Am afraid I am also not an expert in taobao as well. This is only my 2nd foray into it. But if you think AE is cheap, taobao is even cheaper even with all shipping charges in. I know there are people in my country that uses sea shipping to ship in furniture like bed frames, mattresses, dining tables, sofas etc and believe me, they are still at least 50% cheaper than it will cost in the local retail shops.
Taobao has always been very intimidating for me with all the Chinese words actually. But they actually work the same way as AE, in the sense they are not really allowed to post the actual brand if they are selling replicas. Ie at AE, to search for Prada, you key in Pra or something along the line. Same principles applies for taobao, instead of Hermes, you key in "H brand" or "
H?" (
? actually means family in Chinese) and the whole load of things will appear.
ie For illustration, this is what i see after i search for
H? http://world.taobao.com/search/sear...p_cb&cna=o79SDqjmEWACAct90PLJ3Epf&abtest=null I also make use of translator to translate chinese words so i understand what they are saying.
For the procedure to purchase from taobao for me, actually it is quite simple. Not too sure if it works the same to ship to Europe or US. But I can share the steps I took below.
1. Look for a taobao agent (forwarder) that ships to your country and create an account with them. In my case, i use
https://www.65daigou.com/ to ship to Singapore.
2. Paste the url of the exact product you want to buy and the same page will appear within the agent's page. Click buy and it will be added to your cart.
3. At the end, they will calculate the total amount of the products you are buying and you pay the total purchase amount via credit card, bank transfer etc.
4. Once all the products are delivered to their own warehouse in China, they will send you an email and calculate the amount of shipping charges to ship everything to your country. Pay the shipping charges and they will ship over.
5. Once they reach your country, they will send you another email to inform you and you can pay them to ship it direct to your doorstep or collect it from various points across free.
