Shopping Legit taobao companies' shops

I can't tell you if the Taobao shops are legit or not, but I can tell you some things about Taobao.

Some things to note when ordering from Taobao. All of this is from personal experience (I live in the USA) and EXTENSIVE research:

On Taobao, you have to pay a 1% credit card fee if you use a credit card. If you can use a Chinese friend's Alipay account, then great! Otherwise, you will be charged a credit card fee, as I have said, or you have to pay an agent to pay for you. You also have to pay for the currency conversion. Also, shipping directly from the company will be really really high (some companies may offer to pay half the shipping) and the Taobao warehouse will *NOT* ship anything bigger than and MSD sized box (even that is pushing it).

You can use a shipping agent though, like Bhiner or other Taobao agents. However, you will not be able to correct any mistakes if you do so (I have asked the doll companies themselves), such as a broken doll or receiving the wrong order. The reason for this is because the doll companies only give you about 24-48 hours to check the order after it has been marked delivered and it takes the agents longer than that to go through all their orders and inform you that your Taobao order has been received by them (and to take pictures of your order if you opted for that option).

You still save a little money in the long run, but not as much as you think. All the fees you have to pay for various services pile up and add to the bill.

Please also note that some companies mark the order as shipped on Taobao, but it will not have actually shipped yet. I think this is because Taobao gives them some sort of bad mark against them if it takes too long to ship. With that being said, Taobao has an "automatic" review system that will leave POSITIVE FEEDBACK, no matter what after about two weeks after marking as shipped. You can use an "extension" once which will add three days to the counter. After those three days, you can only ask the seller themselves to extend the time. After that, you can't even open up a case against the seller to get your money back. You have to rely on the seller's good faith to help resolve your issue. I found all this out by scouring the help documents in Taobao.

Even so, I took a risk and have four dolls on the way. So far I have not had a problem, but we shall see.

If anyone has had a different experience I would be glad to hear it! Feel free to send me a convo.

 

You are correct about the agent thing. Companies wait and ship out orders to agents after they have made a large batch. However, the doll companies will send the dolls to individual customers (both inside and outside of origin country) or agents in the same country as them as soon as the dolls are completed.

I ordered something from BJDivas over a year ago and have yet to get my order. However, I ordered something from Alice's collections (located in China, I believe) and received my order within three-four months! Both of these orders were from Doll Chateau!

I also use a Taobao agent sometimes and is the easier option when shopping on Taobao.

In any case, I hope both of our doll escapades end with happy stories!

 

Hello guys.
I hope this is the rigth place to post this.
Does Crodi doll and Leeke world have a official store on taobao?
Thanks!

 

iirc they are Korean companies? If they are I doubt they would have a taobao store

edit:just went and checked, they do not