[quote author="mmorlan62"]Do they provide a sufficient price advantage to deal with all the headaches?[/quote]
Yes and no.
If you are buying a one-off, no.
If you are buying a quantity, yes.
For some products, no.
For other products, yes.
The general rule is, you need to buy a decent amount of stuff at once (to amortise the international shipping cost), and you need to maximise the amount of stuff you buy from a single seller (to amortise the domestic shipping cost). I usually buy at least 5 or 10 units of each item [whatever it is I'm buying]. Worth noting that often on aliexpress the minimum orders are much higher than that to get about the same price.
I have a rough spreadsheet which I record my taobao purchases in that apportions the shipping and commission costs between items so I can see the absolute cost of each item in an order, using this to compare what I paid on TB and what I might have paid on ebay, the Taobao price for a given item usually winds up about half the price of eBay sellers or less, but sometimes it works out about the same (particularly heavier items due the international shipping).
Main features with the most important points highlighted.... [hr:][/hr:] The Good
Good cart system (but has a few small bugs).
Displays USD pricing instead of CNY (also a bad, depending on your view).
Accepts paypal at 4% (also a bad, depending on your view).
Will take paypal personal paypal payments to save on fees.
5% commission [s:](unfortunately this information isn't available in my order now and I don't remember if I actually checked it was correct more than "seems about right").[/s:] Update: It is correct, I found the transaction details.
First payment comes after they confirm items are available and work out domestic shipping.
Fast processing - ignoring the paypal delay, it was about 3 days from first submitting my cart to having the items packed at Bhiner and ready to ship to me, very fast.Update: I have made a second order with Bhiner, and the speed was INCREDIBLY fast, from submitting my items, it took only about an hour, to get them all quoted, my personal paypal payment was processed in minutes, and the goods were ordered within a couple of hours from paying!
Internal mail system which is not limited to specifically about an order or item, you can mail them any question.
Can be contacted on Skype
Photographs of each item taken when they arrive, and attached to the specific item line in the order.
Photograph of entire packaged order sitting on scales taken before shipping.
The Bad
Cart system sometimes doesn't want to add items, you have to reload and try again.
Displays USD pricing instead of CNY.
4% commission on "normal" paypal payments.
Needed reminding by skype message to get them to process my personal paypal payment Update: conversely, my second order with Bhiner, the payment was processed within 5 minutes
[s:]Too high shipping rates.[/s:] - Update: I'm revising my opinion of this, I've done a second order with Bhiner and the domestic rates were much lower, and my first order worked out in the end to about what I would have expected from other agents, on reflection I think the shipping rates are about average.
Item photographs taken could be better, they are a bit small, but they do get the idea across.
[s:]Once you make the first payment, the details of the domestic shipping and commission charges are not shown in the order again.[/s:] - Update: They are displayed (roughly) in a separate location in your account "Transactions"
When you pay the 4% paypal fee, it is not shown in the order, or in the transactions in your account, so you need to remember that you paid it if you are working out total cost of your order.
[s:]Quite a bit more expensive than some other agents, mainly due to the high domestic shipping price and slightly higher international shipping.[/s:] Update: Revising my opinion on this too, in doing the final costing of my order, I don't think they are much more expensive, perhaps a little, but the service level makes up for it.
There does not appear to be support to change the shipping method once you have ordered the items, unlike TaobaoFocus where you can change the shipping after the items arrive at the agent and you know the total weight.
I suspect that the international shipping rate is displayed rounded up to the next 500g boundary (eg 2501 to 3000g is displayed as 3000g), which is fine in so far as pricing since there are 500g steps in EMS pricing, but not so fine if you want to try and squeeze as much in as possible (get closer to 3000 than 2501).
There is no ability to combine multiple orders into a single order, as you might want to do in order to maximise the shipping weight (eg find you are 2501, so buy some more things to get closer to 3000).
Conclusion
[s:]Subject to confirming the shipping weight and quality of packing when it arrives,[/s:] I would recommend Bhiner [s:]especially if you are buying mainly for your personal usage and therefore the small increase in cost isn't important.
If you are buying with the intention to resell items locally at something approaching a profit, then Bhiner's higher cost may well cause the costs to be significantly higher, which is never a good thing.[/s:]
Note see update info below, the total shipping costs worked out better than I had thought, about average.
