Everything you wanted to know about TaoBao: answers to the most frequently asked questions

After I started posting reviews of various useful things I’d bought on the Chinese marketplace Taobao, people began asking me more and more often: “Kirich, explain how you actually buy things there?”
About a year or a year and a half ago, I posted a review that included some information about buying on Taobao. That was my first experience, though. Since then, I’ve made more purchases and learned a lot more of the ins and outs, so today I’ll try to tell you about them.


In this article, I want to explain how to use Taobao and make the process more convenient and safer, as well as cover the pros and cons compared with AliExpress.

First, what is Taobao?
There are four ways to sell things online:
1. A classifieds site, such as OLX or Avito. I think everyone knows those.
2. A store. It sells only its own products.
3. A marketplace, essentially a bazaar. The marketplace operator provides selling space for small independent stores.
4. A hybrid: a store that also provides space for other sellers alongside its own products.

Taobao, like AliExpress, is a marketplace. There are large and small sellers, each with their own store, prices, shipping terms, product range, and so on.
The downside of marketplaces is that it can be very hard to find what you’re looking for, and there may be lots of identical products. The upside is that you can often find something cheap.

So, let’s get started. Type Taobao.com into the address bar and go there.
The first thing you see is... chaos: a sea of Chinese characters, a ton of pictures and ads. This is a good place for a brief digression about Chinese “web design.” To start with, everything is very bright, almost everywhere. Also, for historical reasons, Chinese users are used to every link they click opening in a new window. That’s how they used the internet in the past: open a bunch of links, disconnect, then read them later. Over time, this became the norm everywhere, even though internet access is no longer so expensive.
You just have to put up with it, although sometimes it can be convenient.


The most common question—and the answer to why people don’t shop on Taobao—is: “But it’s all in Chinese characters...” That’s why the first step for a new Taobao shopper is to install Chrome.


Why Chrome? Because you can make Taobao Russian with just a couple of clicks.
Right-click anywhere on the page and choose “Translate to Russian.”


The page formatting gets a little messed up. Chinese characters usually take up less space than the text we’re used to, but it’s not really a big deal, and it’s not too noticeable on the main pages. More on that later.


It looks more or less like AliExpress translated into Russian. I know, but it’s better than Chinese characters.


It’s better to start with registration rather than searching for a product. Why? Because Taobao has:
1. A pretty convenient cart where you can save links to products.
2. A chat that uses the same username and password as Taobao.

Find the link at the top and click it.


This part is easier: there’s an “Eng” button on the right that switches the interface to English.
The rest is pretty straightforward. The only thing is that your account is linked to a phone number, but the verification text arrives on our numbers too, so there’s no problem. It’s all standard. If you prefer, you can use your browser’s translator again.
Enter your phone number, move the slider to verify that you’re not a robot, then fill in your account details, and so on.


You’re probably wondering when we’ll get to buying something. Hang on, we’ll get there. But first, let’s figure out not when to buy, but how. There are a few options:
1. Move to China and have things delivered to your home. I don’t think that’s very practical.
2. Ask the seller to ship it to you. The chances are slim, but it’s certainly possible.
3. Ask the seller to list the item on AliExpress or eBay. Sometimes it works; some sellers have stores on those marketplaces. But there are cases where this is almost impossible, such as exclusive products.
4. Buy through an agent. It costs more, but it’s much easier.

I’ll also try to talk you out of buying on Taobao right away, so to speak, and cover the cons.
First, there’ll be more left for me :)
Second, this isn’t AliExpress or eBay, and the chances of getting your money back if there’s a problem with the product are almost zero.
Third, it’s better to buy a lot at once. Small orders just aren’t worth it.

There are pros, too. My experience shows that, unlike AliExpress, Taobao sellers take selling more seriously: they don’t drag their feet on shipping, there’s less chance of getting ripped off, and so on. When you use an intermediary, they’re essentially selling to a Chinese customer, not to a foreigner like us.
By the way, as for communication, sellers are much more willing to respond, and much faster, than on AliExpress, where you can wait several days for a reply.

Now let’s look for something. Let’s say we’re after components made by Nichicon, and Taobao suggests: Nichicon capacitors.
Searching on Taobao is a whole topic in itself, probably worth an article of its own. But briefly, it can often be very difficult, so I’ll also explain a few things about it as we go.

There are two main ways to search:
1. Enter the name in English. This works well for brand names and all kinds of electronics.
2. Enter it in Chinese. To do this, find any page that lists the component in English, copy its Chinese name or keyword from the same page (switching the language to Russian if needed), then enter that word in the search box.


