As I'm clicking away and set to order, I get the good idea to do some price checking and lo and behold, I find the same blue and gold lanterns on PaperLanternStore.com, only around 50 cents cheaper per lantern. So I keep the same 5 star lanterns in the AsianIdeas.com shopping cart, and get ten each of the blue and gold circular paper lanterns from PLS.com. I mean, they're all the same damn thing anyhow, right?
Well, kind of.
Here's where I made my first mistake: I checked out of the tried and true place first.
Your only options for shipping through PaperLanternStore were expensive and restricted to FedEx only. AsianIdeas uses USPS Priority Mail, which is cheaper and ships faster than the standard option presented by PLS.com unless you want to add even more money to your order to expedite shipping. So sure, I ended up saving about $10 on the lanterns by ordering through PLS.com, but any savings I received went straight to shipping. Point in favor of AsianIdeas.com.
Also, when considering total time it took for the order to process and ship, I again have to nod my hat to AsianIdeas.com. It took a grand total of four days for me to get my order from them. It took over a week for the lanterns from PLS.com to arrive. And remember- I paid more for shipping.
As far as the product quality goes, it's hard to compare since we're talking cardstock star-shaped lanterns and the thinner, circular lanterns. But both seem adequate as far as quality goes, and for that, it's just about an even tie.
Overall, I think going forward I'd keep ordering from AsianIdeas.com. They were faster and cheaper from start to finish, and seemed to offer better sales on what I needed. The star lanterns I picked out were I believe $7 originally, but I purchased them for $2.50 each. Not too shabby. Had the lanterns not been on sale, I would have spent WAY more than what I should have at AsianIdeas.
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