This is the weekly "sale watch" post, to help each other find sale
items at our
various local J.Crew stores. ;)
If
you are stopped
by a J.Crew store this past weekend
to see what's available (if
anything!) in the SALE, or to see some NEW ARRIVALS
{sigh!} in person, maybe you
might be willing to
share that with us in this post. In
particular, if you could share
with us a few of the noteworthy items
that are available, at what
prices, and potential sizes the
store is carrying (as well as the
store location)- that would be
fantastic!
Also, please
let us know if your local store
was/ is carrying an additional
percent off sale. Thanks in
advance!!! :)
There was about a 5 minute period where the sale section was not final sale around 10:15 pm PST. Glad I'm finally going to get to try some things risk-free! I've noticed lately that things tend to go to sale rather quickly but only at 10% off or so, which is extremely frustrating when local stores don't get merchandise, final sale is in effect, and sale-on-sale promos have been rarer. Worse deals for products I've never seen that I can't return? No thank you! This is only my 2nd J. Crew order of the year, which is pretty incredible compared to prior shopping patterns. I'm shopping way less everywhere, actually.
ReplyDeleteUn-friggin-believable
ReplyDeleteI bought a black tippi... It arrived this weekend MONOGRAMMED WITH SOMEONE ELSE'S INITIALS!!!
OMG. that is craziness.
DeleteThat's got to be one of the biggest order screw-ups I've seen posted here! Good grief.
Deletethis is on top of a gray sweater that came in without any tags (like no j.crew or size tags) and a different black sweater in XS but i ordered a S. so i think the j.crew universe does not want me to have a black or gray sweater at all.
DeleteThe same thing happened to me years ago with a periwinkle cashmere sweater. I still remember it because I had been stalking that popback for ages. I never did get my periwinkle sweater. 😭 They’re not supposed to take returns of personalized items, but I guess they occasionally slip by.
Delete@Miss JR, that’s crazy! I’m sorry that happened, I know Tippis are hard to come by. I hope that another pops back. I wonder if they aren’t looking as closely at returns with everything going on.
Delete@MissJR: that wins for best comment of the day so far. It's only 9 am but I doubt anything will top that!
ReplyDeleteI picked up a pair of Camerons, the embroidered peace tee, and a Liberty bathing suit during this weekend's sale. I have come to terms with the fact that I gained 8 lbs during lockdown and I have moved up one whole size, so my work pants no longer fit. But I plan to return to the office next month, so gotta start planning ahead. And I am going to the beach (finally! 1.5 years since I last saw the beach!) for my milestone birthday next month so also need a bigger swimsuit. At least the Camerons aren't final sale - despite owning 8 pairs of Camerons, still can't tell how they will fit if different colors/fabrics.
@eeps...Happy early MILESTONE B'day!! Enjoy your whole month (and the beach ⛱) I just bought a pair of black linen pants to cover my lockdown pounds. No shame in my cover-up game!
DeleteMe and my Peloton are still working on them...slowly ;>)!!!
DeleteI’m down a size, post Covid, but I’ve also lost about 50% of my hair. Hopefully the hair comes back and the weight doesn’t. 🤞🏻
Delete@eeps, I hope that you have an amazing birthday next month! The beach sounds amazing, I miss it so much. I’m sure it’s great to have a fun birthday to look forward to!
DeleteSome of my older shorts are too tight now. I won’t buy more this summer I’ll just stick to skirts or dresses if needed.
@eeps Happy early birthday! Can’t wait to visit a beach too. If anyone is interested, gingham cashmere sweatshirt is 30% off.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the early birthday wishes! When I was 21, my bucket list destination for this milestone birthday coming up was safari, but that's not going to happen anytime soon so I had to make do with the beach. After last year, I am grateful for just anywhere outside of my apartment.
ReplyDeleteI am trying to lose the weight before my trip, but it's hard to be motivated when I'm still WFH and it's cold out. Only thing left is to diet, which sucks because I love food.
Happy birthday!!!
DeleteI tried on my shorts last night too and some were a little tighter than I remember. Coincidentally my trainer said a lot of it has to do with our bodies reaction to stress. He actually said I’m not eating enough overall, not eating enough protein and fat, and not drinking enough fluids which can also cause your body to react as if it’s under stress. He told me to start with drinking about 60 oz of fluids and see if that helps. He said my body is retaining water because it thinks it’s in starvation mode. 😝 I am careful about what I eat but I eat as much as I want...I’m surprised. Maybe start small and up the fluids! .
Also, I feel you, I turned 50 not long before the pandemic and we were going to do a big 50th birthday/25th anniversary combo trip since our youngest was also graduating HS and our older two college. Oh well. We got nothing.
