Taobao, a place where people in China buy everything from rubber stamps to cabinets, from building their own PC to getting their Photoshop work done. Any legal product or service which you can think of, Taobao has it. Especially in a time of high inflation and recessionary economy, saving money has become more important than usual. Taobao, being the most famous e-commerce platform in the factory of the world, has products which are greatly cheaper than many countries, even after factoring in shipping.
However, barriers like payment and shipping exist for foreigners. Buying from Taobao may be a hassle and unknown territory for many people. Hence, this post serves as a guide to those who wish to explore Taobao by themselves.
Select The Correct Taobao Location
First, go to http://www.taobao.com. You may be assigned to a location depending on where you are. You need to first choose Taobao Mainland from the top panel. Since we are planning to buy from Taobao, we would want to choose a location with the widest variety and the cheapest goods.
Search for your item, and a list of items and shops will be displayed. There are a few indicators of a shop to look out for.
Taobao Ratings
The ratings of the shop are represented by 3 factors – description (of product), service and speed of delivery respectively. Green (arrow down) represents below average, while red ( ‘=’ and arrow up) represents average and above average respectively. The ratings can be found somewhere on the shop’s page (no fixed location).
You may wish to avoid shops with green rating(s) as actual product may differ from the description, with bad services and slow delivery. A guide would be to only buy from shops with all 3 red ratings. Opposite from the Western world, in China red means good and green means bad.
The credibility and reputation of a shop is determined by the total sales volume to date and indicated by hearts, diamonds and crowns. Shops start off with 1 heart. 5 hearts and the next level will be 1 diamond. After diamonds will be crowns, followed by gold crowns.
As a general guide, people will put their trust in a particular shop once it has hit diamond reputation as it would have been around long enough to reach the sales volume required of a diamond level. That being said, I have successful buys from heart levels before.
You may also wish to find the comments customers have for the shop/item. Just search for the option indicated in the picture below:
Do not just look at the good reviews, for they may be fake. Look also at the bad reviews, which may also give you an insight to the worst possible scenario. If you are buying things like clothing, do take special note of the photo reviews, for the impression given from what a model wears may be quite different from what an average person wears.
Conclusion
This sums up a general guide of buying from Taobao. Buy from reputable and trustable shops, and the probability of you being disappointed with your shopping experience will be greatly reduced. Do note that buying online, especially buying from overseas, carries with it a certain risk. Even as an experienced Taobao user, I have had failed purchases in recent times.
Additional Note
We help to purchase from different platforms in China – 1688 (Alibaba), Taobao, Xianyu (Idle Fish), Pinduoduo, etc. Give us the link, and we will handle the rest for you.
This article was written by me years ago, and I had published it on a few different sites. So you may have seen it elsewhere.
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