How to Buy from Taobao
This is the quick and dirty guide – it presents the fastest, easiest way to buy stuff on Taobao. If you need more detail on any of these steps, links are provided to guides that go in depth into these points.
First things First
If you don’t live in China, you will need to check out our guide to buying on Taobao from overseas. If you do live in China, be sure to sign up for Taobao and add money to your account. When that is done, you are ready to start shopping with the guide below.
Step 1. Search in English
Yes, just type in English! You will find the stuff you want 95% of the time.
More search tips:
2. Check the Seller Feedback
Scroll down into your results and click on the products that look good. On the product page, look here and make sure that the Seller is highly rated. A good rule of thumb is at least 99% feedback on more than 500 transactions. (In the image below, the seller has 100% feedback on 949 transactions.) More on Evaluating a Seller
3. Click the Orange Buy It Now! Button
As seen above. There is now also a Blue Shopping Cart button which is useful if you are buying multiple things at once.
4. Add a Shipping Address
Click the button circled in green below to enter your shipping address. Use Chinese for the street address if you can, but English (pinyin) is okay here too.
5. Choose Shipping method
Kuaidi 快递 is usually the preferred option — a delivery person will come to your door with the package. For details on the alternatives, check out our detailed guide to buying.
6. Submit your order
As seen above.
7. Enter your password to confirm payment
If you have a question about this step, check our guide to paying for your Taobao order.
You’re done!
Sit back and wait for your package to arrive. When it does, you should check out our Guide to Receiving Stuff. … if you’re not too busy playing with your new treasure.
Great guide! I successfully set up everything and made my first purchase! It did take a bit of patience and looking for answers on this site for the various windows popping up but now I’m set! Thanks
I get to step 7 and my “password” is not accepted. According to google translate there might be a problem with my registration/email?
For some reason I am getting this: 由于您的买家信用度处在0－3分之间，可以出价5次，再次出价必须在支付宝付款或交易关闭后进行，具体请看：“淘宝出价规则”。 What has happened?
Hi There I have followed your guidelines to register, all the steps were successful but I still did not get an email from taibao. I checked the spam folder as well.
Can it take a day or more to receive the email confirmation?
@Alicides – that is an interesting problem. What happens if you try to login?
Hi Alicides, try this: send email to ok@taobao.com, use your registered Taobao user name as the title, put “激活帐号”(meaning activate account) as the content. your account should be activated within 3 minutes. but still I’d recommend you to change to another email address that doesn’t block Taobao’s email to register, just to make sure you don’t miss other important notices from taobao later on. =)
umm how do we do lik size exchange?? lik for clothes and stuff
Clothes are the most popular things to buy on Taobao. If you are interested in buying some clothes, just take your best guess at the size. If you need to exchange, just send it back and the Seller will be happy to send you a different size.
If you are concerned about it, talk to the Taobao shop first. Confirm that they have the sizes and styles that you might need to switch, and ask what the shipping terms are. The shop might be willing to split the extra delivery costs. In any event, the delivery costs should be less than 10rmb each way within China.
sr but , what does this step mean ?
this one : 买家已付款，等待卖家发货
That means: “The buyer has already paid, waiting for the seller to ship.”
thx alot
… i thought i lost my money 
Is there any way to combine your order when you want to buy different products from the same seller?
Sure is! Check this out: Taobao Shopping Cart
Hey, just to say thanks, I am now a taobao superstar. Everything went super smoothly.
That’s awesome Agathe! Be sure to tell us what kind of sweet stuff you find in your Taobao journey~
Again they changed the layout of the pages so it’s not exactly the same. For example after the “buy it now” they offered a secured log-in option (which I could not manage to understand how it works-required a plugin) or a regular log-in (which I did)where they asked me to reconfirm my password.
Hi So,
and I input my address, and it just freezes, and says “加载时间过长，建议您刷新后重试。” So I refresh, and nothing happens!! I go back to try again, but then it automatically knows my address that I’ve already put in, and it just says the same thing, over and over. Is there a place where I can change my address, or do you have any ideas??? Help! I want those rain boots!
