Category: Shopping

Over the past couple of years, Mogahwi have really turned things around. At one point they looked like they were closing down after shuttering their Salmiya and Shuwaikh locations but instead, they restructured and came back a lot stronger. Their Kuwait City location got a major facelift and now they’ve reopened their Shuwaikh location.

Mogahwi in Shuwaikh used to be pretty huge, I think it was their main branch/head office. They ended up closing that location down, demolishing the whole building, and constructing a much nicer plaza in its place called MogArt. Now they’ve reopened a smaller Mogahwi there focusing mainly on art supplies.

It’s a small but really nice looking store and the items seem to have been curated, kinda like the best of the best art supplies. If you want to check it out, here is their location on Google Maps.

You’ve probably seen the ads on the roads for Drops, they’re a grocery store app where you order your items from and they’d deliver them to you. There are a bunch of other grocery store delivery apps but I was attracted to Drops for the simplicity which is why I’ve been using them.

I generally used to love grocery shopping in person but that was mostly when Sultan Center Shaab was open. The place was never too busy and it was always a good calming experience shopping there. Once that location shut down I never really got used to shopping at another supermarket and covid after that just made things worse. I live next to Lulu in Salmiya but that place is so overcrowded and tight, it’s never a chill experience shopping there. The old Sultan Center in Salmiya on the other hand looks great with their new redesigned interior but somehow managed to make the checkout process an even worse experience than before. I’ve stopped shopping there completely because of the checkout layout which is chaotic, squeezed and so old-fashioned. They really should have installed some self-checkout counters at least, it’s 2021! Or at least, at the very least set up a single queue multiple counters layout.

When vacationing in Europe a couple of weeks back I barely dealt with any cashiers, most places I shopped in were self-checkout and a lot of places now had RFID baskets where you just place your items next to the checkout screen and the machine prices everything in it. Super convenient.

Anyway back to Drops. I’ve used them a few times and I like them. Unlike some other apps, with Drops you don’t pick a supermarket and then shop for items. Instead, you treat Drops as a large supermarket and not just a delivery platform. You can shop either by category, brand, or just search for the specific items directly and add it to your cart. You can also create various “wishlists” of items you usually order to make it easier to add the next time. I’ve used them a bunch of times and the items generally arrive within 2 hours. The first time it took longer than 2 hours and they credited my account back with the delivery charge. All the items arrive in Drops branded boxes or bags and the delivery guy has a small trolly so you can order boxes of water for example and not feel guilty about the delivery guy having to carry them.

The worst thing about Drops though is their tracking system is shit. All my orders that were already delivered still showing as “Being Prepared”. When the item goes out for delivery you can’t tell nor can you track the driver even though these features are built into the app, they just never progress past the “Being Prepared” stage.

The prices of the items on Drops are similar to what I pay when I go to the supermarket myself. The only difference is I now pay 1KD to have them deliver the items which really isn’t that bad considering how much time they save me as well as having them deliver the heavy boxes of water instead of me having to carry them up from my car in multiple trips.

If you want to try them out they’re on instagram @dropskuwait and you can download the app from the Apple and Android app stores.

Kuwait’s favorite tabletop gaming store ‘Good Game’ started their two-week-long sale today. The sale is only taking place in-store so if you haven’t been to their new location yet this is a good reason to pass by (It also gives you the excuse to pass by Spunsprinkles upstairs).

Games will be discounted up to 90% and this will also be the very first time they have a sale on Magic the Gathering products. If you want to pass by, here is their location on Google Maps and they’re on Instagram @goodgamekw

Last month I posted about DesertCart Plus, a service by the Amazon dropshipping website DesertCart where for 5KD a month you get unlimited free shipping. The only caveat was it only applied to items that weren’t oversized, and DesertCart refused to define what “oversized” was exactly. So you’d only know if your item was oversized or not after placing the order. I mentioned I was going to order a few things small things to try it out and I ended up doing just that.