[s:]It's a real shame that those shipping fees are SO much higher than some other agents, because otherwise[/s:] See update I was impressed with Bhiner's efficiency and speed (paypal delay accepted), with their website (even with the couple of bugs), and with the activity shown by the people running it (that they have skype, are regularly posting to social media, updating the information on their site all the time...)
[s:]I don't know if I would use Bhiner again just because of the high shipping fees, I would sure like to, but I'd have to be especially concious to make sure that the item prices were the lowest I could find and to maximise the items from a single seller.[/s:] Update: I have placed another order with Bhiner, see update below.
Update
Package arrived. The box was really beat up, torn on one edge, cardboard was soft and smooshy. I think the baggage handlers must have played football with it on the tarmac. Never had a package this beat up. Luckily the stuff inside was fine.
Bhiner took longer than I would have liked for them to actually ship it once I had paid the second payment, 2 or 3 days after I paid the order was marked as shipped, tracking number updated, and a photo of the box sitting on their scales was added (nice touch, but..), I would have expected it to be shipped out next business day after payment, but ok I guess.
The package weight, grrr, on my scales, it weighed 2.48 KG, on their scales in the photo it weighed 2.52 KG. 40 grams difference may not sound like anything to be annoyed about, but it put the shipping price over into the 3kg range, an extra $8 USD. If they had removed just one bit of bubble wrap. I'm not even sure that they didn't, because the EMS ticket has it down as 2.49 kg, I paid for 2.5+, grr, mutter, mutter.
Now that said, the amortised shipping per weight of actual item (domestic and international combined) when I worked it out, didn't actually turnout much different from other orders I have made (came to about $31 USD per kilo of actual item weight) - but remember that I took care to maximise purchases from each seller to cover the higher domestic shipping cost.
In all, I was pleased with Bhiner. Enough so that I have placed another order with them. However I did take great care in trying to choose my purchases in order to maximize the items from each individual seller, and do my best to estimate the weights so that there is as little "empty weight" in the package as possible. I think Bhiner are still perhaps a little more expensive, but the service offered and the website system, is the best one I've found so far.
Full Story [hr:][/hr:] As mentioned above adding items to the cart is a bit hit-and-miss, at least in Chrome, due to a javascript race condition, perhaps it works better in FF. If they fixed that problem, Bhiner would have the best cart system of any of the Taobao agents I've seen (see above list).
Once everything was added to the cart, you need to move it to the next stage "quoting". No payment is required yet. Processing here was fast, in 24 hours all items had been confirmed as available. One niggle is that Bhiner seems to only try once to contact a seller, if they can't get them then those items are marked as "unable to contact the seller". You can simply ask them to try again by clicking a button for each of those items, which I had to do, they only took a couple of hours to do so once I did, so very fast processing in general.
The domestic shipping was considerably more expensive than other agents, costing me about 30 CNY per seller. Of course it's hard to be sure just how much more expensive they are without doing a identical order on two agents. I decided to continue anyway.
At this point, you should save-to-pdf/print the quote before continuing, unlike me, the reason is that once you've moved it to an order, the amount you paid for domestic shipping and such is not shown any more on the order, so this is the only time you get to save it for your records!
Now is where you need to pay the first payment. As well as "normal" paypal at 4% I found they also will take buyer initiated personal payments to an email address, where you can pay the substantially lower fees for that if you have money in your paypal account already (to send 100 USD cost me about 50c instead of $4). Doing this personal payment it took a while for the Bhiner staff to update my account balance, after an internal message and an email on Saturday afternoon (their time), and a skype message on Monday morning (their time). I have no reason to believe there is any particular high risk in doing this, but it probably did slow down the process by a day at least, so if you are in a hurry or are of a nervous disposition, use the normal paypal method at the 4% surcharge.
It took only about 48 hours from time of 1st payment to when all items had arrived at Bhiner (from sellers in Shanghai, Ningbo and Shenzhen, to Bhiner in Shenzhen) and had been photographed, so the order processing was again very fast (again, the domestic shipping was more expensive, perhaps because they use express mail domestically). Each item was photographed and had the photograph attached to the item in the order (this is a good idea since it will mean it is harder for them to miss an item, like TaobaoFocus did) - although they could work on their photographic skills (or get a better camera) to get clearer images.
