I have been putting an electronics project together. Several things could only be found on taobao.com. If you are not familiar with taobao, it is basically chinese ebay equivalent. I would argue it is better than ebay, however, the language barrier is a bit of an issue. I thought I figured everything out, however, I can not figure out how to pay. Supposedly, I can use my credit card, but it seems to direct to their “alipay” system. Has anyone done this before? Who wouldn’t mind lending a bit of direction lol.
FYI, Taobao is a weird mix of electronics, kitchen appliances and super small clothing. A sister company for flights is Flying Pig which is interesting to browse.
They do not understand how large the US populations normal body size is. Of course the site is really for their native market. Just heard lots of people comment that “this dress was so cute and super cheap but when it arrived I could not fit it over my head”
Generally you pay by credit card through AliPay, the other thing to remember is shipping is separate and you most arrange for a shipping agent to deliver the goods.
@technick14 Warning on the electronics with taobao. Many components are seconds or didn’t pass QC. I once sourced a bunch of Charging ICs that had a failure rate of 30%. It sucked having to QC 100+ boards after assembly with that large of a failure rate. This same thing happened with other components I purchased as well on my first production run of bike lights. So if your buying in quantity, make sure you are working with a vendor that has provided quality parts in smaller quantities first. But, I ended up just sourcing the majority of components from Mouser and DigiKey for the higher QC standards. Reworking was just too expensive at scale.
@Webdevel The sizing for clothing is hilarious. They effectively just print whatever size you want on a youth large version of the garment. I once order a really interesting diagonal zip hoodie from them, chose the size 8XL as I had been warned the sizing thing. When the hoodie came in, it fit my little niece and not me. I’m still jealous she has that cool hoodie.
Thanks @Lampy and @Nick! That is what I did. I went and talked to my bank today to double check. It still failed when I got home and tried again. I used alipay to pay with cc, but it’s still failing and doesn’t give indication why. I will read @Lampy’s article. Maybe I missed something with their weird chinese crap lol.
@Nick I am not really buying any serious components. It’s mostly completed MCUs, FPGAs, LCDs, and a few resistors, transistors, and 1 MCU IC. Should be basic, but thank you. Hopefully, I do not have bad luck as you described. I will keep my eyes peeled!
Hey @Lampy, how did you pay for your items? I read through the guide you posted, and it is what I did. I even tried again. It still won’t work. I am not sure how to use alipay correctly. I keep getting the same error. I guess I will contact my bank again tomorrow. I know there’s nothing wrong with my card. I can’t find any customer service on alipay so far. Any help would be very appreciated! Thanks!
Thanks guys! I had to use a different visa card. I called my primary card, they said that the method of visa payment taobao supports they do not support.
On this, if anyone’s interested: I’ve ordered a couple of Chinese made garments before and usually they’ll have a US sizing table along with it. Go up one more size from what they put you at on that and you’re good to go.
I disagree,
I would state it more as a total crap shoot if you have never worked with the vendor before. But, the pricing is often so low that crap odds are still kind of worth it some time to time.