I signed up to the DesertCart Plus free trial and ordered two items, both very small and cheap, cheap as in shipping would cost more than the item which would mean it usually wouldn’t be worth ordering. One item was an adapter for my tire inflator (KD 2.900) and the other a battery disconnect switch (KD 3.200).

Both items ended up shipping and being delivered to me for free, just as described. In hindsight, I should have tried ordering a larger item to see if I’d run into any issues, but since DesertCart doesn’t define what oversized is, I don’t think that would have been very helpful of a test anyway unless I ordered multiple items in different weights.

Would I sign up to DesertCart Plus? No, but only because the service isn’t useful to me. This service is for people who tend to order a lot of small, light and cheap things off Amazon on a monthly basis. If you fall under that category then the service works. They offer a free trial anyway so you can give it a go yourself without paying the KD 5 monthly fee. Link

If you’ve been to Al-Rai area recently you might have noticed a Nike store that was under construction next to True Value. The construction work is now complete and the store is officially open, turns out it’s their new outlet location.

The Nike outlet is two floors, the ground floor for men and the top floor for women. They had a ton of stuff for sale and all heavily discounted. I was hoping to find some cool Metcons for sale but ended up finding only one color combo which I didn’t like but you might find something you like.

If you want to check the place out they’re open 10AM to 10PM on weekdays and 10AM to 11PM on weekends. Here is the location on Google Maps.

I was at JYSK yesterday in Shuwaikh looking for something when I found a sign pointing to an outlet in their basement, so I checked it out. Turns out it was the outlet store for AAW brands and it was pretty huge and packed. Some of the brands I spotted were:

Eastpak
Vans
The North Face
Jansport
Patagonia
Siemens
BOSCH
Coleman
and more..

If you’re looking for outdoor or winter gear for travel, or backpacks for school, you should check them out. Here is their location on Google Maps.

When the iPhone 13 Pro launched a couple of weeks ago I pre-ordered one from the Apple store along with a silicon cover. This is how much it cost me with shipping:

iPhone 13 Pro 512GB (Sierra Blue)
Apple Silicon Cover (Blue Jay)
Total = KD 404

Shipping – MyUS (so I don’t pay US tax)
FedEx 1-3 Days Priority
Customs and clearance fees
Total = KD 16

Total cost = KD 420

I’ll be actually selling this one since I accidentally ordered the 512GB instead of the 256GB. And since the shipping time from Apple is now 3-4 weeks due to high demand, I’m just gonna wait till Digits gets their phones and buy one from them. But, the prices above should give you an idea of how much it generally costs to get a phone directly from the States. There were two cheaper shipping prices with MyUS, but both would have resulted in the iPhone arriving in around 10 days’ time and I’m traveling soon so wanted it to arrive before.

So last week I posted about DesertCart and ever since that post I’ve been searching for other items I want but wouldn’t be allowed to ship with Aramex. While adding one such item to my cart, I got an option to ship for free if I agreed to become a DesertCart Plus member where for just 5KD a month I would get unlimited free shipping. That didn’t make any sense. Does that mean I could order a bowling bowl every day and not pay shipping for it? I decided to investigate things further.

Firstly, DesertCart already has a flat shipping rate of 3KD for items valued under 30KD and free shipping for items over 30KD. That alone is a great deal. But when you read the fine print on their website, (which also applies to their “unlimited free shipping” offer) you’ll see the big “but”:

We have a flat 3 delivery charge for all orders below KWD 30. If your order is KWD 30 or above, your order is delivered for free! You can see the final cost of your order after adding an item to your cart. If the item you have ordered is oversized, an extra shipping charge may apply. If your item exceeds a courier’s standard dimension or weight, they may charge an additional fee. We will communicate this with you before we charge your order.

