I must declare I am not associated with any of the sellers below.
“Trustfire Z3 ($13)”: http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.10.82.BPwbrp&id=13184458425
No wonder many sites can have 50% promotion :bigsmile:
ugh… the price is in chinese yuan
Skyray king-USD36 (the seller claim it is genuine or else we can get back our money without returning him the goods)
Trustfire Z3- USD13
TR3T6- USD 20.
And this is the retail price.
A look at alibaba for skyray king (http://detail.china.alibaba.com/offer/1149034094.html). Price is 27USD.
Take into consideration their shipping fees as well as the fact that you cant pay with Paypal(do they even accept it at Taobao?) and its all of a sudden not that stellar of a deal IMO 
Yep, cost for shipping from seller to your Taobao agent, agent fees, and shipping cost from the agent to you…
plus the agent I used wasnt really helpful when there was something wrong with the stuff I received.
Cant comment on alibaba, never bought anything from them
I tried Mistertao, they were slow to process, then said they ordered for me, then said that they will need 1.6$ to ship items back to seller before they can refund me my money and after that they said that seller doesnt accept returns and they cant refund me.
Needless to say, Paypal isnt available at Mistertao, I wonder why ;)…
So here I am, waiting for reclamation by my bank and credit card company which takes forever, its been months since I filled it.
At best Ill get my money back in month or two, at worst Ill get the items I dont want anymore.
If theres no Paypal, then its NO DEAL for me, I knew things can go wrong when not using Paypal, but hoped that with my experience I could take the risk…
Actually I live in singapore and that explains why taobao looks like a better deal.
Alibaba is where taobao people get their supplies. From what I understand, taobao will hold the money until the goods reach the buyer (suddenly cannot remember the term for it
escrow
MisterTao used to accept PayPal until about a year ago. They also charged the buyer for PayPal’s fees, so I guess they stopped using PayPal because there were too many disputes.
I used a prepaid card a couple of weeks ago in order not to expose my credit card to them.
There was a problem with the order - they cancelled and refunded the batteries, said they can’t ship them abroad due to postal regulations. The problem was that this was just a part of the order, and they’ve already ordered, received and packaged the other part before informing me of the refund. (actually I only knew about it because I checked why the order takes so long to process, they never send any progress emails, nor emails informing about customer service replies, requests for payments, etc.). When I asked whether I can order something else and add it to the package to save shipping costs, they said they have no mechanism to do that.
I chose to accept the other part of the order, even though the savings in shipping costs were lower now, since it was still cheaper than with eBay or other stores.
I’m still waiting for the refund of the remainder of my balance I asked from them.
But I really dislike what MisterTao has become. It was a great place to shop in in the past, when they were just beginning this, and CS was great and helpful.
Now, not so much. They’re still great when everything works, commission is low, shipping costs are good and the orders process fairly fast, but they are useless when something’s wrong.
I think I’ll stay away from them as much as I can.
PayPal is the sorriest excuse for reality that I have ever seen. Anyone can cheat you blind and you can cheat anyone else blind. It's a haven for scams and always has been.
Good Tao agents end up loosing their PayPal accounts, because bad buyers will buy, receive the goods and then try to get their money back, keeping the goods. PayPal always sides with the buyers, even if they are scammers. (The fake coin being sent as a return, instead of received). Then PayPal takes the money out of the Sellers account and if they don't have the money, they take it out of their bank account. The next person pays for goods, but the PayPal account is now in negative and you get where this is going...
So far the agents I have used are honest and reputable, but one of the good ones just lost (locked) their PayPal account for just such a reason. I have used taobao-buying-agent (who lost their PayPal account), TaobaoNow and Taobao Focus. So far Taobao Now seems good and they respond quickly, answer questions, etc.
What anyone outside China does not always understand is that even with Taobao, the price is not set. It can be haggled over, but the agents will not haggle for you, because they are getting 10% of the total, so they want you to pay more. I would love to find some member overseas who would buy for me/us, but then it would be hard for him, since inevitably someone would go ballistic on him for something out of his control. It's a loosing situation for honest sellers and a great place for dishonest ones.
I still buy through Taobao, because with an honest agent, you still pay less on some items. You have to shop around and know the prices well, but I usually can get some items sent to me thru Taobao and save from 25% to 30% and that is still enough for me to continue shopping there.
I used a spanish taobao agent a few years ago, the shippment was lost, and they covered it, I made a second order with no problems.
The thing is, you need to make a big order as their shipping cost model goes for a minimum of one kilogram, the shipping costs are not cheap, there are many lost percentages, if I remember well you have to pay about a 10% to the taobao agent, a 4% for paypal, internal shipping costs from each supplier to the agent and the shipping to your country, this leaves the price from an original 60% difference aprox ( average) from the taobao price, to a 20-30% that you save comparing to the regular chineese shops we normally use. I do not recomend doing it unless you want a product that has not been released elsewhere or something special as the risks of paying extra money when it arrives to your country are high and you can end up paying even more than if it were in DX for example.
Sure, everyone can cheat everyone.
Im talking about buyers protection here, its not perfect, but its far better than no protection at all and better than my bank/credit card company coverage.
As for sellers - Im not sure I would like to sell something through Paypal due to high number of scammers and Paypals unwillingness to actually investigate such cases.
I have only bought from agents via Direct Bank Transfer (luckily, they had account in FI).
This way, PP fees (exchange ratios) can be avoided.
Only good experiences.
I wonder how different is it compare to AilExpress. My purchase experiences with them are good so far.
Fast shipping with valid tracking. Most importantly… plenty of ready stocks.