Ordering from Taobao.com

[dchoc]

Folks, have any of you ordered directly from Taoboa and shipped outside to US or other countries? Have you used http://www.taobaoenglish.com/ or any middleman for that matter? I'm contemplating on getting some stuff from Taobao, but I just wanted to know what your experience (experiences) and advice. Thanks.

 

[Zankantou]

I help some of my customers get stuff from TaoBao too. But there is a certain risk buying stuff there... after all it is in China. The price you see in there is RMB, and if you do the conversion most of the time it may be more expensive then you would have expected it to be. TaoBao also does a **** job in moderating, so a lot of sellers who post items up are usually out of stock. But they don't remove it and TaoBao doesn't either. Also the shipping part to HK... can be a little rough most of the time. I helped a customer of mine order a few SHF's and when it came to me the box was all banged up. They don't wrap things up and from China (also depending on which province) they will toss your stuff everywhere all the way till it reaches HK. As far as I know, most sellers in TaoBao do not ship internationally. One factor is communication barrier the other being the cost. One more thing, buying from TaoBao there is a possibility of buying fake or counterfeit items; and there is no protection policy either.

Also the TaoBao in English..... dude, you really believe that mainlanders will maintain the English section regularly? XD It's just to show, folks in China always love to show XD

If there is anything interested in TaoBao, just let me know and I'll be more then happy to help. But really, keep it as a last resort is my advice to you.

 

[usbcheater]

I use Bhiner as an middleman to taobao, I did a long blog about it http://bit.ly/vvOuDA But now that I read back its quite insufficient. Just like with Taobao, Bhiner's staff is really lax with helping you when something is wrong with the order at hand. And at first the didn't really show what your order looked like. But not that it matters though. Their boxes suck. More then once I was worried that I lost something because the box had an huge gaping hole in it, because it was constructed from several noodle boxes.

This is what I hauled recently. It costed €37 to buy everything and its still in China because I have to pay for the €50 shipping costs http://bit.ly/O8Ss5N

 

[dchoc]

Thanks to both of you... I hope people will post more information soon. Regards.