I highlighted in bold the sentence that caught my attention so I got in touch with customer support via their live chat to get clarification on what exactly constitutes being oversized? What a frustrating and waste of time that was. Their support staff seemed to have been trained to maneuver around a straightforward answer but I kinda managed to squeeze out a number from them, 1-1.5KG. According to the first live chat operator (yup I contacted a bunch), as long as the item was below 1 to 1.5kg, they would ship it for free.

That’s actually not a bad deal, 5KD a month to ship an unlimited number of items that weigh around 1KG. But why isn’t that information on their website, why not make it clear or mention it in the fine print? I needed someone else to confirm that to me. So I got in touch with customer support a second time on a different day and no matter what I asked I couldn’t get an accurate answer from them. Instead, I was fed with the generic answer below:

We do not have the option to check if the item is considered oversized. Normally, if the item has large dimensions or is heavyweight, the international merchants apply the extra shipping charges before shipping the item.

At this point, we notify the customers if they are willing to proceed with the order by accepting the additional shipping charges or the customer can cancel the order from the order status page.

The merchant can only confirm the shipping charges once we proceed with the order.

When I highlighted to them that the “merchant” is Amazon and they don’t charge extra for heavy items, they responded to me with the following:

We are not affiliated with Amazon. Desertcart ships products from merchants around the world mainly from the UK, US, and India, and some from local UAE merchants. We cannot confirm what are items considered as oversized as the merchant can only confirm the shipping charges and not us. But in my experience, items that are 5kg is considered as heavyweight and the merchant might ask for the extra shipping cost

This is where their lack of transparency really bothered me. They ARE a storefront for Amazon and they ship the items to their warehouse (forwarding address in Delaware) before shipping to the UAE and then to Kuwait. You can copy-paste any product name no matter how it’s written on Amazon and DesertCart will pull up the exact same item, with the same photos and the same reviews. The customer support person got very defensive when I called them an Amazon storefront.

They were also still being very vague about what weight wouldn’t be eligible for free shipping and the fact you need to purchase the item, pay for it, and then be told if you would pay shipping is bad practice. So I kept at it trying to find out more, I decided to give them a call which didn’t result in anything new either since the person over the phone was also programmed to reply the exact same way. They recommended I email them which I did only to be also given a generic reply.

I really want to like these guys but they’re making it really difficult. They’ve also scored terrible on Scam Detector which doesn’t help their case either.

But, I still wanted to see how this free shipping works so I decided to order a lightweight and cheap item that I needed but wasn’t worthwhile to ship with Aramex, an adapter for my tire inflator. Even trying to order that was a horrible experience. The item on Amazon would have cost me around KD2.200 with tax and shipping to my Aramex address. The price on DesertCart was listed as KD2.900 which is slightly more but they need to make money as well plus currency conversion, etc, so that’s fine. But, when I would select the item to add it to my cart, the price would jump up to 7.5KD (check above). It kept happening over and over and not only with this item but with others as well. I can’t tell if it’s a buy-in their system (they have a ton of them) or if that’s part of their business model. I’d search and find an item I want and the price would say 3KD, when I click on it changes to 5.9KD. It was very frustrating. But after exiting the page and coming back in, and trying it out from the iPhone App and different browsers, I finally managed to click on the item and not have it triple in price. I added the adapter to my cart, chose to become a DesertCart Plus member (it’s free for the first month), and placed the order with free shipping.

We’ll see how it goes, I’ll also try and order a few more items of varying sizes to see what will pass and what will be considered “heavyweight”. I’ll post another update once everything arrives. If in fact, this all does work out, they might be a good option to ship items that Aramex won’t as well as ship items that aren’t too heavy. Let’s see.

