether we must return it or not. There will be cases where you receive a refund without the need to return the item, but it is also possible that you will need to return the item. Of course, they promise that you will never have to send it back to another country to receive your money back.
In addition, if it does not arrive you also receive a refund. They explain from their website: “All packages are backed by our “Money Back Guarantee”. We calculate a maximum delivery date for each item in case there are delays that are beyond our control. If the item does not arrive by this date, you can submit a refund request within 30 days of the date.” This guarantee consists in calculating a maximum delivery date for each item and we can request a full refund for the order if we do not receive it on that date. We simply open a ticket in the technical service and they will contact us to solve the problem as soon as possible.
How to buy
We can buy on Wish from their website or from their application. Before entering we must register. Once we have it, we can go to the different categories to add products. We explain how, step by step.
Before entering: registration
We cannot access Wish without registering, something that does not happen in other online stores. To be able to buy we must register but also to see the catalog offered to customers or to see any of the available categories. We just need to fill in name, email and password.
Once we have filled in the data, they will ask us if we are a man or a woman and we will have to say an age group to which we belong. When we have completed everything, we can access Wish and see all the details.
Add products to cart and buy
Once we have registered we can access all the categories and buy. You go to the category that interests you and all the products will appear, but keep in mind that there are no filters or the possibility of sorting by type or anything similar. You will see all the products and we must scroll to find something that interests us. When we have it, we click. And we will have some photographs that allow us to see more details as well as the total title, the price and the options in case there is variety in the same product.
In our example, we can choose the size or color of a blanket for the sofa. When you have chosen the details, we touch on the “buy” option to add it to the cart. It will be added to the basket and we will have a summary of the order: the total price of the product, the total price of the shipment and the estimated date on which it will arrive at our home.
We will only have to add a shipping address at the top, choose a payment method between credit cards or PayPal, and pay. We tap on “finish purchase” and we wait for the Wish product to arrive, taking into account that we have a guarantee of money evolution. In our case, if the product does not arrive before March 20, they will give us a refund.
