Just want to contribute a little on buying from Taobao. I had explored myself first and experimented with various purchases before just chancing upon this page yesterday. I just started buying from Taobao from late May, 2014 and I had already received 3 shipments from their designated forwarders where there are a total of 3 forwarders who ship to Singapore. They will consolidate purchases at their warehouses in China, and allow up to 20 days free storage for each invoice while you consolidate your purchases before forwarding. This is especially convenient for overseas customers, and I have noted that most of their sellers' customer service are very good, because they are very concerned that you give them good reviews. There are 3 types of reviews, Good, Normal and Poor. Only Good Reviews will add points to their grading which make them more reputable. I have bought a variety of items from them including coffee equipment (V60 cups, manual coffee grinders, filter papers, kettle and weighing scale for Pour-over V60 usage), clothes, shoes, hair accessories, some wooden kids toys plus those catapult helicopters, beginner telescope F36050M, and lastly toilet accessories (aluminium - realised I cannot attach photo, nevermind, refer to link http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a1z09.2.9.253.6QxLsF&id=35669910786). I will be moving on to purchase baby cot, kitchen accessories and other home reno items (to be used when I purchase my home soon), as long as the price and shipping works out to be cheap. Note that I was a heavy Qoo10 shopper but I have mostly converted to Taobao supporter now, because their Sellers' and Taobao's internal customer service are really very much better than Qoo10 sellers and most importantly Qoo10 customer service which are very bad now. Back to Taobao. Do note that their China customs differentiate goods into Special Goods and Normal Goods. So the forwarders will also charge you differently for different goods, and you can consolidate up to 20 invoices into 1 forwarding invoice. Note that there are restrictions on the size and weight per package they receive from each seller, for example in Chinese, 新加坡的包裹限制：新加坡/马来西亚：单边长 不超过150cm，或者（宽+高）*2+长≤330cm ；所有地区特货：单边不超过150cm；新加坡/马来西亚：单件不超过30KG ^_^ I have currently used 乐趣购 for all 3 invoices (and these few days I have chatted extensively with the customer service to clarify on especially Special Goods Classification and Item Size Classification), of which one package was special goods, and the other 2 were normal goods packages. They sent by Air and the delivery time is about 3 - 6 working days. During my first item purchase, which was a cheap F36050m telescope, when I saw it classified as Special Goods (reason now I know was because it may have contained magnet), I got a shock with the shipping fees, which was RMB118 for 1st kg, and RMB23 for every 0.5kg. Normal goods are only RMB35 1st kg and RMB12 every subsequent 0.5kg. However, when I reviewed the forwarder as poor review (because I really felt not too happy), their customer service contacted me and did service recovery if I was willing to change to good review. My shipping fee for this telescope, weighing scale and kettle worked out to RMB187 initially, but the forwarding agent refunded me RMB100 due to the above issue. So they are actually very customer service oriented. You try doing that with Qoo10 customer service or seller. For my future purchases, I will be trying 酷悠悠.PRouter as their 1st kg for Special Goods is only RMB47 and subsequent 0.5kg is RMB27. Special goods are those classified as the following in Chinese: 特货（特珠商品）：液体、粉末、食品、手机、含电池商品、玩具枪、玩具刀、对讲机和带有磁性商品以及化妆品 ^_^这是特货的大致分类. Basically, food, powder, liquid, mobile phone, battery items (I think also any electrical items), toy guns and knives, loudspeaker and magnetic products are largely classified as Special Goods, and note that according to the forwarding agent I used, they have a high chance of being rejected by the customs and sent back, so wasted the shipping fees. Do note that there are also items that are prohibited. Most of the information above can be found in the link below to Taobao's forwarding page in English. Forwarding agent Normal Goods 1st kg then every 0.5kg and Special Goods 1st kg then every 0.5kg, all in RMB/Chinese Yuan 4PX递四方 35 12 118 23 酷悠悠.PRouter 35 12 47 27 乐趣购 35 12 118 23 http://www.taobao.com/go/chn/transit/price/eng.php?spm=0.0.0.0.dNgY3C But for bulky items which is charged by volumetric weight, I will research and maybe use Amcon or similar if it works out cheaper, especially for electrical like lighting (these are classified as special goods) and bulky items. If anybody has any questions, I will try to answer if I can.
