How to order from Chinese Taobao online auction

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Shopping in China is often associated with the Taobao site because it is one of the largest online auctions with almost everything. Of course, everything is sold at very attractive prices, but there is one drawback - the site is only in Chinese. To buy something on it, you need to contact intermediaries, but, fortunately, there are a lot of them, the main thing is to choose the most favorable conditions for yourself.

Taobao is a very large online store that has almost everything from a heap of all kinds of clothing to rare collectibles. Appliances and cars, tea and office supplies, it is not even worth listing, you will find there even more than you can imagine.

On Taobao you can buy a smartphone for 300 rubles, a branded backpack for 200 rubles. and stuff like that. Of course, you will have to pay for delivery and intermediary services - to buy on Taobao you need to have an account in a local Chinese bank and negotiate with the seller in Chinese too. In addition, without knowing Chinese, you will not even find anything on the site - you will randomly poke at the hieroglyphs, not knowing what category it is in.

This means that you need to choose an intermediary - their tariffs are approximately the same, but each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Here we will consider them.

Mediator's website in English and Russian, with a catalog in Russian. Let's say right away that the catalog here is inconvenient: there are categories of goods in Russian, but then you are still redirected to Taobao in Chinese, and you will not read anything about the product, just look at the pictures. In addition, by clicking on the link to sofas, you can get to a page with some socks.

As usual, on the site you can calculate the cost of your order according to tariffs, in accordance with the weight. They can deliver to Russia using EMS and China Post Air Mail, DHL - only for Ukraine (and a number of other countries, but Russia is not among them).

By air mail, the goods will go from 10 to 40 working days, and delivery will cost 18 yuan (98 rubles) for the first 100 grams, and 15 CNY (81 rubles) If the parcel is large - 170.5 CNY (930 rubles) for 1 kg.

For those in a hurry, you can order EMS delivery at 201.5 CNY (1098 rubles) for 500 gr. Will arrive in 10-20 business days.

There are no restrictions on the amount of the order, there is a check of the goods - before you pay for delivery, your goods will be checked for damage, photographed and repackaged in your warehouse, so the risk of getting damaged goods is lower. Three days after sending, you will receive a tracking number and can track the parcel.

For services, you will pay 10% of the order amount, and you can deposit money for both goods and delivery in different ways: PayPal, bank cards, WESTERN UNION, WebMoney, etc.

Vygodnokupi.rf

This intermediary has a normal product catalog: there is a translation (albeit a little clumsy), the product is easy to find, and you can read its characteristics. In addition, the prices here are in rubles, there are many filters, you can put likes or navigate by them.

Delivery here costs about 1181 rubles. for 500 g via EMS and 1120 rubles. for 1 kg. via China Post.

The choice of payment methods is also varied:

All sorts of promotions are regularly held on the site, for example, now you can get compensation 10% of the order value and 90% discount on packaging and services.

There is a list of goods in Russian, and again terrible translations from Chinese, but it's not hard to figure it out.

The commission for services is slightly less - 9% of the order value, but not less than 70 yuan.

Of the advantages of an intermediary - 50% discount on shipping by EMS … To receive your belongings in 10-20 days, you need to pay only 298 yuan or 1,353 rubles. for 1 kg. Airmail will deliver at 215 yuan (976 rubles) per 1 kg, but the wait, of course, will take longer.

Also, this intermediary does not have a commission for checking and combining orders, there is Russian technical support by phone, skype, e-mail and VKontakte. Payment via Privatbank or Moscomprivatbank, Privatmoney or YANDEX money, Qiwi, Sberbank of Russia, WESTERN UNION. In the "personal account" there is the current exchange rate.

From this reseller, you can order not only a full list of services, like others, but only delivery. This service is called Mail Forwarding, and its essence is that you yourself order and pay for the purchase in the online store, after which it is sent to the intermediary's warehouse. There, your purchases are combined into one or more parcels and sent to you. In your personal account, you can see how many items have arrived at the warehouse and combine them into a parcel yourself.

If you do not want to worry about a self-purchase, the reseller also offers the usual set of services with a standard commission of 10%. You can read about services here, details about delivery here.

There is a Russian-speaking support service, you can insure your parcel - 2% of the value of the goods, there is delivery by EMS, China Post, Light Airmail.

Try which intermediary is more convenient and profitable to work with, and buy things 2-3 times cheaper. If you have experience of ordering with Taobao with different resellers, please share it in the comments.