Taobao Shipping Options

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.
  1. 官方物流－直送 (Taobao official direct shipping)
  2. 官方物流－集运 (Taobao official consolidated shipping)
  3.  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 several shippers to choose from. There is, at the time of writing:
  1. Prouter
  2. Lazada (air)
  3. Lazada (sea)
  4. 4PX (popstation or send to doorstep)
  5. ZTO
  6. DEX sea
Update (Dec 2018): All of the above 6 options are no longer available and has been replaced by Taobao's official forwarder, Cai Niao or 菜鸟. Basically this shipping option is by Taobao itself and now Taobao has a monopoly on consolidated shipping to Singapore. According to what I've read other forums about it, it is slow and not well liked. However I cannot verify this as I have not personally used it before. 

 Content that is now irrelevant has been marked with strikethrough.

Parcels shipped using all of the above options except 4px popstation will be sent to your address (送货上门). For air, they charge a set rate for 1st kg, then every subsequent 500g or part thereof. Prices are in Chinese Yuan(RMB). For 4px popstation, you will be able to select the popstation you want the parcel to be sent to when you consolidate your parcels. 

 The official consolidated shipping still has a option for 自提点, but I am not sure if it is the same as popstation delivery by 4px in the past.

Things to take note

I normally use lazada air, or 4px to ship. 4px will use actual weight if volumetric weight (length x breadth x height(cm)/6000) is less than 3 times the actual weight (if I remember correctly). Lazada air option was only recently introduced and it was rumored that they use 4px warehouse, but it is slightly cheaper than 4px so I occasionally use it.
For 4px, any side of the item cannot be more than 120cm, length+breadth+height cannot exceed 200cm.
For 4px popstation, size of all consolidated parcels combined cannot exceed 37*42*61cm.
For lazada air, length+breadth+height cannot exceed 300cm.
For more details on dimension limitations you can visit Taobao’s website. 

When choosing items to consolidate/buy, you should estimate the dimensions of the item. If you send something larger than the popstation can fit, you will receive an SMS telling you to contact the customer service to change to send to doorstep.

If you’re in a rush, and the items are small, I recommend using 4px popstation. Fastest I’ve experienced is 3 working days from the day I consolidated the shipment (not counting time for the item to reach consolidation warehouse).
If you are in a rush, I'll recommend you explore other 3rd party shipping options. Reviews I've seen about the Cai Niao shipping say that it is slow.

Limitations of Taobao Consolidated shipping 

Occasionally, you would get the message 该宝贝不支持国际转运服务，如果您需要购买，请取消国际转运. This means that either the item you are attempting to purchase is a sensitive item, or that  Taobao's algorithm detected some restricted keyword in the item listing and thus prevents you from using the official consolidated shipping. To counter this, you can sometimes choose official sea shipping. For some items, you still will not be able to purchase even after selecting sea shipping.
Normally for air shipment, GST applies only if value all items in a consolidated parcel, including (I think) shipment fee, exceeds SGD400. However, for sea shipping, 7% GST applies whether value exceeds $400 or not.

Another way is to use 3rd party forwarders. These include ezbuy (ship-for-me), SGShop (ship-for-me), princess forwarder, sfinex, 86of etc.
Have only tried ezbuy and sgshop ship for me so far, can’t advise on other forwarders.


My experience using ezbuy ship-for-me

I personally like to use ezbuy ship-for-me. Its economy air shipment is indeed very economical at $1.69/500g, but it will not deliver to your doorstep and you have to collect at their selected drop of points and at a given timing.

For ezbuy to deliever to your house it’ll be an additional $8 or more, which is not worth it. I quite like the neighborhood stations as they have a collection point near my house (they probably have one near yours too) and it is pretty convenient, for the cheap price.

Update: It is now possible to choose a collection point nearby to collect your items and you do not need to collect at a specific timing. Rather, you would be able to collect at the collection point's operating hours, within 4 days of the arrival of the parcel. I personally use a nearby minimart for the collection point. That particular minimart is open 24 hours, which means I can collect my items any time after it has arrived!

However you should note that ezbuy charges volumetric weight if it is larger than the actual weight and they multiply the weight by 1.1. They will also occasionally flag some non sensitive items as sensitive, which you would have to pay a rate of $4.99/500g.
Since ezbuy’s address has been blocked in 2017’s double 11, they have reopened sea shipping for ship for me where you could ship by sea should it be flagged as sensitive, but I am not sure how long this will last. 
GST rules are the same as official forwarders for ezbuy.

Currently, ezbuy's address is blocked by taobao and you will not be able to cart out. 
Error when using ezbuy warehouse address
However, there is a way to bypass this. Simply cart out with a fake address (just enter any words) and contact the seller to change address after payment. More details can be found on their website. 

Using 3rd party forwarders

To ship to 3rd party forwarders you’d have to enter their address into taobao and select the China address when checking out your cart. Do not select your home/SG address. Then, when the items reach the forwarder, you pay the forwarder to ship your items to Singapore.

Conclusion


Both ways of shipping(official or 3rd party) would require you to pay twice. The first time is when you buy your item, the second time is to ship to Singapore. Whether it is better to use 3rd party or the official forwarders depends on what you are buying. I would recommend first using the official forwarders, and then try out other options as you get more familiar with Taobao.
In the next post, I'll go over the payment options in Taobao.

Quick Links:




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

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