Delete@Suz Has: Thank you!!
DeleteRe combo trip, I firmly believe last year didn't count and this year and next are all about making up for lost time. I know a lot of people who saved the $ from big trips they were supposed to take last year and plan to use it to treat themselves to extra special trips next year. Where would you have gone if you could have?
Re weight gain, one of my 2021 resolutions was to drink more water. I've been tracking my water intake daily since Jan. 1. and I am appalled at how little water I must have been drinking before I started paying attention. But I definitely know for sure I gained weight because I ate a lot more last year - all that staying home with plenty of time to cook, I tried recipes that I would have never done in Before Times. Not to mention all the stress eating. Plus, I'm a NYer and I have never walked less in my life than last year. Usually my doctor is really on me to be more active/healthy, but even he kind of gave up when I told him why I thought I gained weight last year. He was like.. yeah, you and everyone else in the world.
As I said, last year doesn't count! LOL
Initially we wanted to go to Italy, our second choice when we chose Greece for our honeymoon. Then I got really into yoga and wanted to do a retreat in Thailand. As a matter of fact we were considering going in February and didn’t because I didn’t want to be away from my daughter during her senior year of HS for that long so we thought we might do it this past fall. Well...we know how that went. As a matter of fact when my teacher returned it was just as quarantining was beginning so I was grateful we didn’t go but who knew how long it would last!
DeleteApologies to non-Canadian JCAs.
ReplyDelete(I will be breaking this up because there are max chacter limits)
For Canadian JCAs... the continuation of my "Shippsy" cross-border shipping experience and tips and things to know for those of you who are interested.
With J Crew shutting off international shipments, I decided to take the plunge and try a cross-border shipping service (Shippsy). I don't know if the link below will work, but I wrote about it on this website Feb 19 and described the initial steps.
http://jcrewaficionada.blogspot.com/2021/02/seek-find-will-you-visit-jcrew-this_19.html#comment-form
Even though J Crew is shipping again to Canada, there may be circumstances where you may want to order from the US website and they will only ship to a US address (like the one provided by the cross-border shopping service)
Non-Canadian JCAs will be bored (but may marvel once again at the hoops non-Americans are willing to jump through). I am sorry but I may be setting a record for longest post on this website (even after splitting the information up by posting about the early part of the process a couple of weeks ago).
First thing – I am doing this only because the items are final sale or I am treating them as final sale. When the COVID restrictions are over, you may be able to return non final sale items if you are willing/able to drive to a store across the border and get some of your money back (the various fees and Canadian taxes/duties are probably a write off), but that is just too much trouble unless you happen to be going there anyways. I’m the kind of person who wonders about remote risks – What if they go under while my package is with them? What if they screw up and my package gets lost? I guess these things are all possible. I would have been really upset if my stuff somehow disappeared but I would have been able to deal with the financial loss. I was not ordering an expensive designer bag or anything like that (which I would not recommend you do this route because of the duties and uncertainty). Things went well for me, but please keep in mind that if things go wrong that unravelling and getting it fixed may be harder.
J Crew has resumed international shipping, but Canadians may find this helpful.
(continued below)
continued from above
ReplyDeleteAfter the order is placed with J Crew's website and you have used the Shippsy address provided to you (as described in my earlier posting)
1) Item arrives at Shippsy in the US
2) You get an email telling you it’s arrived and you are asked to provide information about the items and the values and attach an invoice on the website
a. I just cut and pasted the information from J Crew’s invoices and created PDF of the order and uploaded that
3) You have the option of instructing them to transport it to Canada or you can wait if you have additional packages coming to them, you can wait and consolidate packages.
a. I think they charge $7.99 to bring in a single package into Canada. But if you consolidate the different packages that they receibed, they charge $4.99 for each of the packages you are consolidating.
b. But… if you are consolidating, you have to keep the duties in mind.
c. You have to pay provincial sales tax (HST of 13%) on all packages. If you stay below $150 Canadian for the package, there are no duties. I think (but am not sure that it’s 25% duties on the entire amount if you exceed $150 Canadian)
d. In order to stay below $150 in each of the consolidated packages, I created 3 different pairings of my 6 orders, to create 3 different consolidated packages.
e. The Shippsy website made it quite easy to pair the items I wanted and gives you flexibility to consolidate as much or as little as you want
f. At this point, I did not pay anything to Shippsy
continued...