Thank you so much for this website! I’m excited to get buying! BUT>>>
This is my 2nd TaoBao account I’ve set up, and both times I’ve gotten it set up, added money at the post office, added it to my Alipay account, and gotten to the part where you BUY the baby
Hi Emily, which system and browser are you using, Taobao’s support for browsers other than IE is pretty pre-mature…. all kinds of weird shits might happen… =) we’d suggest you use windows system and IE6 or IE7 to buy stuff on taobao.
Hi…thanks for this awesome guide,i registered and received my first order!…..
But got one question,Can you please provide the chinese characters which request the seller to consolidate the shipping fee for multiple items from same seller…..Thanks!
Hi Tree, Congrats on your first order!! =D
regarding the shipping fee consolidation, it usually should be done before you pay for the whole deal. the step is, you purchase 2 items, pause, contact seller to revise the 2nd shipping price charge to 0, after he did it, you pay for the order, and wait for the delivery. now that you already paid and received your order, the only way to get your over charged shipping price back is to talk to the seller about this first, say “hey bro, I find I paid double the shipping price, I’m gonna submit a partial refund on this order for the overcharged amount. give my money back!”here’s the Chinese version:”兄弟，我发现我付了两份快递费啊，我申请退款了，把多收的那部分退给我！”then go to mytaobao and find the order, click on “申请退款” and input the correct amount that you should pay for the deal. paste the above sentence into the reason for refund area. that’s it. usually it will take some day for the money to come back to you.
Sellers sell tons of interesting stuff. Most of the time you can see pictures at the bottom of the page with other goods that they have. Or on the left hand side of the page they have a list. But sometimes they don’t – no picture, no list. So is there any other way to check all the goods sold by this seller ?
how long it would take before the shipment from the seller arrive? 快递
is for how many days? its been 3 days now since i paid the goods but i havent receive anything yet!
Hi Beth, usually Kuaidi takes about 3 days, you can check your order status, here’s a simple guide to do this. it’s also possible that the seller ran out of stock and left you a message in wangwang chat. check it out, see if there’s messages from this seller. or maybe wait a couple more days, see if it’s just delayed by kuaidi accidentally. let us know if you still don’t receive it or anything else happens. good luck~ =)
i was so disappointed with my order! i tracked the shipment and it says
2009-08-26 20:04 已签收,签收人是,so i was shocked! i called the freight company only to find out that these shipment arrived in shenzhen! i called up the seller and you know what she had told me? she said” oh,that is not your tracking number,i just faked it because i dont have time to ship it! she added ” anyway,if you want i will ship it tomorrow! i hanged up! i cannot bear listening on senseless reasons like these! MY GOD!!! what a desperate and stupid person! what if 10 days had gone by and i didnt called her? i didnt confirm receipt because i havent receive anything, then i cannot apply for a refund yeah???? do taobao allow things like this to happen? she is one hell of a nincompoop!
Oh NO! that’s totally unacceptable!!! Shameless lady! Taobao will certainly not allow this to happen. However, any refund process is unpleasant, and for you could be more trouble with the language barrier. but bad ppl has to be punished, Beth!! You need to report this to Taobao, and get your money back!! Here’s how to do it. 1). First talk to the Seller about this with Wangwang, save the screenshot of the conversations as evidence to prove that she faked the delivery info and never sent the good. keep it. 2). get your money back, follow this guide for refund without receiving a product. it usually takes a long time and you’ve to check the refund status to make sure it doesn’t expires at your end, after I think 2 rounds of unsuccessful mediating between you and the seller, you’ll get a button to involve Taobao service person, and upload your chat history as evidence. then you’ll get your money back no problem. 3). usually when you get your refund, the order status will be “交易关闭”(transaction closed), that means you can’t give black flower to the seller any more. if you really want to punish the seller for wasting your time and energy and for the unethical behavior, Laobanniang had just called the service to find out how, I’m be writing an other guide on this tonight. I’ll update the link here later. Cool libra will not tolerate filthy injustice! =P
Hi Beth, the new guide is ready, here’s how to report unethical sellers to taobao. check it out! =)
Hey thanks for the quick reply.I got one more doubt.I heard that we could actually bargain on the price listed in taobao,with the sellers.Suppose the seller agrees to our request and reduces price for me…….where will i go and buy for the reduced amount…will the seller provide a order web page exclusively for me….or should i ask him something else,if so can you also please provide the Chinese characters for that…..Thanks a lot in advance!
