Which EZbuy service should I use? Ship for me or Buy for me?

EZbuy, formerly known as 65daigou, was one of the pioneering Taobao purchasing agents in Singapore. I have used their service to get some stuff from Taobao previously and it was a breeze. However, ever since Taobao started their own forwarding service, I have stopped using EZbuy.

Recently, I have been hooked on buying stuff from US. I came back to EZbuy again after finding out they now provide forwarding service for US parcels! I have since tried their Ship-for-me and Buy-for-me service and here's a lowdown on which service will be more suitable depending on your needs.

The Service
Ship-for-me means you place and pay for the order yourself and ask them to ship to EZbuy overseas warehouse. Thereafter, they will ship to Singapore and you pay for the shipment.
Buy-for-me means you ask EZbuy to help you place and pay for the order. On top of the shipping fee to Singapore, you also have to pay for an agent handling fee.

International credit card
This is the most important criteria in determining whether you can even use ship-for-me service. If the website you are buying from does not allow international credit cards or modes of payment e.g. paypal, you will not be able to use ship-for-me service. Your only option is to use buy-for-me and EZbuy will charge you an additional 10% handling fee on top of your product cost and agent fee (if any).

Agent Fee
In terms of pricing, the only difference between the two services is the agent fee. If you are familiar with the website you are purchasing from, you can use ship-for-me and save on the agent fee.
However, I do notice EZbuy does a lot of promotions where they waived the agent fee. You can also use EZbuy credits to offset part of the agent fee for buy-for-me.

Risk of missing/wrong parcel
What I refer to as missing parcel is when it goes missing from the shop to EZbuy warehouse. If you had chosen buy-for-me, you won't have this issue because EZbuy would be accountable for helping you purchase and ensuring it arrived at their warehouse. If anything goes wrong in between, I would expect them to be the ones liaising with the seller. Also, EZbuy helps to inspect the parcel to ensure the item the seller delivered is the right one e.g. colour, size is correct.

Website promotions
Some US stores may offer promotions where they require to key in promo code for a discount. Both service allows you to take advantage of the promotions. You can key it in yourself for ship-for-me or include in the remarks for EZbuy to do when they buy for you. However, certain promo code may have restrictions e.g. only for new accounts or the promo code is tied to certain email. In this case, you will only be able to do it through the ship-for-me service yourself.
Further to that, if you find yourself frequent a particular store often, you want to use ship-for-me service and start building up those loyalty points or VIP benefits yourself!

Timeliness
My experience with EZbuy buy-for-me service is that it can be slow. If the order is not straightforward, they might get back to you and seek your opinion before proceeding. For e.g. if you mis-calculated the total price (including the shipping), they will inform you that you need to top up additional $x and ask if you are agreeable to it. This might take one or two days depending on how fast they or you reply.
This also brings me back to my previous point on website promotions. If the store has a flash sale and an item is only on offer for a day, EZbuy might not be able to place the order in time or the product might be sold out.

I generally would prefer to use ship-for-me service and have used it at least 3 times already. I find their buy-for-me service to be very slow and I wouldn't have used it if not for the website doesn't allow international credit card. I paid for my item 4 days ago and till now I don't think they have purchased it yet. Day 1 was spent asking if I'm ok to top up additional 10% fee because the shop doesn't accept international credit card. Day 2 was spent telling me that I miscalculated the shipping fee which I have no idea why because when I carted it, it has free shipping. Day 3 was spent telling me that the link I gave them for one of the items did not work (that's because they took quite some time and the item was sold out). Now, I'm still waiting for the status to change from 'purchasing' to 'purchased' for my 1 item.