Taobao Tips

Saving more $

Buying on Taobao is already considered pretty cheap for many, but there are still a few things you can do to try to save a little bit more.

In TaoBao, there’s this thing called the 淘金币, where you can check in everyday to get some coins. These can be used in some listings that state for example金币抵2%. In this case you can use your淘金币 to pay up to 2% of the price of the items provided you have enough. Furthermore when you 确认收货 for your items, you are able to collect more淘金币.

For Tmall, there is the 积分 that can be used to offset some of the cost when purchasing in Tmall. When you walk 5 thousand steps(or more) in a day, you can collect积分.


Some sellers would reward you for giving a good review. They’ll normally include a slip of paper with the item you purchased that say if you give good review you can contact them for a few RMB. They’ll then credit it to your alipay account. However your Alipay account needs to have ID Verification, where you’d need a China bank account and/or phone number, which is very troublesome. I normally get the sellers to send the money to the person that usually helps me with payments, then use it to offset the price for future purchases.

You can also use ShopBack for cashback on eligible items you've purchased. This works on Lazada, Shopee, Qoo10 etc. too! I've managed to cash out once so far and in my opinion there's no harm to using it. Just make sure to disable your adblocker to ensure the purchases get tracked. You can sign up with my referral link and get $5 instantly too!
Referral Link: https://www.shopback.sg/referred-signup-bonus?raf=s8Td5g

Refunds


Should you be unhappy with your item, or it arrived broken etc., you can contact the seller via Aliwangwang(in Chinese only though) to reach an agreement on a refund. You can inform them that you’re not in China and used 集运 to ship the items overseas so sending back the item will incur high shipping costs, which could encourage the seller to give a partial refund without you sending back the item.


Lastly for the latest happenings related to Taobao, you can follow the HardwareZone forum here.


Quick Links:

  1. Introducion to Taobao 
  2. Shopping on Taobao
  3. Taobao Shipping Options 
  4. Payment Options in Taobao 
  5. Other Tips 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Payment Options in Taobao

After you've chosen your shopping method, it is now time to pay for your items. 支付宝 (Alipay) is the platform for payment for Taobao. It is linked to your Taobao account. When making your first payment, you’d have to set a 6 digit passcode for authorizing your payment, excluding 代付 (getting someone to pay for you, more on that later). DO NOT forget this passcode. You’ll need this passcode for every payment you make. Not really sure what to do if you forget but it seems that it’ll be a lengthy and troublesome process to recover your account should you do. There are multiple options for payment by alipay: 1. Credit/Debit card. Note not all credit and debit cards will work. This mode of payment is convenient, but the fees associated makes the exchange rate poor. 2. Taobao Purchase Card Can be purchased at any AXS machine under the top up section. Only available in 200rmb, 500rmb and 1000rmb denominations. If you are buying something that’s 30rmb, you’d still
Read more

Shopping on TaoBao

Image
I assume you have already created a Taobao account. If you haven’t, and are not sure how to, there are multiple guides out there on how to do so. Just Google it! :) Most of the pictures are screenshots on mobile, it is pretty much the same on desktop/browser once you get the hang of it! Searching on Taobao You should always try to search on Taobao in Chinese. English listings on Taobao are almost always more expensive. If you’re not accustomed to reading Chinese on taobao, you can use Google Chrome and translate the page into English, although the translation can sometimes be funky. Sometimes you could use Google Translate to translate an English term into Chinese however it wouldn’t always work out. You could also do a google image search of the item you are looking for, with ‘taobao’ added in the search keyword. For example, you are searching for tempered glass screen protector. You could google image search ‘Tempered glass screen protector taobao’. The images would so
Read more

Taobao Shipping Options

Image
When you check out from your cart or select buy now, there will be an option to enter your address. You can go ahead and do so. For shipping, there are multiple options. I’ll be going through the various shipping options for sending items to Singapore. Sending to other countries could differ. When your address is a Singapore address, the following options would appear. 官方物流－直送 (Taobao official direct shipping) 官方物流－集运 (Taobao official consolidated shipping)   卖家直送 (seller ships directly to you) I recommend option 2, for I have not used options 1 and 3 before. Experiences of people using options 1 on forums haven’t been so great (it seems to be more expensive). Option 3 is where the seller sends it overseas by themselves, which would be very expensive. Option 2 is basically where multiple items are sent to a single warehouse. When all your items have arrived, you can consolidate them and ship to Singapore as a single bigger parcel. For option 2, there are se
Read more