Guide on How to Buy Stuff from Taobao

Since a few people have asked me this, thought I'd write up a quick guide on how to do this.

This is currently the best method I know to get laptops & phones for a very cheap price, compared to buying from Amazon / Ebay / Temu / Aliexpress.

• A Lenovo Pad Pro 2023 would cost around $800 or more but I got it for $400. Brand new, came with case, screen protector and tablet stand.
• A Lenovo Legion gaming laptop with RTX 3050 and 16GB RAM and generally very decent specs would cost about $2000+ from PBTech or elsewhere, but only $880 from Taobao.
• A OnePlus 12R (equivalent specs to a OnePlus 11 flagship) would cost around $1000 but only $530 from Taobao.

The only caveat is that most of the site is in Chinese, so you'd either have to use Google Translate, or find someone who can read Chinese. The other potential caveat is that you may need to find a Chinese friend who has AliPay. Otherwise, you'll have to pay using Visa, which should work but may cost more. More on this later.

1.Firstly, browse to the site - https://world.taobao.com/

2.Next, look at the top left corner and you should find a dropdown menu:
https://imgur.com/a/UufeI4A

This is your country selection. It doesn't change the language and honestly I'm not too sure what it does. I think it just lets the system know that your country is XYZ and it'll set the import GST tax for that country accordingly. Either that, or it shows the converted prices from Yuan to NZD. Speaking of which, I recommend getting one of those in-page currency converters for Chromium browsers. Some of the ones I use are Chrome Currency Converter, Currency Converter Pro, AutoConvert and Direct Currency Converter. Some are paid extensions that I have cracked myself (don't bother asking me to share), but there are plenty of free ones. As another sidenote, I recommend installing Extension Manager (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/efajbgpnlnobnkgdcg…). This allows you to create rules (supports regex too) for automatically disabling and enabling extensions when you browse to certain webpages or domains. For someone like me with over 300+ extensions, this extension greatly helps reduce the clutter and keeps the performance of my browser fast. When I browse to shopping sites such as Temu or Aliexpress, I need certain extensions to be enabled to show me coupon codes, price charts with history and trends, seller feedbacks, etc. But when I'm not on those sites, I don't need them to be loaded into memory.

Anyway, back to the Taobao site. The 2nd option is login and the 3rd option is to register an account. If you don't have one already, then click this and go to step 3.

3.https://imgur.com/UaqIC9A

You can click on English on the top right and it's pretty straightforward from here. You provide your mobile number and just input the verification text that gets sent to your mobile. I already have an account and I don't recall what else is required after this step, but I'm pretty sure you just go through the typical setup and that's it. Use Google Translate if you need to.

4.Now you should be ready to browse Taobao and place an order. Let's say you want to buy this tablet here:
https://detail.tmall.com/item.htm?_u=620f5vccj660d8&id=73386…

Here's the snapshot of the page as of current writing:
https://imgur.com/X35U7Qw

Basically, the normal price starts at $1527 Yuan, but after getting the store coupon, it'll bring down the starting price to $1498 Yuan. The price obviously depends on the specs you choose, whether you want 8GB RAM + 128GB or 256GB storage, etc. To get the store coupon, choose your specs first and then click the red button on the bottom.

5.Next is the checkout stage:
https://imgur.com/i5WLCRv

A couple of things to note here. Firstly, the shipping options can be misleading and you have to be careful. As far as I know, Taobao merchants do not offer direct shipping from China to NZ. They only offer direct shipping if it's within China, i.e local shipping. Despite this limitation, the site will still let you choose direct shipping and even let you checkout, but the merchant won't do anything about your order. If you run into this issue, your only solution is to cancel the order and place a new order.

To find out what type of shipping option to choose, generally it's the cheapest one that's automatically selected. You can always click into more detail and it should take you to the info page for that particular shipping option. The keyword to look for is the one highlighted in the screenshot below:
https://imgur.com/CNh9xWg

If you see that, then it means combined freight. This basically means your order will be shipped together with a bunch of other orders and that's how they keep the shipping costs economical. 17 Yuan is about $4 NZD. However, there's more to it than this, more on this in point #8.

Back to the checkout screenshot. You'll notice there is a GST of $224.70 Yuan, or about $52 NZD. This is the import tax. I believe if you ship the item to a local address in China, then find your own courier redirection service (something like NZ YouShop) to ship to NZ, then you'll save even more here. More on this in the bonus section below.

At this point, the tablet will cost us $1722.70 Yuan, or about $397 NZD. However, there are some more gotchas. At the bottom right of the checkout page is the payment method. You can choose to pay in Yuan using AliPay, or pay using external options, such as Visa. If you pay with AliPay, then you'll pay pretty much the same price as what you see on the checkout page. However, if you were to pay using Visa, there'll be another $12.24 of fees added on top:

https://imgur.com/xC0HL9M

As you can see, the tablet costs about $354.73 NZD, import tax is $53.21 and the VISA fees is $12.24 and that comes out to a total of $420.18 NZD. It's still cheap compared to buying it in NZ.

For those who want to pay using AliPay, it's quite difficult to set up. Getting the account set up is one thing, but I believe you'll also need to have a Chinese bank account and also verify using a Chinese ID. Basically, I couldn't get it to work, so I just gave up. I then tried to Wise to pay in Yuan to avoid the FX fees, but it didn't work because I believe it required you to provide Chinese ID verification or something like that. In the end, I paid using Visa but again, it's still worth it.

Since then, I was able to get my Chinese friend to make payments for order using his AliPay, then I just transfer the money in NZD (with a little bit extra added on top) to him. On both the Taobao site and Android app, you can choose to use AliPay and specify the AliPay user whom you'd like to pay for your order. I won't go into this in detail, but you get the idea.

