I’ve joined taobao group orders before for bjd things, but this was my first time placing an order by myself. I read some good reviews about TaoBaoSpree (TBS), so I decided to go with them after going through and reading everything on their site.
TBS provides you with an order form in the form of an excel sheet, you can download that on their site. With that form, you just input the things such as the url to the item you would like to buy, quantity and the size/color/etc in the commentary. Those are the three mandatory things you need to fill out (apart from name and contact information), but I tried to fill out the other columns as well to the best of my ability.
I e-mailed Susan my order form on Friday, November 15th, expecting an answer on Sunday (Monday in China). Instead, TBS got back to me within a few hours, and Nancy was assigned to me as my agent for this order.
Nancy confirmed a few details about my order with me and gave me the quote for the first payment (cost of the items + shipping from seller to them + agent fee). I was told that one of the items I ordered would take two weeks before it would be shipped to them, I replied that I was fine with waiting for a few weeks and paid right away. In three hours time, Nancy e-mailed me telling me that she has purchased my items for me! :O
After three weeks, I e-mailed Nancy again on December 9th to check for updates on my order. I received a reply on the same day with status updates and a revised version of my order form was attached as well with status update notes made on it. Some of the items ended up being out of stock or they were unable to get a reply from the seller and a few items were still on the way.
In the end, I canceled the few items were they were unable to contact the seller and asked Nancy to just ship me everything that has arrived already. Everything was excellent up until this point. I was a little disappointed about the canceled items, but it wasn’t the agent’s fault.
When it came to the time for making the second payment (shipping fee from TBS to me), there was a bit of confusion. The fact that quite a few items from my order had to be canceled didn’t help. A combination of a slight language barrier, multiple conversion rates, and fees left me really confused. Luckily Susan (e-mail correspondences are all CCed to her) stepped in and let me know that she and Nancy will sort it out and soon I got a reply where all the shipping fees and refunds were listed out clearly. I ended up not needed to pay for shipping and will get some money refunded back.
My order was shipped out on December 20th via EMS and I got it on Christmas Eve! I was so happy that my parcel arrived so quickly. Canada Post really bust out their behinds during Christmas season. ^^
The big box, just over 4kgs.
Inside, each item was placed in individual plastic bags with my name and the item number marked on it.
I knew this jacket wouldn’t be warm enough for our Canadian winters, but it looks so cute! It came out a really wrinkled though, which is understandable given how it had to fit into the box.
They kept the shoes in their shoebox. The top of the box was a little bit flattened, but the shoes were not crushed and were in excellent condition.
I am absolutely IN LOVE with these shoes. It’s so adorable but my boyfriend finds them ridiculous. >.>
I have to take my right shoe off and wear flats when I’m driving though. XD
This bag also comes with shoulder straps (not pictured). It’s very light and fits quite a lot. :3
I also ordered the Dark Magic Party JSK, headbow and hat from Infanta. I will write up a review on this with photos in a separate post soon.
Overall, I had a nice experience with TBS. I would most likely order from them again in the future for shopping on taobao. There were some complications/miscommunication, but they were also so very prompt with replies (I e-mailed them about my refund just now and got a reply and my refund in twenty minutes!).
How much was the shipping?
It was around 900HKD for EMS shipping.