The last time I posted about places that sold 3D printers was 5 years ago and since then, all the places on that list either closed down or stopped selling printers. So here is a new list:

Dimension W
Located in Promenade they have just one Formlabs printer for 1,400KD

Kuwait Institute for Training and Engineering Simulations
Creality brand of printers with prices ranging between 159KD to 2,470KD

Printa
Phrozen and Prusa Research brand of printers ranging from 199KD to 460KD

Also, here is a list of places and people that can print 3D items for you:

Alternative Solutions
Dimension W
Exfusion
Kuwait 3D Printing
Rapid Manufacturing Technology
StereoLab
Tamim (Robotics)

If there is a place missing that should be on the list, let me know in the comments.

I wasn’t planning on posting about this until I bought a watch for myself, but I don’t need another watch so I need people to go buy everything and not leave anything for me to impulse buy.

Al-Batel is an old watch store that was established back in 1959. Back then they used to carry a number of watch brands including Breitling, Heuer (before they were purchased by TAG), Nivada, and Zodiac. Incredibly, they still have unsold watches available for sale (New Old Stock) dating back to the 60s and 70s. They have some of them listed up on their website but they have more on display in their shop in Mubarakia next to AlFares (Google Maps).

If you’re into vintage watches then definitely check them out ASAP. Their prices are pretty much the same compared to online prices for used versions of these watches except the ones they have are all new. Link

If you’ve ever searched for a product on Google then you’ve most likely come across the website DesertCart. It’s an online store that will ship and deliver items to you from around the world, think of it like if Amazon and Shop&Ship merged together because that’s what DesertCart is. DesertCart’s catalog is composed of items from various other websites but with the added convenience of being able to ship the items directly to you.

I haven’t had a reason to ever use them, I just order my stuff directly from Amazon to Kuwait or have items shipped to my Shop&Ship mailbox. But, a couple of weeks ago, I ordered a Dewalt Cordless Tire Inflator from Amazon. It’s really the best cordless inflator you can buy and my friend has one which we use at the race track. It’s super convenient and runs on batteries which you need to purchase separately since they aren’t included with it. The local Dewalt dealer sells 18V 5000mAh batteries for 35KD but I wanted to get 20V batteries which they don’t get locally. Amazon also doesn’t ship batteries directly to Kuwait nor does Shop&Ship. MyUS do ship batteries but they’re too expensive and so wouldn’t make sense with such a low-value item. So I started googling other options and I ended up finding a Dewalt 20V 4000mAh battery for sale on Desert Cart for 29.600KD plus 3KD to ship to Kuwait. So 32.600KD total and that also included customs. So I placed the order.

The battery turned out to be available in the UAE and within a couple of hours, it got sent to the DHL warehouse and prepared for shipping. I got a notice by email that the item was classified as “dangerous goods” and that it needed more handling and packaging but that they would still ship it. Due to it being classified as dangerous, shipping took a bit longer than usual since I don’t think batteries can’t be mailed on regular flights. A week later, I got the item.

Throughout the whole process, my order tracking was updated constantly, and overall my experience was pretty great and I’d order through them again, but I did run into issues:

• Originally I wanted to purchase two batteries, for me and my friend, but every time I tried to pay for the items I got a weird error regarding payment. I got in touch with their customer support through live chat which was impressive, but after trying a few things and placing the order from different browsers, we couldn’t figure out the issue. I then tried purchasing just 1 battery and the order went through. Turns out that there was only 1 battery in stock which is why my previous orders were confusing their system.

• The second issue I ran into was with my account. I have an account but no password, everytime I try to log in I need to enter a code that gets emailed to me. There doesn’t seem to be a way for me to create a password for my account and I think I have three different accounts with them all using the same email and number? I don’t know, it’s confusing because when I log in from the app on my phone, I can see my previous order. When I log in from the browser on my Macs, I can’t. Also, I verified my phone number on my MacBook but now when I logged in to DeserCart from my iMac I noticed my phone number wasn’t verified so I just verified it again. It’s really buggy.

• All my issues with them seem to be related to random strange bugs, the menu button on the iPhone app for example pulls up an empty list (see above). It’s really odd because they’ve been around for years now so how come no one has run into all these issues before?