The international shipping by EMS was a lot more expensive than I had anticipated, not just because the order was about double the weight I had guesstimated (at least according to the Bhiner staff - the package is still in transit to me so I have not confirmed it's weight myself yet) but the EMS price compared to Taobao Focus was about 15% higher.
I used the normal 4% surcharge method to top up my account for the international shipping - it works fine and instantly as expected and calculates the surcharge for you on top of the amount you enter to transfer. But once you've done it, there is no record of the surcharge in the Bhiner systems, only in your paypal records :-/
At this point my order with Bhiner is making it's way to me, when it arrives I'll update this post with the actual weight of the package as it is received by me.
http://www.taobaonow.com - site goes up and down a bit, news on homepage from Xmas, seems to only accept credit cards, cart does not allow you to select option for a listing (eg size) and does not give correct price for option (always gives the highest option price even if you choose the lowest), 10% fee, min fee 50 CNY, photos not standard
http://www.taobaoring.com - used to have a good service, but the Feedback page shows that service might have some problems, uncertain if it accepts paypal still, 8%, 30 CNY min fee, photos standard(?), cart does not allow you to select option for a listing (eg size) and does not give correct price for option (always gives the highest option price even if you choose the lowest)
http://www.yoybuy.com - credit card, western union, webmoney, 10%, min 5.69 USD fee, unknown on photos, you can only add one size to the cart, if you try and add another, it just changes the one you already added, it always uses the lowest option price even if you want the highest option
http://www.newbuybay.com - western union, bank transfer, 5%, no minimum?, unknown on photos, cart does not allow to purchase more than one varient of the same listing (eg if the listing has different selections for size, you can only add one size to the cart, if you try and add another, it just changes the one you already added
http://www.taobaomaster.com - no paypal (WU, Moneygram, Bank Transfer only), 5%, no minimum, cart doesn't appear to allow you to choose options, uses the lowest option price per item, doesn't allow you to add more than one of an item. Generally, broken.
http://www.engtaobao.com - 5% (or maybe 6% ?), accept paypal with 3.9%+30c fee, minimum fee $5 US, 50% EMS discount, selecting multiple options for a single product (eg ordering 3 different sizes of same item) gives the lowest price for each instead of the correct price. No reviews on web I can find. Their last "News" item was in December, looks like they started in May last year, english is dodgy on the news page. Responded to email asking about paypal quickly and with good english.
http://taobaospree.com - 10% min 50 CNY fee, paypal only in HKD and 4%+ surcharge, no ordering system have to just email what you want, 40% EMS, limited photos standard
http://buyfromtaobao.com/ - 10%, no minimum but an additional $5 US for repacking, paypal accepted 4%+30c, not sure on shipping, photos are extra cost, search doesn't work, but adding to cart directly does
http://agencytaobao.com/ - english on the site is terrible. 5%, no minimum, seems to accept paypal, many shipping methods, registration email went to spam, selecting multiple options for a single product (eg ordering 3 different sizes of same item) gives the lowest price for each instead of the correct price.
http://ibuygle.com/ - 10% 20 CNY minimum fee, accepts paypal no surcharge, you can only add one size to the cart, if you try and add another, it just changes the one you already added, it always uses the lowest option price even if you want the highest option
http://taobaobuying.com/ - music plays on every page (it's nice music, but really now, every time you navigate to another page the music restarts!) 10% 50CNY minimum fee, paypal with 4% surchage, message on site indicating order system broken and need to email orders? last news item on their page 2011.
http://www.tbtrends.com/ - 10% 35 CNY minimum fee, paypal accepted, does not allow to select options but you can add the item multiple times (eg ordering 3 different sizes of same item) but gives the lowest price for each instead of the correct price.
http://www.bhiner.com/ - 5% 35 CNY minimum (or is it 15 CNY), paypal accepted 4%, adding to cart is a bit buggy there is a race condition I think in the javascript which prevents add to cart working sometimes, setting a breakpoint on line 146 of searchResult.js and then just continuing when it hits that point as the page loads makes it work ok, the cart adds correctly, and it allows you to choose multiple options fo rthe same item, and gives the correct price (only one of all the above that gets it right!). English on the site is not bad, a review on the net indicates english communication may be dicey though. Photos seem to be included. Many shipping methods, EMS has a 8 CNY "customs declaration fee", 40% discount I think. Domestic shipping is 20 CNY/seller, more expensive than most. This one might be worth a try anyway.
