#i translated the me0ws

[contaiinedarmageddon2]

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Long post but there’s been a lot of confessions lately about not being able to use Taobao. As a regular Taobao user wanted to give some input as to why people are perceiving the attitude of “you just need to figure it out” from current Taobao users and also why you might not really be missing out on much/trade offs of using it vs dealers.

First off in my experience Taobao really isn’t something you can handhold because there really isn’t a cut and dry solution to everything. If someone did make a very detailed end all be all comprehensive Taobao guide it would likely be research paper size and 95% of it would be troubleshooting as in “Trying b, c or d when a isn’t working”. The kicker is after trying all that it still might not work for you for whatever reason or it may work one time but not every time. It’s why looking at a few Taobao guides online isn’t enough and why a lot of people are still very confused even after giving it a few genuine tries.

Even using proxies like Bhiner isn’t easy as there are many potential issues such as:

-proxies don’t translate pictures and sometimes sellers only put text and buying details on pictures;

-some words don’t translate well or translate from Chinese at all;

-you have to research the correct word or phrase to find what you are looking for in Chinese to search the site as you can’t search in English and searching in or browsing in the proxy gives funky results at times;

-not everything on the site is even available for purchase at the time you might want to buy; sometimes the link won’t work in the proxy and you need to convert it (there are mobile, desktop and international link versions);

- sometimes the proxy changes word selections to tiny ass pictures and you have to put everything in the cart in various combinations (think color, size, version) on the agent site just to see what it is;

Among many other issues that may arise including figuring out is this really a new artist/shop or a new recaster. There is a lot of do-it-yourself legwork that is involved even when you are familiar with to using the site.

So if you are looking for this “ah-ha” moment it’s never really going to come. I’ve been using it for over a year and have made over 50 purchases with agents. You are just over a period of time going to get better at troubleshooting and being scrappy/resourceful enough to find what you need when things aren’t working. Even knowing the name of the clothing or wig maker or having a picture for image searching I STILL often enough have to spend hours searching Twitter, Weibo, etc to find their Taobao due to their store being named something different than the name they go by or Taobao giving me generic reverse image results.

I wouldn’t call anyone stupid or lazy for not being able to figure it. However, before you even think you might be missing out on much there are trade offs/disadvantages to using Taobao and shopping agents over dealers that I’ve noticed.

Unless you like organizing GOs for friends or you make a lot of doll item purchases yourself monthly there’s no real savings/advantage in using Taobao. Nearly everything you could want on there you can get from agents/dealers like New Cl0ver, Alice, Me0w Marts, Spac3BJD, D0llection or Moonlight (Moonlight if you are really desperate). I’d say the only things you are missing out on are custom wig commissions and buying small random items for pennys like doll hairnets, face masks and wig caps.

Plus you still have layaway with dealers vs coming out of pocket $50-250 per outfit with a proxy/agent. Just a note though the Chinese selling process is typically deposit and final payment. Some agents allow you to do deposit only initially but I would not trust them reminding you when to pay (because not all artists send out payment reminders). If you don’t pay on time you lose your money and the item (it’s happened to a friend of mine using spreenow). Dealers like Moonlight and SpaceBJD will send emails when the final payment is due and other dealers like Alice and New Clover allow layaway.

Not to mention some of those dealers have free shipping over a certain amount. With shopping agents you have to buy enough items to make international shipping worth it and within a certain period as they all need to come in around the same time to avoid item storage charges. Overall the dealer markup (with the exception of Moonlight) pretty much evens out the international shipping cost if you were just to get that one item with a proxy/shopping agent.

Most importantly though you have someone who is more inclined to help if there are any quality issues when you buy from dealers. Most shopping agents things come as-is, they take pictures for verification/storage purposes only and no returns. Bhiner took literally a picture of sunglasses with a lens popped out and didn’t flag as an issue (granted it was $2 so I wasn’t about to fight them over it). They’re not as inclined to work through issues since they only get paid on orders made and have ZERO relationship with the artist. Some shopping agents like 42agent actually charge you more if they have to write you a ton of messages about your item or work through issues. Superbuy actually makes you manually type in to confirm “no refunds” before they confirm your order in a lot of cases, if you don’t agree they reject the order.

Finally most shopping agents if they end up refunding you for whatever reason the amount doesn’t go back into your PayPal, it will go into your wallet on their site and you will have to pay a fee to get them to transfer it back to your PayPal account. The expectation is you will buy more with them rather than just getting the refund. Bhiner doesn’t even accept PayPal on items over $350 (if you buy a doll,etc) you have to do a bank transfer to their Chinese bank account. Btw it took me 4 days to figure out back and forth with them as they kept giving me the wrong bank info and thankfully transferwise won’t let you send money unless they can verify the receiving account or I would have been out of $600.

Not saying all this to discourage anyone from learning how to use Taobao. But just to give a reality check on what using it is like in the day to day and it isn’t easy even for the people who do use it regularly. I still use dealers often too when I want layaway or when I’m not buying much at that time.

Overall just saying all this cause it really isn’t Taobao users not wanting to share info and gatekeep. I know of others, including myself, who are more than happy to find a link for you or even share them without being asked. However it would be way too much work for someone to write some comprehensive guide when it might not even work for you and we are over here stumbling around ourselves still. The blind leading the slightly less blind at that point. This is why people who know how to use Taobao are more inclined to help if they know you are able to do some legwork too.

~Anonymous