Hi Tree, nice to see you again! =D On Taobao, sellers don’t set up new links for the bargained price, you still need to buy through the same link after you agreed with the seller upon a price. After you order it, don’t pay the money right away, tell the seller through Wangwang chat to change the price to the one you agreed upon for you. (You can say “老板我拍下了，请帮我把价格改到说好的那个。”) After he says “done”, you can check it at “已买到的宝贝” and see if the transaction price is correct now, if it is, then pay. (BTW, Alipay will notice you with an email every time the seller changes the price after you ordered a product. ) Have a nice weekend! =)
Thank you loaobanniang……
so,that is to say that that i should order the product,but dont pay for it by typing in the payment password,but to close it and come back to my order page and wait until the seller changes the price for me,right?……
correct~
Hello!
First of all I have to say that this is a BRILLIANT website. Thank you to all of the people involved in making this.
I made an account and went to the post office to buy a recharge card. I then put the money on my account. Everything went well. Then, I ordered a product and wanted to put in the password to confirm the payment. This did not work and I came to a page that said I have to activate my alipay account. I pressed activate but now it is asking me for my passport number and all this information. I dont know which one to select under “passport type” and so I can not confirm the payment on my product. What can I do?? I dont see a guide to this on this website so i figure that everyone somehow got around it?? Please help! Thanks!
Hi Philip, for the “passport type”, since you don’t have a Chinese ID card, you should select “护照”(passport) and then type in your passport number. I’m a bit confused about which step you come across this problem, sounds to me you had already activated your alipay account because you were able to input money into your account from the recharge card, and the “activate alipay account” link/button should be the last step, the information filling should be prior to that… since my account is already registered, it’s hard for me to test it out again for you. Would you please double confirm with this two guide carefully and figure out witch step went wrong? Taobao Registration & Alipay Registration. If you still got problems, please contact us again or call Taobao service hotline 0571-88157858 if your Chinese is good! =)
Thank you for your feedback. I don’t actually think that your guide was wrong at all. It is brilliant I must say. I think I just understood everything wrongly. What happened was that even though I left the check box checked (when i registered for the account) I had an alipay account but it was not activated yet, just like you said. I was able to put money into the account and everything, I was even able to make an order. The only thing that I was not able to do was to pay for the order. It asked me for a password and of course my password for the taobao account did not work. After 3 tries it told me that my account was not actually activated yet. It then told me (in Chinese) that I had to go to this certain page and click these certain options. This took me an hour as I was not sure where to click but i figured it out. Then I had to sign up for the account just like it says on your guide to registering for alipay. After doing this and confirming the email, it worked and I was able to pay. So what I think happened was that even though I left the box checked that I wanted an alipay account, I still had to register. After this however, it worked without a problem. I had to go to my account main page, then to my account settings, management, and there was a link to activate the account.
Thank you for the feedback Philip, I’m guessing if there’s an update on the Taobao registration process. Your share of experience is going to be very helpful to other users with the similar problem. We also want to know if anyone else meet the same problem, if so, Laoban and i will try to find time to update the guide for everyone. Thanks again! =D
Ok i got the some problems. When they ask me to type my pass to confirm the payment and i did. But it said i typed wrong but i typed the right pass. After i went to alipay to register but it said my email was used. So i don’t need to register at Alipay but when i try to log in Alipay i got the same problem with the pass. So any help? Somehow they said my acc isn’t activited. But i did it already.
