My first BIG Taobao purchase! 🤩

Our new home is almost ready so recently I bought some things on taobao! It’s my first time buying furniture from taobao using a 3pf and it was quite easy!

🔹 I chose Forest as the 3pf as I saw a post on Lemon8 recommending him! He’s fast in his replies and will guide you step by step on how to start. He is also detailed in checking my items.

🔹 I thought all sellers will be able to ship the items out as the 3pf address is a warehouse in China. However, some of them messaged me to say they don’t ship to 3rd party forwarders as they don’t want to ship the items overseas incase it gets damaged. One seller said they received bad reviews as the buyer received a damaged item due to the transportation process from China to overseas. In the end I had to cancel the order and taobao refunded me the amount a few days later.

🔹 When keying in the item details in the excel sheet that Forest provided, do indicate clearly which items you want him to unbox and check. I only asked him to check the bigger and more expensive items and not the smaller ones. If the items are damaged, he will help to return it to the seller and get them to replace it. Also indicate which items you want him to crate (usually the fragile, heavy items). We will also have to key in the price of each item as we have to pay gst for that.

🔹 Total breakdown of shipping cost for all my items: shipping ($129) + gst ($70) + crating ($33) = $232 (I had 4 pieces of furniture & other smaller items like toilet racks, book shelves, hangers). I paid through the taobao app and was charged ~$240 after transaction fees.

🔹 For the shipping fees, I tried using WeChat pay to avoid paying transaction fees but realized that they do not accept overseas credit cards. Alipay charges a 3% fee for transactions >200 RMB (if I’m not wrong) and I had to go through the hassle of signing up for an account. So payment through taobao will be the best & easiest option.

I hope this post is useful! If you have any more tips on taobao shopping/3pf, do share with me as well! I will probably be carting out more stuff from taobao in Nov as Forest is having a promo for his shipping rates 🤭

Overall I’m quite happy with all my buys. Will share more about them in the next post! 🛒

#taobaotips #taobao #3pf #ShoppingHaul