Just tried to make an order with NewBuyBay and they tell me that they no longer accept Pay Pal, only Western Union or Bank Transfer (SWIFT telegraphic transfer I guess). They mentioned that will soon be able to take credit card.... but not sure I'm so keen on giving my CC details to a taobao agent :-/
Has anybody seen Via rivets which will fit a 0.8mm drill hole?
I bought a few which were advertised as 0.8mm, but they turned out to have an outer diameter around 0.88mm and so would require a drill hole of at least 0.9 really.
Searching for 0.7mm via rivets or smaller is not turning up anything at all, well not from the chinese sellers on ebay or taobao. Perhaps they just don't exist at all?
Hi all, long time lurker (and occasional blog commenter), first time poster.
It was here on DP that I first heard about Taobao for electronics buying and I have made 3 orders of stuff from there to date, with a few of us having done so I thought that it would be a good idea for a thread about how we have found the agent service. This is not entirely altruistic because for my next order, I want a different agent.
There are other sites which have a few reviews of TB Agents, but electronics components is such a different area than [things you put on your feet (avoiding the new user bad words), tea, knock off labelled bags...] that we have specific requirements (and much more trustworthy reviewers!).
So let me kick off with my experience of...
Taobao Focus
I made my three orders using Taobao Focus.
The first order, in December, went well, it was a small test order about 70 USD total or so, nothing very much, some screw terminals, binding posts, fuse holders, right angle strips, and a pair of meter leads.
The second order, what a mission getting things that were not "out of stock and seller doesn't know when they will get more" of course that's not to do with the agent and given it was end of January perhaps understandable with the chinese new year around the corner. But anyway, Focus were (silently) patient while I pieced together replacement items from other sellers to add to the order (mainly so it wasn't too small to be worth shipping with all the missing items) and it all came out in the end.
The third order, things seem to be coming apart a bit, processing has been a bit slow in general, one of the items wasn't in the photos and took a couple of days to resolve that, and worst is they over charged me on one part of the order (and refused to fix).
So the experience with Taobao Focus has been pretty varied, from excellent, to a bit dicey.
Good: Photos before shipping included. No paypal surcharge. EMS rates are cheap. The packing of items was good - but not static safe, I didn't buy anything that is very static sensitive intentionally, certainly no bare ICs, I don't think a general TB Agent could be trusted for that.
Bad: The main problem they have is that their cart system doesn't handle fractions of a yuan. If you add something to your cart that is 0.1 yuan, it rounds up to 1 yuan, add a 1.5 yuan thing and it becomes 2 yuan. You can specify the "requested price" as the correct amount and in theory they are supposed to purchase at that requested price and set an adjusted total, or if they can't get it at the price, cancel the item and let you know.
The trouble is two-fold, firstly, the "first payment" is the rounded-up figure, for an extreme example in this last order I purchased 200 Via Rivets for 0.05 each, that's 10 yuan total but for the first payment I had to pay 200 yuan to order them, the adjustment being 190 Yuan contributed towards the shipping, quite annoying. But the bigger problem is you are having to trust them to do that adjustment, as I have seen in the latest order it's not a sure thing, one item I ordered a few of was 0.1/item, I specified that it was 0.1/item, and they still charged me 1/item (they should have cancelled that item if it was more than 0.1/item) and when I asked them to fix it, they refused. In this case I'd only ordered a handful so I just let it slide, but if it was say those rivets instead, that would have been a much harder pill to swallow.
Poor ability to communicate. The live chat is so-so. The in-order communication is very minimal. Email notifications of order status is very hit-and-miss if there are any. I tried to get that mis-priced item (1/item charged instead of 0.1/item) fixed by using the live chat support after the in-order communication request was refused, which was painful and unsuccessful, I don't know if they didn't understand, or didn't care, or both.
Conclusion: Definitely do not recommend Taobao Focus if your item prices are fractions of a yuan due the cart and pricing issues it has. For pricier items where that doesn't matter, I'd give Taobao Focus a slightly hesitant thumbs up providing that you login to the site and check the order status at least once a day (because you won't get emails half the time), that you double check the totals of your items as soon as they have gone to ordered status (especially if there is an adjustment expected to be made, calculate the adjustment and check they calculated it correctly), and that you don't need to give much of any sort of special instruction about an item.