ReplyDelete4) My items arrived in Canada and I am asked to pay
a. I am paying $4.99 for each of the 6 original packages, plus 13% HST on that shipping fee plus 13% HST on the value of the merchandise. Because of the way I combined the packages, no duties were incurred.
b. Shippsy gives you the choice of picking up at their location or having it mailed to you.
c. They are charging me $25 for mailing all of my orders. I experimented on the system with the mailing combinations. The system seems to take into account what Canada Post would charge for weight and number of items. If I had asked for a single unconsolidated package, it would have been about $10. If I paired some of the combinations, it would have been about $15, etc. So $25 to have all of them mailed to me seemed pretty reasonable. (Keep in mind that J Crew shipping to the US address is free and we Canadians are used to paying $14 an order.)
d. Not sure why they do it this way, but you have to put credits into your account with credit card or via PayPal. So I put the exact amount into my account via PayPal and then used the credits in the account to check out.
e. They shipped it out very quickly – I paid in the morning, and it seemed to go out the same day via Canada Post.
f. They offer tracking on their website – you click a button and they port over the Canada Post tracking information. I do wish they gave me the complete Canada Post tracking info because I can see what has happened to date, but I can’t see expected delivery date on the Shippsy website which I think I could see on the Canada Post website.
I consolidated my orders and asked them to ship on THursday, and I received it today (Monday). Depending on where you live, it may not be as fast.
Is it worth it?
I will definitely keep it in mind as an option but I think it’s only worth it either if
1) it’s a really special item (e.g. cashmere or Liberty)
a. you cannot get it in Canada or it’s substantially cheaper via the US than directly to Canada
b. AND you are paying less than $150 Canadian (to keep it under the duties limit)
i. If it’s really special, then you may be ok paying the duties
OR
2) You have a bunch of items that are very heavily discounted and you are able to consolidate a couple of packages and keep the consolidated total under $150 Canadian
I don’t think it’s worth it if, for example, you see a $70 US sweatshirt marked down to $10 US sweatshirt on the US website and that is all you think you are going to buy and you need it mailed to you by Shippsy. It might be worth it to you if you are willing and able to drive to pick it up from Shippsy in Canada.
Is this a rational use of time – maybe not. But I could probably say the same about shopping in general ☺. I was curious about the cross-border shipping experience, and it really was quite easy (too easy).
continued
ReplyDeleteAdditional Notes
- the packages were all opened for inspection, but the resealed very carefully. so no complaints there
- Consider currency conversion. - I have a US dollar credit card and US dollars, so when I placed the J Crew US order, I am not going to pay for currency conversion. If you are using a Canadian dollar credit card, you will be “dinged” by the credit card company when it converts the US charges to Canadian dollars as they will build a fee into the FX conversion rate for themselves. I think that this depends on the credit card, but even if you are paying a couple of percent, it does represent another cost.
- Time - There is a limit to the number of days Shippsy will hold your package – 30 days including the date it arrives at the US address. After that, they start charging a small late fee $1 per package, and at 45 days, they will destroy the package and charge you $2.50 a package. So if you are wanting to consolidate with future packages, you will need to keep an eye on this. I ordered 6 packages over a 2 week period. Once I took the plunge and placed one order, I placed another, and then another and so on. I could have picked up the initial order ages ago (or had it mailed to me), but because there are some cost benefits to consolidating (up to a point), I waited.The J Crew packages arrived surprisingly quickly at the US address, so I had almost 2 weeks left still on the 30 day clock when I consolidated my orders. But I can imagine that you might get unlucky and the packages get delayed in shipping.
- Shippsy - Their website was pretty good. I think that there are some very minor rough edges they could improve. For example – I got a couple of automated emails telling me that details were missing from the information that I had provided. When I went to the dashboard on my account, everything seemed fine. So I called the customer service number. They told me that it was a “glitch” and everything seemed fine. Shippsy is the retail arm of a commercial shipping company called Stallion Express so it is not some person setting up shop in their basement. You may see this name on some small portions of the website. (I can’t recall for sure, but the phone may have been answered with Stallion Express). My PayPal receipt also said Stallion Express.
- I was very pleased with my own experience but some people online do complain about not having a great experience
https://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/if1tlo/parcel_forwarding_company_for_us_purchase/
But other people are happy with Shippsy
https://www.reddit.com/r/askTO/comments/j1ow5f/best_us_to_canada_shipping_service/
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ReplyDeleteFinal one, I promise
ReplyDeleteReferral Code
If you found the above helpful, I would appreciate if you would consider using my referral link below. You will get $10 off your first order, and I will get a credit towards subsequent fees if you use.
https://portal.shippsy.com/register/ZP3JOK
@Toronto Modern, thank you for the details, it makes it so much easier to understand what the costs would be. I’ve noticed some crazy price differences the past few days between Cdn and US prices since our promo is only 30% on some items. It’s so tempting but like you said it makes it so that you can’t really return if it doesn’t work out.
DeleteIf I ever use this I will use your referral code. I was hoping we’d get better promos with the new shipping system.