The search brings up a whole bunch of different capacitors, but there are extra filters at the top for narrowing down the results, which can make life a lot easier. In this respect, it’s much like AliExpress.


Another downside: Taobao has a lot of counterfeit branded components. A whole lot. I even made a separate video about it.
You might ask, what’s actually worth buying on Taobao? Basically, the same things as on Ali, though there are a few nuances related to shipping.
It’s worth buying things that aren’t available on Ali, or that are only available there in small quantities. Cosmetics are probably worth buying, too.
Some people buy clothes, but I wouldn’t risk it. Also, read the description carefully: China has its own unit of weight, the jin (市斤), equal to 500 g. So you might order a 5-jin pack and receive 2.5 kg, which could be quite disappointing.


Let’s follow one of the links. This is a product page, much like on Ali. It has reviews, product photos, descriptions, and so on, but they’re often written in a less structured way.
The main currency on Taobao is the yuan, but an approximate price in dollars is shown below, which is more familiar to us. If you shop on Taobao often, you’ll gradually get used to the exchange rate and start to know roughly how much things cost, since prices on the search results page are always shown in yuan.


I can certainly imagine that these capacitors might be genuine, but then the price won’t be so “tempting,” so you need to look carefully.


At the bottom of the product page, there are links to similar products from this and other sellers. By the way, Google Translate renders “product” as “child” here.


Now I’ve reached the part where I explain why registering on Taobao is useful.
If you click “Add to cart,” not only is the item added to your cart (up to 120 items), but you’re also taken to a page with a bunch of similar products, some of which can be very interesting.
Note: adding items to the cart only works on the original Chinese page. To return to it from the translated version, just refresh the page.


I picked a capacitor at random, but as it happened, I’d already selected an item from this seller, so it showed up in the same block. This is very useful, because buying 5 items from one seller is not at all the same as buying one item each from 5 sellers. The price difference can be significant; I’ll explain why below.


A separate note about the stores themselves: just like on Ali, you can open a store’s full product list, and it’s often just as chaotic as it is there. At the top left, there’s usually an option called “All children,” meaning all the store’s products, as well as a breakdown by category. But if a simple store doesn't have too many categories and products, you can still manage to find things.


But with other stores, especially those selling all kinds of small items, searching can turn into a nightmare. Products are often grouped according to some strange logic, so you may find what you're looking for in a different category—or miss it in the category where you think it should be.


Well, now let's talk about how to buy. As they say, “And now, the slides” (C).

I'll demonstrate the buying process and explain how it all works using the intermediary service yoybuy.com. There's a separate note about this at the end of the article.
Of course, you can order through other intermediaries, but the general principles are the same.

Go to the intermediary's website and register. It's all pretty standard.


Use one of the methods described above to find the item you need, then copy the link.


Open yoybuy.com and find the field where you enter the link. It's usually hard to miss.


The site takes you to a window like this, showing:
The price of the item in dollars—the amount we'll pay. It's usually higher than the price shown on Taobao.
The shipping cost to the intermediary. It's zero here, but more often it's $1.8–1.9, though some sellers charge more, for example $7–8. Pay attention!
Quantity
If there are several items on the page, there will be a button to select the one you need. In this case, it's DPX6012S.

There are a couple of things to watch out for: one applies to all intermediaries, the other specifically to yoybuy.
1. If you order several items from the same seller, the shipping cost to the intermediary doesn't change. For example, it might be $1.9 whether you order one item or five.
2. yoybuy has a glitch: if you try to order several different items from the same page, it calculates the total in some completely nonsensical way. For example, two items costing $1 and $20 might come to $40. They'll charge you $40 when you buy, but refund the extra later. They know about the problem, but still haven't fixed it.
Workarounds:
1. Place several separate orders, but arrange with the seller to ship everything in one parcel. Extremely inconvenient.
2. Find the items you need on different pages of the same store. That's what I did.
3. Forget about it and wait for yoybuy to refund the money, usually within 1–3 days.

Next, click the “Add to cart” button.


If you don't plan to buy anything else, you can go to the cart. I'll keep shopping.


Let's find a second item. In this case, it's from the same seller.


Copy the link and add it to the intermediary's website as before. You'll land on the page shown above.
But what's this? The product options are described in Chinese characters... Right, the translator doesn't work here, so you'll have to go by the numbers or the order of the options, which usually matches the order on the product page. To check, look at the item's price and how it changes when you select an option. That way you can tell whether you've selected the right item. For example, the store page might list three items priced at $2, $48, and $50, while the intermediary shows $2.1, $50, and $52. You can rule out the first by price, and distinguish the second and third by the difference in price.