But, as I mentioned, my experience was pretty positive since I ended up getting an item which under normal circumstances I wouldn’t be able to get. Even talking to their customer support was a positive experience. I’m still not sure what I’d use DesertCart for again since I don’t need any more batteries, but what’s going to happen from now on is that anytime I want to order anything online, I’m going to check and compare the cost to DesertCart. I just really hope they work out all their kinks. Check them out at desertcart.com.kw

Have you tried them before? Did you face any issues?

Bin Nisf which is probably one of the most popular and largest hardware stores in Kuwait have now officially launched their website. Previously they had a website but you could only search for items but not order from it. As of yesterday, the website is now fully functional although I did run into a few annoyances so if anyone from Bin Nisf is reading this, here are my comments:

• Website looks like it was designed in 1998
• When searching for an item you can’t tell if it’s available or sold out until you click on the item
• While browsing for products by brand, you have brands listed even though you don’t carry any items by them

That’s pretty much it so far. If you want to check out their website it’s binnisf.com. Shipping is 2KD if the value of your items are under 30KD and free if the value is over 30KD.

Barmaee is a new outdoor sports shop that opened up recently. I found out about it by chance since it’s near my garage where I’m getting my Datsun restored and I kept noticing kayaks and paddleboards through the display window so I decided to stop and check the place out.

The store is fairly cute and clearly being run by someone who’s an outdoorsman but the physical store really is just a small display area, their real store is online where they carry so many great brands including YETI, Thule, Marmon, Osprey, Salomon, Black Diamond, Shimano, and many many more. It’s actually pretty insane how much cool stuff they have on their website. They describe themselves as the Middle East’s largest outdoors store and I believe their website could very well be that since I haven’t come across anything like it in the region. (UPDATE: Turns out it’s not true! Read the update below)

The only confusing part is that their physical store is called Barmaee while their online shop is called Just Outdoors. I don’t know why that is, maybe because the physical store doesn’t carry many items but it just confuses things.

If you’re looking for outdoor gear definitely check these guys out. Their instagram accounts are @barmaee.q8 and @justoudoorscom, while the website is justoutdoors.com

Update: So it looks like the whole thing is misleading and not true. They aren’t the largest outdoor store in the region because they don’t have any of the items listed on their website. Their website is just an affiliate store for a US website so everything needs to be shipped from the US store to Kuwait. It’s similar to websites like uBuy and Desertcart which are just affiliate stores for Amazon. Disappointing.

A few weeks ago I decided to finally upgrade my toolbox with a proper set of tools. Over the years I’ve been buying tools as I needed them and that has resulted in a bag full of random brands, missing pieces, and duplicate items. Since I use my tools a lot because of my cars, I decided to reboot my toolbox and put together a nice set of some great brands and great tools.

There are two very popular hardware stores in Kuwait, Ace Hardware and Bin Nisf, but there are a ton of other smaller or more specialized stores in Kuwait which is mainly why I wanted to put this list together. There isn’t one store that carries everything so if you want to build a kit with the best of different brands you’re going to have to visit different locations. Below is a list of my favorite places that carry some great brands, most of them are only available in the stores they’re listed under. I’ll only be listing the brands I think are worth mentioning, for example, Bin Nisf carries a lot of brands but not many quality ones. Also, some brands like Bosch, Dewalt, Stanley, Makita, etc are sold in all hardware stores so I haven’t mentioned those as well. Check out the places below:

Last month I posted about a restaurant in Avenues that accept cryptocurrency as payment and now there are two more shops that accept crypto.

Outwest: The local lifestyle shop now accepts Bitcoin as payment

VI BY VOGULARITY: The local fashion label now accepts Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Ethereum as payment

Better Books: They have over 10,000 books including some really old ones and they accept Bitcoin as payment.

If you know of any other local shops that accept crypto let me know in the comments.