Hi Tannis, I’m wondering if you’re using non-windows non-IE browser when you’re doing this on Taobao. This kind of situation is usually caused by that. Please let us know if it still doesn’t work when you use IE on Windows system. =)
Problems solved. My acc didn’t activted with Alipay. I need to put my passport nr. in and real name and so on that i found somewhere
. I always use firefox and windows.
Hi. 5 months ago I could chat on taobao with no problems (I use IE with the security settings recommended above). For the last 3 months when I try to chat with a seller, I can last about 2 minutes and then I get the error messages in chinese and am forced to click OK and shut down that page. So for now I just end up closing the page and re-opening it 3-4 times until I’m done chatting. can anyone help? I’m using windows xp on 1 computer and vista on my wife’s computer. Thanks.
Also…I just started noticing that the first 20 items on my page have the picture come up, but then the last 30 or so have no picture. Anyone else having this problem?
I also have the same problem chatting with sellers. I am using Safari (which I have been using successfully with taobao for 4 months). Just in the last 2 days have I started having this website.
Do you have to use their payment system? Is it possible to pay cash upon delivery immediately after inspecting product?
Hi Peter, actually starting from this year, you ARE able to skip the payment system. You can do so by choosing suppliers with 货到付款(cash on delivery) service. The icon for this service is a package in front of the ￥sign.
Hello,
can you please give me the chinese characters for consoladating the order and having only 1 shipping fee? Thank you so much in advance.
Hi Amy, when you buy stuff, instead of clicking the orange “buy now” button(立刻购买), you just click the blue “add to shopping cart” button(加入购物车), so when you’re ready to check out, you’ll only be prompt with 1 shipping fee. That’s how you consolidate your orders. For detailed instruction, check out this guide. Reminder: You can only consolidate shipping fee for multiple items from one seller, not from different sellers.
I had the same problem as Philip.
I just put in my chinese name, “护照”(passport) and then a random number (my old passport number) which seemed to do the trick.
But because I had problems the first time around, I have three unwanted transactions all ‘等待买家付款’. I can’t work out how to delete/close them!
Fantastic website by the way!
Hi Dandan, buyers can not delete the transactions by themselves. If you want to delete the unwanted transactions, you can leave a message to the seller and tell him to close it for you. =)
Hi, I live in Singapore and I am wondering if I can just buy from taobao without going thru some agent instead? And for foreigners, are there any means of payment beside Alipay (not sure if foreigners can reg for an acc with Alipay or not)and credit card? Such as payment upon receipt of purchase etc.
Hi Elaine, currently you can only pay by Alipay or use your Chinese credit card.
Screen shots are out of date, taobao’s payment page doesn’t look like this any more.
How do I see what else the seller has to sell?
@beast
You can only bid 5 times at the beginning as your credit rating is between
0 yo 3.
@alcides
What kind of email service did you use.The comfirm mail maybe cann’t send to you for IP or domain block reasons.
@Ewy
I suggest you buy things from Taobao Mall and not taobao sellers,for there
are thousands of sellers in taobao like ebay,it’s difficult for you foreigner to distinguish.
@aloha99
Taobao and Alipay constantly adjust the page layout for a better user experience.
@Emily
This means the net work between you and taobao.com is not very smooth,just like paypal reminds you that if you cann’t login five seconds refresh it.
Now taobao support IE6.7 and firefox,but for stable.I suggest you use IE.
@All
If you buy more than one item,donn’t hurry to pay,the seller can combine
shipping fees to ong freight if not overweight,it will save money for you.
@beth
“快递” for you is UPS I think.
If in China,delivery will be finished in 1 to 3days.
For abroad maybe longger.
___________________________________________
I suggest try to ask some twitter users in China ,most of them will help you.
I have same problem with Philip.I put the money on my account. It is looked like my Alipay account activated with 500yuan. But when I ordered a product, there are other windows opened and let me choose payment condition and it is look like I didn’t activate my alipay account. When I choose “wanghuiE payment” it is asking me for numbers again and my secret code for the taobao account and of course it did not work. What can I do?? I dont see a guide to this on this website. otherwise I have to wait it works on..? but how long?