Select the item, click “Add to cart,” then agree to go to the cart so we can see what's there.
There are our two items, both from the same store. This isn't a purchase yet; the price and shipping cost are shown here, so it's easy to keep track of everything.

Items can stay here for as long as you like, but there's a problem. If the seller runs out of an item, that won't be reflected here, unlike in the Taobao cart. You could end up in an unpleasant situation: you pay for, say, three items, but only one gets shipped. Of course, you'll get your money back, so that's not a problem. But if shipping to the intermediary costs extra, the deal may not be as good as you originally expected. That happened to me once. In another case, one of the two items simply wasn't available, so I had to choose a replacement and pay an extra $1.9 for shipping :(
So it's best to add items here only when you're actually ready to buy.


Let's quickly recap the steps.
1. Find the item, right-click on the page, and select “Translate to Russian.”


2. Select the item. The description will be translated here.


3. Select the link in the address bar and copy it.


4. At the top or bottom of the agent’s website, find the link input field and paste the link you copied earlier.


5. Find the product option we selected earlier by price or description—the trickiest part.
You can also see here that shipping to the agent has been added; in this case, it’s $1.88.


6. Click the button with the shopping cart icon, then select View cart.


7. Great, our products are all there. You can see that shipping is free for some items and paid for the last one. If we add another item from the same seller, the $1.88 charge will appear for only one item; shipping the other one to the agent is free.


Now it’s time to explain the free-shipping issue. I doubt anyone wants to pay an extra $1.90 to ship an item to the agent, and since all agents charge for this, the information applies across the board.
You can try to save money by selecting the Free Shipping checkbox when you first search for products.


There will be fewer products, of course, but these are items the seller can ship without charging for delivery, so the total will be lower.


One chip costs 29 cents. I wanted to buy three, but the agent’s support team wrote that the seller wasn’t willing to ship such a small quantity for free—and I can understand why; the item costs next to nothing :)
So the seller offered to sell me 10 chips, for a total of $3. If I’d bought three chips and paid for shipping, it would have cost 1+1.88=$2.88. That seems a little cheaper, but I’d get three chips instead of ten, so I think the difference is obvious.

So if the item is widely available, there’s a good chance you can pay less. If shipping is only available for a fee, look for sellers who have several items you’re interested in. For example:
3 sellers, 3 items at $10 each: 10+10+10+1.88+1.88+1.88 = about $36.
1 seller, 3 items at $10 each: 10+10+10+1.88 = about $32. That’s $4 left in our pocket.
We’ll also get one package from the seller instead of three, but more on that later.


So, we’ve added some items to the agent’s cart. Next, we can select all of them or just some—the choice is yours.
Click Process to payments to proceed to payment.


This takes us to the product payment page. There are several ways to pay, but some payment systems require you to add money to their internal wallet first. The button at the top is Add money. I pay through WebMoney, which is one of the main reasons I prefer this agent over the others.


I’ve already topped up my wallet, so I select Pay from wallet. I also applied a 10-off-20 coupon. New users get a 10-off-50 coupon, but keep in mind that it expires after a month or two—I don’t remember exactly.


The total dropped from 129 to 119, so the coupon worked. Click Purchase order at the bottom of the page.


The first part of the order is done. The agent will now receive your money and buy the products from sellers on Taobao. You can see in the screenshot that I still have three items in my cart; I decided not to buy them just yet.
It’s not just Taobao, actually—there are other stores too. You can also use a warehouse in China: you arrange something with the seller yourself, and they ship the products to that address. The agent then packs them and sends them to you.


Our order has appeared under the My products tab. The order status is shown on the right: Await purchase. The agent will now buy the products, and you can follow the process.


After a while, usually the next day, the statuses will change. For example, they may show In process or Bought. The first means it’s still being processed; the second means it’s been ordered and is on its way to the agent. Hover over the status to see more details, and sometimes even the tracking number within China. There’s a website where you can track the parcel through the Chinese postal system, but honestly, nobody needs that.


There’s an internal chat icon on the right. At this point, it’s worth checking the site from time to time to see if there are any new messages. For example, once a manager asked me before placing an order: “This product comes in two versions, assembled and as a kit of parts. Are you sure you want the kit?” I replied, “Yes, that’s exactly what I want.” I also noticed they haven’t asked me that again, so… They have some kind of note on your account, like “likes DIY kits” or “can solder circuit boards.” It’s actually pretty convenient—they don’t bother you unnecessarily.
Or, for example, they receive an item and think, “What is this weird thing? Are you sure you want this one?”


