Making a wish

Things to know before shopping Wish.com

By Brittney MacDonald, Life & Style Editor

Though I had heard of it before, I’d never really explored Wish.com or taken the time to understand what it was. I had seen it in an ad on the sidebar, or spoken about it halfheartedly among  co-workers. Now that I’ve actual used the site, I have come to realize that it is the online shopping equivalent of playing poker. That is to say it’s an intense form of gambling.

Wish.com is an online shopping site where sellers will blow out old stock at ridiculously discounted prices. Some of the items are free, even, and you just have to pay shipping and handling. You can find everything from cellphones to cardigans, but for the sake of this article and reporting on my own experiences, I will be focusing on the fashion aspect.

The Wish website is hard to navigate because there is just so much on there that you can lose hours trying to search for something specific. The website seems made for browsing, instead. The search bar seems to work best with broad and basic descriptions, much like eBay. So simply typing “sweater” will return far too many results, while using brand and design names such as “Nike Women’s Tanjun Athletics Sneakers” won’t return any. You also have to keep in mind that many of the sellers on Wish are in Asia, so their English communication skills and ability to speak and write in English varies from seller to seller.

This brings me to my next, and probably my most important point—there is no guarantee that the items you purchased will be exactly how you see them in the pictures. This is why I refer to Wish as a bit of a gamble. In my experience, receiving items from Wish has been both good and bad. I’ve gotten really amazing pieces that rival some of the design labels available in Pacific Centre—but I’ve also gotten some WTF stuff that I’m positive I never ordered, and was actually a mix up at whatever warehouse it came from. Unlike eBay, there is no way to rate the seller of the item, or at least none that I can find. Listings go up and are available until they sell out. They are not organized by seller at all.

To combat this, the people who use the site seem to comment religiously. It is not unusual to see a listing with several comments stating various experiences in receiving the item—both good and bad. This makes using Wish a little easier. You can find out important things, like whether or not the item in question runs small, or what kind of fabric it’s made from.

The last thing I noticed was the shipping time. Because Wish items come from various locations, and are sent by different people, the shipping time can be a bit of a crapshoot. Some sellers are really fast and you’ll get your garment in a little over a month, while others might take three.

As a student, Wish is a good option for replenishing or starting a new wardrobe—just buyer beware, and don’t expect next-day shipping!