I’m succeeded. ( However it took me about whole day ;P..) Thank you dear team, Philips and other kind members who wrote such brilliant advise and expierences
my Chinese is not very good, but I can connect with seller and make some bargaining on reducing price and shipping. But i don’t know how to make purchase with new price. how to set it on table?
Hi 尼曼, After you negotiated a new price with the seller, you can just go ahead purchase the item, I mean click the “立刻购买(Buy it now)” button, but don’t pay for it right away. Tell the seller that you have bought it, and ask him/her to change the price for you to the amount you both agreed on. After the seller notified you that it has been changed, refresh the payment page and double check if the amount is correct. Then just input your password to complete the payment.
Hey. what do you suggest when you get to this option on the page where you put in your address?
确认提交订单
* 匿名购买（选择后，您对该宝贝的出价、留言和评价都将匿名。）
* 找人代付（选择后，您可以指定朋友帮您付款。）
I’m sorry. maybe this was answered some where but what do you suggest for these options?
确认提交订单
* 匿名购买（选择后，您对该宝贝的出价、留言和评价都将匿名。）
* 找人代付（选择后，您可以指定朋友帮您付款。）
again… sorry if I’m asking something that was already answered. I haven’t been able to find this anywhere… thank you again for your generous help.
Hi ,I had a similar problem with Beth, I ordered from April 15, waited until now my package is yet to come as well,about 4 days ago I received an email from alipay to confirm if I’ve received the goods or not if yet I must contact the seller but I try contact the seller via phone or mobile phone, sms, email, she/he never returned. what should I do??? to contact the courier they all in chinese .
This has never happened before during my shopping is going WELL , but i think only happened to this SELLER ( i put my effort to text her /him again and try to tell her/him to send me an email in chinese so i can reply him/her with my translator )but she/he never respond it .
Hi,
Thanks for your great guide.Very helpful
regards
Prasanna Ba
a few days ago I asked my Chinese friends to find out about my package has not arrived since April 15 by calling the courier company and they said that they sent the wrong package in town so I had to wait for the package but has not yet arrived. This is very weird but on the other hand I was shopping with another seller went well even though sometimes my package arrived within two weeks.
I have a question how to change the review for the seller, I commented to one of the sellers I buy my goods and how can I change my comment to them?
thanks
I LOVE THIS WEBSITE and I LOVE TAOBAO ..
Hi Michelle, sorry for the late reply, we were out travelling recently. 匿名购买 means anonymous purchase, all your comments and reviews after buying this product will be anonymous on Taobao; 找人代付 is a new payment option, it means if you don’t have an alipay account, you can type in one of your friends(who has money on their alipay account) to pay for your transaction. Hope this helps. =)
Hi Sayang, Sorry for the late reply, It was a long holiday. I’m sorry to hear all the trouble you went through. If the package never arrived, the first thing you should do is check your transaction status. if it is “卖家已发货”(seller had delivered), if Yes, then click in “详情”(details) and then the “收货和物流信息”tab, there’ll be a link “查看物流信息” to let you check your address and track the logistic detail of this package. Never confirm your payment before you have received the package. If you got reminders from Taobao saying that it’s almost time for them to confirm the transaction automatically for you, and your package is still not at your hand yet, just click “退款”(refund), and choose “I’ve never received the good”, the seller will usually start to contact you more and try to settle this problem for you, it will also win you more time. You can find out the refund guide here.
I think you should stop recommending taobaonow.com to users. Provide very unprofessional service. My first time using taobaonow will be my last. Pre-sale and paid for a phone through him and my item has never come. Paypal freezes my account demanding invoices from my buying agent. Sent 7 emails or more to taobaonow asking for help and i got 0 reply from them. I lost a thousand because of this missing product and 2000 stucked in paypal because of their non-responsive behaviour.