And they attached some photos. I replied, “OK.” In my opinion, their service deserves 5 stars. Just make sure you don’t miss the message, or you’ll be waiting forever for your item and cursing the forwarding service.


Here’s why you should add items to your cart right before buying them. I ordered three chargers. They were in stock with the seller when I placed the order, but I didn’t actually buy them until a few days later. When I checked, the total had changed, some money had been refunded to my account, and there was just one charger... :(
At first I didn’t even understand what had happened. I thought I’d made a mistake, and only figured it out thanks to the screenshots I’d prepared for this article. In the end, instead of getting 3 power supplies at $1.56 each plus $1.88 shipping, I got one for $1.56 plus $1.88 shipping, which is noticeably less of a bargain.

By the way, you don’t have to fill up your cart and order everything at once. You can buy items one at a time; the packages you receive will be collected at the forwarding service’s warehouse. I just hadn’t thought of that at the time. So if you see something interesting, order it before someone else buys it.
Free storage at the forwarding service seems to be about 90 days, so you can order items over that period and then have them sent together in one big package.


After a while, the status changes to Arrived, meaning the items have reached the forwarding service. You can wait until everything arrives, or select just some of the items—whatever works for you. Check the boxes next to the items; the total weight of the items plus the packaging weight (10% of the items’ weight) is shown below.
If everything looks good, click Submit. If not, order some more, wait for them to arrive, select what you want, and click Submit later.


After clicking Submit, you’ll be taken to the page where you pay the forwarding service fees and shipping. I hope you’ve already added your address in the settings? ;)
I also paid from my account balance here, but that doesn’t really matter. What does matter is choosing a shipping service that suits you.


You can also apply a coupon here (more on those later).


There’s also an option called Insurance fee. It’s something like insurance. I always save money at this stage and turn it off, even though that’s not quite the right thing to do. It does make it cheaper, though.
The total forwarding service fees for my order came to $52, but there’s a catch: the amount depends on two main things:
1. Where and how it’s being shipped
2. How much the package weighs.


Click Pay, and that’s it—this step is done.


Next, the order goes into processing—more specifically, packing and shipping.


Below is the total order cost.
Red: my items, with the coupons applied earlier deducted—in other words, what I paid for them.
Green: payment for the forwarding service, packaging, and shipping.
Blue: the coupon applied when paying for the service.


But don’t celebrate just yet. The forwarding service estimates the packaging weight at 10% of the items’ weight, and it often gets the calculation wrong. That happened this time, and they asked me to pay about $8.6 extra. I once asked the manager what to do because my balance had gone negative. He replied that they’d already shipped the item (you can see the tracking number on the left), so I could pay next time. It’s convenient in its own way, but a little unusual. Of course, you could try creating another account, but the manager warned me right away that they track customers by address and contact information, and don’t recommend doing that.


The package has been shipped and is slowly making its way to me. In the meantime, I’ll tell you a bit more about the ins and outs of using Taobao and the forwarding service I mentioned above.
First, coupons, which I’ve mentioned quite a few times.
You can use them at two stages:
1. Paying for the item
2. Paying for the forwarding service.

Since the first stage can be split into several parts, you can use more than one coupon.

Where do you get them?
1. A new-user coupon: 10 off 50. A great deal.
2. Search for coupons online; you can sometimes find them.
3. If you haven’t bought anything for a while, the manager may try to get you shopping again by offering a coupon. I got a 10 off 20 coupon that way—pretty great.
4. Exchange points for coupons.



How do you earn points?
1. You get a few points after adding funds to your account, although I don’t think I got any last time. I can’t remember.
2. After receiving your order, leave a review and add up to five photos of the items. This earns the most points; for a fairly large package, you can get 2500–3000 points.
You can exchange points for coupons on a dedicated page. It’s not much, but it’s something. By the way, after you make a certain number of purchases, your status changes and you earn points at twice the rate. There are more perks after that, but I haven't reached that level yet. The top tier gets you a personal manager :)



Now for the useful stuff on Taobao.
I’ve covered a lot of the finer points above, but also mentioned registering on Taobao. Registration lets you use their chat.
To do that, click the chat icon on the store page.


But the Chinese wouldn’t be the Chinese if they did things like everyone else: they came up with a separate chat program for communicating.

