Taobao.com, Anyone ordered from them?

Has anyone here ordered stuff from Taobao.com? I saw (what looks like) a nifty little zoomie on their website.
Trouble is… the whole page is in Chinese(!) I can’t understand a dang thing. Even selecting English on their home page doesn’t help at all. Anyone care to share any shopping experience over there?

O-L posted about it here:

You’ll need to use a buying agent. You pay the agent, they buy the stuff and get it shipped to them. They check the stuff and ship it to you. You’ll pay for all that stuff plus a commission.

Taobao is for Chinese only. It's kind of like their ebay and google all wrapped into one. There are many Taobao agents, but they tend to be just individuals, working out of their apartments or houses. Basically, anyone that can sign up for PayPal and the other money services, can be a Taobao agent. Most of the ones I used a year ago are all gone now. They don't seem to last long.

With the sales and low prices that the current sellers have, it's just about not worth it, unless you want to go bulk. If you are going to buy a hundred XM-Ls, you can probably find them on cheap aluminum stars for about $1.50 each, but then, by the time you pay for their services as an agent and the shipping costs, it's about $2.50 each. Still much better than most sellers will sell for, but it will take up to 2 months sometimes, to actually receive your items.

I gave up on it because there is really no English search engine that works well and all their terms for stuff is hard to search. Reflectors are "cups", leds are "bulbs", multiple led flashlights tend to be called "Nuclear" and so forth. It's irritating to search and get good results and you have to know the exact item you want, because the agents won't understand what the hell you want if you ask for a certain led or light.

We need a China based member who would want to do it for us, but it's a hassle for them. We know just how much we bitch and moan and complain about every little thing and who the heck, in their right mind wants to deal with that, just for being a nice guy/gal.

In the end, it ain't worth it, unless you find a helluva deal.

There was Rey (WWEFANS). Has anyone heard from him lately? I sent him emails and messages months ago, no reply. ;_;

Thanks guys :slight_smile:
Based on your comments I think I’ll give those guys (Taobao) a miss. Much too complicated process and they don’t use Paypal.

yo can try to convince wall buys, fast tech, bang good… to sell them, send them all a product request with the link

If you get an agent get some of these for me please: http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.108.DI5UvG&id=19020830239

with option “single flashlight (with extension tube)” so says google translate :slight_smile:

Around $30 :slight_smile:

-Jamie M.

Just FYI, I sucessfully received my taobao item through the agent http://yoybuy.com :slight_smile:

It was this item: http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=19020830239

Some pics: 26650 46mm head zoomie

So awesome :slight_smile:

-Jamie M.

How would you rate their communication and response time?

Who, yoyobuy? Their communication system is very strange. You have to look at your order page and beside the item there will be a little icon called “NOTE!”, flashing. You have to click it then you can see the message(s) from them. It messed me up because after they had the item they took photos of it and were asking me to confirm it was the right item, in good condition, etc. then they would send out! lol.

Their response time and communication is great, once you figure out their not so easy to use website/ordering system.

They speak great english from what I could tell in the messages.

-Jamie M.

Thanks, Jamie!

i think you don’t find professional taobao agent company.I suggest you try used zarmark
zarmark have taobao agent experience about 5 years.Hundreds of thousands of clients of the service
There are many experienced taobao act as purchasing agency company in China.They didn’t even charge service fees.
Taobao’s rich product and price is low,Not to be missed shopping mecca :bigsmile:

This seems like an important update. I got a popup dialog when I visited TaoBao today, and it's about shopping from the USA:
http://www.taobao.com/market/global/help/int/guide.php?spm=a215z.7106357.0.0.IEbHS8
http://www.taobao.com/market/global/help/int/eyoubao.php?spm=a215z.7106357.0.0.IEbHS8
http://www.taobao.com/market/global/help/int/eyoubao_step.php?spm=a215z.1121335.562573.5.ebW6yM

It seems that using TaoBao agents has been baked directly into the site! I used Google Translate to read those pages, and I understand that baby=item, but I'm not 100% sure what's up with "email treasure" and that seems fairly important. I'm getting the idea that if I just understood those 3 pages, especially the last one, I'd be able to purchase from TaoBao in a relatively easy fashion.

Does it say what payment methods they take? They sure as heck don’t take PayPal so it’s super annoying to pay for stuff, even if you have a friend in china you can ship to :frowning:

-Jamie M.

Visa, Mastercard, and JCB.

They weren’t able to use my Mastercard (BMO travel pre-paid) when I tried last time. When I called my credit card company they said “I can’t use my card for online gambling or casino’s”, that’s why it was declined, lol? :frowning:

-Jamie M.

That seems pretty disingenuous to me. I assume you told the CC company that TaoBao was not either of those things and that you were displeased with what was happening?

Hopefully someone will post whatever hints are necessary to get through this process and I’ll give it a try with my Visa card.

I did. It’s a pre-paid card so I tend to get much less service than a “real” credit card, i.e. can’t use it at gas pumps, etc.

I’m super happy with everything I’ve gotten from Taobao. Top quality stuff, even used a bunch of the lights during a massive storm/power outage last night. On that note, Trustfire 26650 batteries are NOT SAFE!!! Running for hours straight the batteries swelled up and were almost impossible to remove from the lights, one of them leaked. All the king kong 26650’s handled the workload NO PROBLEM!

-Jamie M.

Thanks. Somehow I was starting to think I might try those Trustfire cells, I think I’ve seen a good report or two around here… I normally don’t use *fire cells at all anymore. Maybe I’m thinking of the Trustfire 32650’s? That’s exactly what I’m thinking of. So now my 26650/32650 thoughts are reconciled with reality again~~ good. For 26650’s I’ll continue to look at KK and/or whatever they put inside those KeepPower wrappers.

KK and keeppower are great quality cells. I’ve now recycled every single *fire cell in my house and replaced all the 18650’s with Panasonic NCR18650B batteries and the 26650’s with king kongs. I feel much safer for the next power outage now!

Wonder if Taobao has NCR18650G 3600mah panasonic batteries??? GROUP BUY TIME! :slight_smile:

-Jamie M.