E-Commerce Review: Getting my first pink box from Althea

Well, well.. 

Online shopping isn't new to me. In fact, that's where my monthly salary mostly goes to. I usually buy most of my make up and skin care products online because I can get much better deals than buying from the physical stores, and even get products that aren't available in my country yet. I have several online shops I always go to, and sometimes I also use market places like Tokopedia or Shopee. Normally, I avoid buying from sellers outside Indonesia directly, as I'm worried that my goods will get lost in the way, or they'll get stuck at the custom office and I have to pay certain amount of tax to retrieve them. One time I bought 2 Holika Holika's eyebrow pencils from Qoo10 (which worth less than $5), and they took more than a month to arrive. They stayed in the custom office for weeks, and it got to the point where I decided to let them go forever. Although I eventually got them, I just thought the price of the items wasn't worth the risk and time, I'd rather buy from local sellers who import things directly, so I don't have to worry as much. 

However, 2 months ago Althea made its entrance in Indonesia. It's an e-commerce website providing Korean beauty and skin care products straight from Korea, with affordable price. Althea promises that it won't take more than 2 weeks to arrive at your doorsteps and all the products are the cheapest among others, they're authentic and fresh from Korea. Your purchases also won't be delayed in the custom office, and you don't have to pay entrance tax what so ever. You only have to add the items to your shopping cart, check out, make the payment, and wait patiently. Althea provides free shipping and handling fee for a minimum of IDR 500,000 purchase, and even IDR 50,000 points that you can use for your purchase. Since they've got many brands which are new to my ears but offer exciting products, I decided to give Althea a try! So, how's my overall experience? Let's get straight into it!

I made my order on May 16, and I made use of my IDR 100,000 credits I got during their grand opening offer, together with 10% discount they give for every first order. I was way too excited and ended up spending more than IDR 900,000 for my first purchase, which was reduced to only IDR 757,980 due to my points and 10% discount. To be honest, it took me 3 days before I decided to check out and pay my order, because I was busy looking for more information on the brands (which sometimes are from smaller companies) and whether the companies are cruelty-free. How I wish they had a special category for cruelty-free brands, or at least give more information about it on their page. Only after making sure I bought products from cruelty-free brands (a lot of googling was involved) did I make my payment.

Details of my order which were sent to my e-mail

In Althea Indonesia, there are two ways to pay your order. First, using Doku Wallet, where you get a billing number and make the payment through Alfamart, Mandiri Click Pay or Permata Bank's ATM. You can also pay using Visa/Mastercard, which I chose since it's more convenient and your payment can be verified instantly. I didn't find any inconvenience during my credit card payment, and it was also pretty secured in my opinion.

After your payment is received, you'll receive an e-mail confirming your purchase with the details of your order. and this is the part that requires a little bit of patience. As I've said before, I received a confirmation of my order instantly on May 16, and it was then processed for more than a week, before I finally got another update that my order had been shipped on May 24. They also gave me a tracking number for my shipment, which was sent by SRE. 

An update of my order, informing the shipping's tracking number

Prior to this, I was impatiently waiting for the processing time and sent an email to the customer service asking when my order would be shipped. At first the CS officer said that she couldn't find my order and advised me to re-order since the payment might be unsuccessful the first time. Imagine how shocked I was to receive that reply. I almost lost my cool and I replied quite harshly the second time, only to hear that my order had just been shipped (pheww), but they didn't apologize for their first mistake. I guess that was the only dissatisfaction I had for Althea, the long processing time and their quick but inaccurate response to my e-mail questioning my order.

In the email they sent me, I could easily track my order and it took 2 days to arrive in Jakarta, only a day for the goods to be cleared from customs, and another 2 days to be shipped to my house. In short, from the day I placed my order to the day I received my pink box, I had to wait for a total of 14 days, not including weekends. 

The tracking website from SRE. Pretty quick, huh?

After all that waiting, I was more than happy to open the pink box, and found that all my goods were safely and individually wrapped in thick bubble wraps, together with 2 Althea's pink boxes made of thick card board, and I even got one complimentary face mask. I have used all of the products except for the cleansing oil and cleansing water, which I save for later use since I still have my Holika Holika cleansing oil and non cruelty-free Bioderma micellar water to finish. I think overall I was pretty satisified with my first order in Althea, though I wish that they could process my order faster so that it would have arrived sooner. Well, 2 weeks aren't actually that bad, when you compare it to my previous Qoo10 order. 

Will I place an order again? Without a doubt, yes. I'm eyeing Aromatica products, which are 100% cruelty-free, and want to try more of other skin care brands (W-Lab, B-Lab, Skin & Lab, etc) they have there. I won't buy any products from bigger brands (Laneige, Etude House, Skinfood, etc) because the available brands are mostly sold in mainland China, thus aren't cruelty free, sadly. The next time I make an order, I might need to join hands with another person so I can avoid the shipping fee (IDR 120,000) in case my orders are below IDR 500,000.

So, what's left for this review? I'll give you all the pictures of the products I bought from Althea. Among all of them, I gotta say I really love the cleansing foam and peeling gel from B-Lab. They leave my skin squeaky clean and moisturized!

Have you ever bought anything from Althea? How's your experience? ;)

B-Lab;s: L-R: Cleansing foam, cleansing water, peeling gel 

Chica Y Chico's Killing Star cleanser (oil to foam cleanser for a one-step cleansing)

Skin & Lab's Don't Touch Trouble Spot (acne spot treatment) & Don't Worry Wrinkle Spot (eye treatment)

Petitfee's Black Pearl & Gold Hydrogel eye patch. They're soothing and reduce puffiness!