My thought to taobao

My thought to taobao

Now for the review of the shopping service I used for buying products from taobao: smalltao.com, alsotao.com.
First I found the website of smalltao.com by chance and I liked the idea of being able to easily search for items without the use of Chinese (I can read and write Chinese but it’s not enough to comfortably browse though everything). You can search through specific departments or even for specific product and easily put them into your shopping cart. After you found everything you need you can go checkout and pay for the products and shipping after selecting the shipping method. smalltao will purchase the items after you paid for them and if something is out of stock they will inform you. After their purchase you wait till smalltao gets the items and then finally sends them out to you. Fairly easy right?

The great benefit of this is that you only pay once. The downside is, sometimes they have to pay you back because the estimated shipping cost doesn’t correspond with the actual price. But at least you get your money back.
My experience with this shopping service:
After I ordered my items and payed via Paypal I got a lot of emails back and forth about items not being available and so on. I ordered on smalltao.com but I was soon redirected to alsotao.com because the other site wasn’t taking orders at that time. They always sent links in the email with suggestions for similar products if one is out of stock! They even advise you from which shop you shouldn’t buy because their business seems shady. The communication was very quick and reliable. After the shipping cost turned out to be less than what I paid they refunded the money, BUT they refunded onto the alsotao account and I had to write an email to ask them to withdraw funds onto my Paypal account. Nevertheless they handled it pretty quickly. Of the $70 dollar I paid in total, 30 were for the shipping. I guess that’s reasonable for tao bao orders? The package arrived after 3 weeks in Germany but I had bad luck and it landed in the customs office were I had to pick it up and pay about $12 custom fee.
All in all I was pretty satisfied with the service, because:
1.Fast communication and very reliabel
2. Suggestions for similar items if some were out of stock
3. Easy process of ordering and paying
4. You can change the order at any time during the process (before they finally purchased everything)
5. Delivery time was ok! (3 weeks after I ordered everything)
I suppose if you already found items on taobao you can also just send them the links and specifications, too, especially if you don’t find anything on their own site! I’m still not sure if I’ll use this shopping service again or if I’ll try a different one.

My experience and review at smalltao

My experience and review at smalltao

This time I tried using the agent 'AlsoTao' for my purchases (I believe they were previously known as Smalltao) and I've had mixed feelings about the whole process.
First off the site is reasonably difficult to navigate you really have to hunt for bargains, as the items are named and categorized strangely.
The first thing I tried to order was a coat, I had to cancel it because I couldn't tell it was for a custom item and it was just a deposit, at first I felt rather stupid but then I noticed it really was a misleading listing. So I cancelled the order, luckily they e-mailed me about it, they're very good at contacting you I'll give them that.
So they put the money back as a sort of store credit, so I had to think of something else to buy, to be honest I would have rathered just have my paypal refunded. But anyway, I set about picking something else, and after hours of searching, because you have to open the item up to see how much it really is with shipping, which can amount to quite a lot. I finally chose a wig, and when I had gone through the process of purchasing it, they told me it wasn't available and asked if I wanted to cancel it "well duh" then they refunded me the wrong amount, which I told them was wrong and they rectified it straight away, which was fine but this was certainly a bit of a rigmarole and to be honest I would have preferred to spend the extra $10 to buy on eBay.
So I chose a similar wig, and bought that, and I was messaged saying I had to pay an extra 4 dollars for shipping, which I know isn't a lot but just another pain in the ass because it means either the listing wasn't accurate or their shipping estimate wasn't. I was also a little concerned as it was a picture of a blonde wig, however it was listed as 'army green' ???? At this point they have sent me pictures of the weight of the item and it in the factory, and I've got to say the product looks quite good and well packaged, so lets see once it gets to Australia.......
My Wig finally arrived! It took over a month to get here, which is quite long but expected, it was very well packaged, and just like the picture in the listing. It's a very high quality wig and I'm very happy with it. Well you get what you pay for I guess.
Also sorry if this post is tldr.

Shipping cost:2/5
Shipping time:2/5
Product Quality: 5/5
Customer Service: 4/5

Overall Rating: 3/5

So basically there was a lot of small issues, however they were resolved quickly and easily.
The site is pretty awful to get around/understand.
However the product is quite nice.
So after quite a process I now have a nice reasonably priced wig.