If you don’t have the chat program installed, you’ll be prompted to download and install it. Unfortunately, everything is in Chinese, and I can’t show you the installation process yet because I don’t want to lose my chat history. Maybe I’ll put together an installation guide a little later.
Though, to be fair, a lot of it is intuitive, and even the buttons are in the familiar order: “Yes” on the left, “No” on the right. The only thing to watch out for is that the installer may restart your computer after installation. I don’t remember which of the three buttons—Yes, No, or Later—restarts it, so it’s best to save your work in any open programs and close them.

After installation, a login/password window will appear. Enter the same username and password you set up for your Taobao account, then click the big blue button.


Then a window like the one in ICQ or Skype will pop up, with a contact list. Since you logged in through Taobao, the first contact will be the seller whose page you came from. The list will grow from there.
Actually, that’s not quite right: the chat program restarts your computer during installation, then loads automatically in the background. When you click the chat icon on a page, it opens automatically so you can contact the seller.


Click the contact (though it may open automatically), and a chat window will appear. It’s basically Skype again, but in Chinese; the Chinese haven’t invented anything new here. Type your message in the box at the bottom, and add emoticons and other stuff, such as pictures or links. I recommend avoiding words like YouTube, Google, Wikipedia, and so on. The chat is automatically moderated, and you’ll get a warning (I seem to have lost the screenshots of the whole process). I also don’t recommend using YouTube links; it’s difficult to access YouTube in China anyway.

The rest is standard too: if I remember correctly, Enter sends the message. The other options aren’t particularly important, and you can figure them out by experimenting. You’ll also be accompanied by ads the whole time.

But I strongly recommend taking a little time to get to grips with the program. It really comes in handy and helps you save money. For example, I arranged with one seller to reduce the parcel’s weight by shipping only what I needed and leaving out the “free” extras, whose price he later told me anyway.
I talked with another seller about modifying a product to meet my requirements. He also turned out to be a radio amateur, and we had a good chat.


Sometimes the chat icon starts blinking. It could mean a new message from the seller, or a new ad from Taobao. It’s a little annoying, but sometimes the ads can be useful. By the way, the recommended products on Taobao itself are usually selected based on what you search for most often—in other words, targeted advertising.


And so, some time later, I picked up my parcel from the post office. By my standards, the box is pretty big.


It weighed 3085 g and took a strange route via Moscow—though the tracking said “Moskva,” not “Moskow.” The forwarding agent’s report listed the weight as 3070 g. I have no idea where the extra 15 g came from.


Everything was packed perfectly. The items in boxes were sealed, and that was the sellers’ packaging. The items in bags were packed by the forwarding agent. Each item was in its own bag with the order number on it.


You can see more in the unboxing video.


Inspect the items, smell them, give them a taste—and once you’ve smelled and bitten everything, go to the forwarding agent’s website, click the buttons on the review page, write the review itself, and add photos. In return, you get points. Points expire after a certain period, I think a year or six months.


And that’s the whole saga. It may seem complicated and time-consuming, but I can say that by the third time, it all becomes automatic. The article turned out long because I tried to cover everything. A few words about why forwarding agents in general—and this one in particular—get criticized, and how to avoid the problems.
Why forwarding agents get criticized: in practice, they’re not responsible for anything. They’re not sellers; they’re intermediaries, and you should keep that in mind when choosing products. If you weren’t paying attention and ordered an instrument case thinking it was the instrument itself, or bought capacitors advertised as genuine only to find they were fakes, nobody will refund you. The same goes for a faulty device. Intermediaries aren't specialists, but for an extra fee they can take photos of your item. If it's something simple—for example, satin underwear—they can check whether it has any extra holes. They can also look for damage that's easy for them to spot, but they're unlikely to test electronics, although I've heard there are intermediaries who do.

Now, about yoybuy. People criticize it for two things: high service fees and the unpredictability of the final cost. I showed above that they often get the weight wrong, but it's up to you to decide whether that matters.
I've placed 8 orders through this intermediary, seven of which are shown in the screenshot above, and I can honestly say that my personal experience has been entirely positive. They work quickly, handle everything carefully, and pack items really well.

Now a little about the article itself. I've tried to cover everything. This isn't a sponsored article; nobody paid me to write it. People really do ask me about buying things on TaoBao quite often. But if you decide to use this intermediary's services, you can sign up using my referral link. You won't lose anything by doing so, and I might get a bonus of 1–2 dollars from your first purchase, which would give me an incentive to write more reviews of products from this marketplace.

That's all from me. As always, I'll be glad to answer your questions—I'm sure you'll have some, and I've probably forgotten something too.