Taobao & Tmall The interest and and enthusiastic in Taobao and Tmall has always been high among folks. Most can spend hours and days searching for the ideal item to purchase. Then again, some pre-requisite are required before one can venture further. Able to read Chinese, is half the job then. The rest, there is always Google Translate. Just to pen down some thoughts and journey went thru. Searching for the dream item is not the hard part. There some many items to of various design, pattern and colours to choose from. Choosing to buy from who is the tricky part. First there is Taobao and Tmall. So what is the difference? From what I understand, Tmall are more of a premium sellers. Chances of getting fake stuffs from there are lesser the sellers are more reputable, quality assurance is there as well. Then again, this does not means Taobao has no good stuffs or mainly fakes. Practice some due diligence, if an offer looks too good to be true, then mostly it is. For me I will look for those with 1) sales transaction 2) comments 3) higher diamonds seller. Read thru the comments, make sure the comments are coming from different names and also are frequents buyers and not some bogus buyers. Takes a little time but normally shall pay off well. Next, the interesting part, all vendors has a MSN like chat 阿里旺旺, if you are able to type Chinese, download it. You can chat directly with the seller, asking questions of your concern and clarify some doubts such as colour & dimensions (esp for wood grain furniture). And seriously, you can bargain a little as well if you are buying a few items or more, or request free delivery to an address in China. With chatting, the seller can "custom" a link for you to meet your requirement be it the pricing or dimensions. Troublesome you may say but to me, it is part of the fun of online shopping. I always chat when buying big ticket items and kinda get a little discount here and there. I was looking for some rain shower head, found this vendor, chat with him and found out that he is selling bidet spray as well but not listed on his site. So he sent me some pics, ask him about the material so end up buying 2 shower head and 2 bidet from him. He gave me a discount and I got some savings. Now he is offering me with more of his products for my consideration, send me mails with pics of some faucets and taps, will seriously consider if the price is right. Actually there is a small hiccup when buying from him, we both calculated the wrong amount to pay, I paid RMB60 more and the same evening, he refunded me straight away. If you ask me, do I trust them? Yes and no. Yes because the Chinese are slowly moving into the phase understanding the importance of customer service, word of mouth. Passed were the days where they do guerrilla warfare, whack & run. No due to the lack of monitoring in QC and sometimes one may get a lemon item once in a blue moon. Still it wont deters me from continuing to buy from there for some items are pretty enticing. Like a study table, local prices are like $500 up to $1k or more, carpentry is like $120 per foot run, while in TB/Tmall, you can get easily for approx. $300. Makes it more appealing if you are buying 2. Later I will post abit on how and who I used to ship the items.