6.To find the orders you've placed, go to here:
https://imgur.com/66FjzSE

7.Once you are on the My Orders page, you can check the status of your order. Here's an example of my OnePlus Ace 3 (OnePlus 12R), I can check the shipping status and the order details:
https://imgur.com/YmLauiT

8.One very important thing to note is that because you've chosen combined freight shipping, it means that your item will be shipped to a local warehouse first and then shipped overseas. Basically the same as how NZ YouShop redirection works. In order for them to ship it out to NZ, you'll need to pay another shipping fee, which is about 29 Yuan:
https://imgur.com/n2dX2fG

All in all, the 17 + 29 Yuan for shipping comes out to around $10.60 NZD. Not bad at all.

9.At this point, you're done! Assuming you paid using the initial $420 NZD using VISA, then you'll just need to pay another $7 NZD (29 Yuan) and so total should come out to around $430 NZD for the tablet. This is much cheaper than buying the same tablet from Aliexpress or from NZ retail stores. You'll just need to check the order and monitor it every now and then. Shipping takes a while, I think my tablet took a little over 3 weeks to arrive, but it came in perfect condition and no damages whatsoever.

Bonus info:

• I mentioned using a freight forwarder company to save even more on costs. There's a NZ company called Chinz Logistics Ltd and they seem to be based in Mangere in Auckland. They claim to be the only NZ freight forwarding company who has a partnership with Taobao. This means that anything you buy from Taobao will be shipped to their warehouse in NZ, before getting delivered to you. Apparently, even some of the orders from Temu and Aliexpress will be shipped to their warehouse as well. You could simply use their warehouse address in China and ship your item there, then have it redirected to NZ - just like how NZ Youshop works.

On Taobao, if you choose to use the direct shipping method, you'll probably find the shipping company name listed as Cainiao (菜鳥). This is actually a organization that comprises of many different freight forwarding companies. Chinz Logistics Ltd is one of the companies under that branch. Each country's own freight forwarding company who has a partnership with Taobao will be under the Cainiao organization branch.

Anyway, here's the site for Chinz Logistics Ltd. I haven't used them before, but their customer support is really good and the guy spent like 20+ minutes on the phone with me:
http://www.chinz56.co.nz/

• You may have to pay an additional fee for customs declaration. It's a bit confusing, but essentially the import tax and GST and declaration fees are all separate. Sometimes, you may be unlucky and your item may be selected by customs. If your item is over $400 but under $1000 in value, the fee amount is $35. Above $1000 and the fee amount is $80. You'll most likely get a call or a message from Taobao, or more specifically from the Cainiao support people about this fee. In my case, I had a $35 fee to pay. The message was sent from a Cainiao support person, but the account to pay to is a ASB bank account and belongs to Chinz Logistics Ltd. Again, Chinz Logistics Ltd is under the umbrella branch of Cainiao.

Perhaps it may be a good idea to contact the seller to declare the value as under $400, before you buy it.

• I'm 99% confident that all Android devices purchased directly from China will come with English in the ROM. They won't be strictly locked to Chinese language. They can all support Google Play and Google Play Services. Most come with them pre-installed and you just need to go into the settings to enable them (as is the case for my Lenovo tablet), or you can simply sideload them. To sideload, simply download the APK files online and just put it on your tablet and install it from a file manager. It's an extremely simple and quick process to do.

• My Lenovo tablet supports Widevine L1 and works perfectly fine in Netflix.

• You can flash the global ROM on most Android devices without any issues. Some may require a bit of conversion, but it's not hard. The OnePlus Ace 3 is equivalent to a OnePlus 12R. The difference is that the Ace 3 runs on ColorOS, while 12R runs on OxygenOS. Both are OS owned/created by the parent company Oppo. There are slight differences to them, but generally it's unified and most of the settings look the same. You can of course still convert from ColorOS to OxygenOS if you wish. And you can easily debloat any bloatware or Chinese apps on the ROMs anyway.

• All Android ROMs come with some level of bloatware, even Pixel / vanilla Android ROMs. It really depends on what you as the user want or prefer to have installed. The process to debloat is very simple and so it shouldn't matter where you get your devices from.

• Some Chinese variants may be missing certain bands, but for most people this shouldn't be a problem at all. I've owned more than 10 different Android devices and some are Chinese variants. I've never once had any issues with the modem, wifi, bluetooth, 4G/5G signals, etc. But then again, I'm a power user, so who knows.

• If you're buying things like laptops, such as this one here for around $880 (depending on the specs):
  https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?app=chrome&bxsign=scdMWZs17…

Then you shouldn't even run into any issues at all in terms of hardware or software. It's literally the same hardware and you can just flash a new Windows 10/11 install and done.

• Some people may have questions regarding warranty. Personally, I think it's pointless/useless, but that could just be because I never once had to claim warranty in the last 20 years. The question you should be asking yourself is, if you're comfortable with buying 2nd hand items on Trademe/Facebook Marketplace and you're OK with buying stuff from Aliexpress/Temu, then how is buying from Taobao any different? 2nd hand items automatically rule out warranties and if you get scammed on Aliexpress/Temu, then warranty don't matter anyway. They're all shipped from mostly China anyway, so it's not like buying one platform is immediately better than the other. The 2nd thing to note is that electronic items like phones, tablets, laptops, they generally last a very long time and don't break. For more info, see here:

https://www.cheapies.nz/comment/222024/redir
https://www.cheapies.nz/comment/222532/redir