Tutorial: How to Order Items from Taobao

[SpudRider]

Thanks for posting the tips, Humanbeing.

[humanbeing]

Good article
http://billglover.co.uk/2013/02/03/5718 | http://www.theworldofchinese.com/201...unts-in-china/

[SpudRider]

Thanks for posting the interesting links regarding the discount system in China, HB.

[Weldangrind]

I just made this thread into a sticky, to make it easier for others to find.

[SpudRider]

Thank you, Weld. When I posted this thread I added a link to it in both of the Zongshen sticky threads I maintain.

[bogieboy]

i am trying to use taobaotrends, but the items i am adding are not showing up right... they show a price of $0... what am i doing wrong? i copied and pasted the links from taobao right out of the header bar...

[SpudRider]

Originally Posted by bogieboy

i am trying to use taobaotrends, but the items i am adding are not showing up right... they show a price of $0... what am i doing wrong? i copied and pasted the links from taobao right out of the header bar...

If you registered, and performed all the other preliminary steps, you still need to wait a day or two before your account is enabled.

[bogieboy]

ok, I will do so, thanks spud!!!

[rich_e]

Looks like their PayPal account has reached its limit. The alternatives are Western Union and Skrill (https://www.skrill.com/en-us/home/). The fee for Western Union was going to be $9 and would take 3-5 days to complete. So I set up a Skrill account and sent the 1st payment. I pasted the confirmation of payment in a reply to the email I got from the agent.

Hoping this all works out.

Skrill was only $0.64 and the fee was charged to the seller but there was a 2.9% fee to upload the money to Skrill from a Debit Card.

[ghcoe]

Ok, trying this taobao thing. Just made my first order using this site http://www.engtaobao.com/ . It seemed easier to use than taobaotrends.com and was quite a bit more economical too. They had better shipping rates and purchase costs than Taobaotrends. So now the waiting game......

[SpudRider]

Good for you. How did you discover the Engtaobao agent?

[ghcoe]

I was looking for a part for my China Scooter. Been looking for a rear carrier for some time. The Zuma carrier I thought would work, but I did not want to pay $120.00 to find out. In Asia the Zuma is sold as the BWS so I was searching under that name with google images. I found a carrier that was linked to this site http://pintaobao.com/. I remembered this thread from some time ago and went to taobao.com, but could not make out how to purchase there ether because it was in Chinese. Then I did a search for English taobao and this site popped up. I then when back to this thread and read through it and signed up for taobaotrends. Had a hard time trying to figure it out so when back to Engtaobao which I found had a lot more user information and direction. I finally got both to work, but when I dropped the url in taobaotrends it was giving me a $14.00 total amount and when I dropped the url in engtaobao it was $8.40. Then I noticed that engtaobao also offered 50 percent off shipping and taobaotrends offered only 40 percent. Also, there are a lot of perks on the engtaobao site if you order a lot of things and invite friends. So I went with that site. Not sure if they offer the same support though. But, they do verify that the ordered item is as described.

[SpudRider]

Thanks for posting the detailed reply.

Learning how to order from Taobao requires some practice, but the savings are well worth the effort. Subsequent orders will now be much easier.

[humanbeing]

btw. SAL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Air_Lifted is a good option for non-urgent items. Some agent offer this "traditional" method ...

[Weldangrind]

Excellent suggestion, HB. Thanks!