TeaChat

My situation: I'm a relatively young guy on a budget, trying to obtain more pu-erh. I've got the money to make the order and I am trying to be as smart with my money as possible. It looks like using Obook as an agent is much more expensive than I thought, given the surcharges and fee for using paypal, among other things. In fact, it looks like the shipping from YSLLC actually might end up being a dollar or two cheaper AND I could get more tea for the price.

Have any of you used Obook as an agent? Please share your experiences.


Thanks,

Bryan

If not Obook, what other agents are there for taobao? And figuring agent fees on top, is it really even worth considering taobao? Not to mention the fakes I have heard about here on the forum.

http://www.panli.com/ but only in Chinese.

Shipping is very expensive, but pretty fast.

Don't expect to save a ton of money, because tea is heavy. Chinese green teas tend to come in paper/metal tins and pu'er is just heavy by itself. Ultimately you should be using taobao because you enjoy the shopping experience more or you can't find what you're looking for on american sites. Otherwise you may end up spending more money that you wanted to. If you live in china and can get access to a bank account then you will be swimming in good deals.

I've heard about scams from a bunch of different sites. Once a site gets more popular they can get away with more shenanigans.

Very interesting, thanks.

It would be interesting to see who has used taobao and their experiences.

To consider products to buy from taobao or directly from Chinese vendors, I think the key is "light and expensive". So definitely not things like new xia guan tuo Unless you plan to buy a whole box for the future 10 years. Buying directly actually works better for all other teas than puerh. I think what's very good about YSLLC is you can choose SAL. I wouldn't mind waiting for a few more weeks and save a lot of money on shipping.

Yea I haven't noticed any taobao agents using SAL. I think they make money off of shipping contracts/deals. Yeah if you're going to buy, buy good stuff not cheap crap because shipping is expensive. The buy light point is important because Chinese sellers love to put your stuff in fancy containers with a million boxes and bags (like those russian eggs). And remember, just because the package is nice doesn't mean the product is nice. In america you can usually judge something by the package (to some degree), but not in China.

Just checked rates on panli.

140RMB ($20) first 500g, 44($6.50) for each 500g after. Arrives 5-7 days.
Not cheap.

You can use Taobao FOCUS for buying and shipping tea and stuff from Taobao.

International shipping prices for Taobao items are here: [link removed]

SAL shipping is available.

I am in the middle of a transaction from TaoBao Focus right now. Over all I am very satisfied with the service so far. Everything is very easy to understand, there shipping and service fees are very low. Anyway, so far I am very pleased and would recommend them highly.

If someone else other than taobao focus would like to post a link to taobao focus, by all means do. However as a matter of rule, the vendor cannot. Thus the link is removed. A vendor is not permitted to post self promiting posts nor links. A new member is not permitted to post links.

Also, as a mention to this agent, please read the forum rules located under Introduction. Technically, there is nothing in the agent's post that would be permitted under the rules, however I am allowing it since it is in topic ... for now.

If you've not seen already:

http://marshaln.xanga.com/719555394/buy ... -taobao-1/

http://marshaln.xanga.com/719664579/buy ... -taobao-2/

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php?t=123623

Another link on B&B about TB:
http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php?t=157154

They were trying to arrange a group buy, but at the end, I think they went their separate way. However, there are some interesting discussion about fake and interesting suggestion. I think the best buy in term of quality of tea per price from the list on the B&B link is the Dingxing.
TB focus is very easy to use and I think the fee they charge is very reasonably.
If you want to buy 2009 Douji or Hailang Hao, I don't think you can get cheaper deal than YS, however for older Douji, TB will give you more choices and much much better price than DTH. I would not recommend to buy anything which is very old from TB.
Hope this help.

I didn't check when I started this topic, but last night I made an order from Taobao via TaoBao focus. I'll see what happens and let people know what that turns out to be.

Sounds like Spam!

Herb_Master wrote:Sounds like Spam!

Chinese ... actually, both these posters are in China ... thought you would want to know.

also half dipper has a nice link on using taobao

http://half-dipper.blogspot.com/2011/08 ... aobao.html