Hey Nicholas,
Super sorry about your bad experience. It is true that after a strong run in the beginning, TaobaoNow is not what it used to be. We no longer recommend them in our Taobao Agents section, and instead have 2 great agents which have never let us down. I just noticed and removed the old comments from this thread that mentioned TBN, and contacted them about your issue.
Hello I’m new at taobao I’m trying to order something but the problem is I don’t know anything about writing chinese character is it really ok if I write everything in english on my delivery address but I may also have a problem I work and live in a factory and I don’t know the street address(which taobao requires)where the factory is located they say it doesn’t have a name becausa maybe it is a private street I only know the name of our factory and the industrial zone it is located and also the main street is outside the factory please help and advise me on these one I need to buy stuff lots of it if I can pass through that address problem thanks a lot
Hi Rommel, a correct address is very important. We strongly recommend you put it in Chinese, maybe ask your colleague to help type it into the address column. Once you used it, it will be saved in taobao, you don’t have to ask for help every time. Your colleagues might also be able to describe the location of the factory in Chinese very well, with their local experience on this matter.
thanks laobanniang, i hope it will solve my problem by following your advise wait for my good news and get back to you soon thanks and more power to TFG guys
hello laobanniang, i just made my first purchased with taobao with a little glitch but with the help of google translator i managed to chat with the seller and made a purchased and close a deal and now i will just wait for the “baby” to arrive and i hope it will meet my expectations as it looks good on his/her website tks for your advise will return to you and tell you more about my purchased tks
hi laobanniang i am happy that my transaction when out fine i just received my goods in just two days from two different seller and the the products was good so i give them high praises on their efforts and give them good seller rankings hope to do more puschased on Taobao and hoping that all my transactions will also go smoothly anyway i don’t mind because your always there to lay a helping hand for us keep it up tks.
I heard that you can pay for taobao items with a mastercard now. How can I do this?
Hi. I live in Canada and I try to buy things using my VISA card.
I know only some sellers offer this option.
Apparently only VISA from within a certain area is accepted.
How can I buy from taobao??
I don’t have a bank acct in China.
Hi Sarah, if you live abroad, you’ll have to use one of the Taobao Agents to buy from Taobao.
I emailed Obook regarding what I need to buy but there was no reply. How long do they reply on emails?
use google transleter, the option translate the hole page, it translate in real time
and brrrrah! it’s as easy as that !
I have a question , about the payment . I have a paypal account but it’s took too long to transfer the money from my bank to the paypal account . So that i wanna purchase in the different way . I’m having a master card, could i used that ??!!
Hi Julie, Taobao doesn’t support paypal, it supports credit cards but only Chinese ones…
How do you recommend going about bartering? What Hanzi sentences would be useful?
Hi LoriAnn, do you mean exchanging product with product? the Chinese word for it is “以物换物”. But I’m not sure how can you do it on Taobao. The site is basically designed for selling and buying rather than exchanging. It could be risky for both party without the escrow money guaranteed with Alipay.
Hi, i keep having errors activating my account. it says 激活失敗. i tried both gmail and hotmail accounts but i still cannot get it done. Is there any other way?
Hi Priscilla, I searched the web for possible cause of similar errors, but can’t find any. However, the official Taobao service website say you can always call the service hotline, and ask the staff to activate it for you manually. The taobao service number is 0571-88158198.
Oh, no I just meant negotiating a lower price. I do it in person in the markets all the time but didn’t know if there were tips or etiquette for online, or useful phrases that work well on TaoBao? (It just seems a little different because I cannot exactly “walk away” as part of negotiations to get a lower price!)
I have another question — should I get a ship confirmation or something? I ordered a product 3 days ago, paid for it 2 days ago, but its status is still “等待卖家发货”. I messaged the seller using the WangWang chat (she was on her cell phone) asking whether she has shipped the product or not but she has never responded (it’s been an hour and a half).
hi, guys ..is there anyone knows about how to send a link of the item you wish to order through wang wang chat ? because not all sellers can memorized code of the goods or sometimes they ask to send a link so they can see pictures of the product. I can’t find a way to send a link since wang wang chat has changed to the new version ?
Thanksssss
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