English Script Request

Hi, guys, it's Becky again, and here I am to talk to you about TaoBao. Now, a lot of you really like my TaoBao haul, um, you were interested in it and you, like, told me stuff like, "Wow, everything is so cheap, but how do I order from it?" and that is the same problem that I had when I first went onto Taobao. So, I'm going to tell you, um, how I ordered from it.

Um, I only ordered once, but I do my research on internet shopping very well, very thoroughly, so I, pretty much, I know like, uh, what you need to know. So let's get started!

So when you order from TaoBao, you can only do it through an agent, because unless you live in China or you know somebody in China who can buy the stuff and post it to you, um, all the sellers won't ship outside of China, and you can't even sign up to TaoBao without, um, a Chinese address or a bank account.

So, uh, you need, you need that.

You can get a lot of different agents. Um, I chose TaoBaoRing because their service fee was quite low. They had a really good, like, webcart, um, system - so you could just, like, put in the URL of what you wanted and it'll make a little list for you and show you how much everything is going to cost, so it was really useful for me.

That brings me, uh, to what a service fee is. A service fee is how much the, um, the agent is going to take from your order. Um, basically, because they're buying the stuff for you and going to this inconvenience to ship it to you, um, they'll charge a certain percentage of your entire order total, um, so, like, they vary from sort of six percent to twelve percent, I mean, it's nothing too monumental, and, um, it's, I think it's very good for what you're getting, so, uh, you should be happy to pay the service fee.

So, when you have all your items in your cart, then what you need to do is you need to send it off so that they will, um, purchase it for you. They have to go and check if everything's in stock and then they'll come back to you with a price that you have to pay.

So the agent will buy everything for you. And, um, also you have to factor in for domestic shipping, that is, the the shipping from the seller to the agent. Um, that's usually, like, really cheap. Um, the postal system must be quite good, because it's all very inexpensive, so, um, make sure that you factor in for that. It's usually, like, sort of, a pound or so, so don't worry too much, unless it's something heavy.

So, when the stuff arrives at the seller, the seller will usually take, um, some photos of the stuff for you, so you can see what it looks like. And then they will bill you for the shipping.

Now, there are a lot of different shipping methods. Um, I chose to use SAL, that's like the second-best one. The best one is EMS, but it's really expensive. And there's a couple, there's ones, and, um, you just chose what you think is going to be best suited to you. Um, I'm probably gonna always use SAL. Um, it's good, everything arrived, like, really quickly for me, like, basically sort of two weeks from after when I ordered it, so, um, that was really good, and also it's quite inexpensive!

Um, you've gotta make sure that when you're buying stuff, because usually, um, the shipping is the killer, like, that's going to be the most expensive thing for you, um, the shipping from China to you, that's always going to be most expensive. So if you're buying shoes, be wary that it's gonna cost a lot more than if you're just buying like, cute little floofy light things. So, um, make sure that you factor in for that.

And that is basically all there is to the ordering process. It is not as complicated as many people think. There are a lot of good resourced you can use - CGL there is a big, sort of, web dictionary kind of thing which shows like a load of the words to search for. To find good stuff you basically have to use Google Translate, use the built-in webpage translator (to translate the whole web page). The prices are in Chinese RMB (I don't actually know what it is, but it's basically like Chinese currency).

And, like, a good way to, at least it is for me right now at the current British exchange rate, a pound, like if you just take off a decimal place, then you get to roughly pounds, so there is that always. If you use XE.com, it's an online currency converter, that's really useful, I find. You kind of need, in Taobao ... , you need Google Translate open, you need Taobao open translated with Google Chrome, so the page is completely translated, you need the web dictionary, so you can find specific things, you need to have a tab open on tumbler with the track tag Taobao and then you can look up what other people have got. It's usually useful to do that, because you can see where people got their stuff from, and even if you don't want that same thing, you can look at the shop, and you can get the same stuff as them, so that's always useful. And yeah, it's really fun doing it. I usually let stuff sit in my cart for like two weeks or more to make sure I really want it. If you want more stuff, then you get more after shipping, because the more that you order, the less that the shipping will be altogether. A lot of people like to do orders with their friends, and just split the shipping however much it's gonna be. But it's a really good site, I think. It's really useful for people who can't get cute clothes locally, or (locally) online, so I don't know. I'm very pleased with my order. I'm really happy with how it went. I'll do some (number) crunching on the screen now. Okay, so I could actually tell you all the stuff which was on my order. Well I might not tell you all the things that were on it, because it was on my last video, but basically, okay so, the items altogether cost six hundred and thirty-two point twelve Chinese Yuan, which is about sixty-three pounds. The service fee was sixty-one point six nine Chinese Yuan, which is about six pounds, which is, like, really good. The domestic delivery fee was a hundred thirty-nine Chinese Yuan, which is about thirteen pounds, fourteen pounds. Not bad. Shipping fee from China to me was a hundred and fifteen Chinese Yuan, point five four, which if you take off a decimal place, is about eleven pounds, so from China to me was eleven pounds, which I was like, "wow, that's cheaper than from inside of China to actual China." So, yeah, it was really good. My entire item's weight was one thousand nine hundred and twenty-five grams, which is about two kilograms -ish, like just under, which is really lucky for me, and I used the (sale) method, and it was about eleven pounds altogether to ship to me from China. That is, though, I did pay for some things that were out of stock, and so they did what I had paid from my shipping, so altogether it probably would have been about fifteen pounds total that they just deducted the rest of the stuff. Even still, it's really good for me, so.. I did my final payment shipment on the nineteenth of February, and my stuff arrived on about the fifth of March. Round about then, probably like a day before, so I could put it in my video. Yeah, so that's about like, it's not a lot of time at all, so I was really pleased with that. I've had a good experience. People do have bad experiences buying knock-offs of things, or anything like that. I would always be careful if you're buying something which says it's like "Louis Vuitton" and it's probably not going to be. Just beware of that. Also customs does get mad if you buy fakes of things, so be careful, your package could get seized. Your package could also be opened by customs, and all sorts of stuff like that, so be aware with what you buy. Make sure you buy it from someone with a good rating. Make sure to talk to other people if you're not sure, I mean, there's a lot of good communities online where you could just ask them like, "Is this a real thing?" People will always be happy to help you, and happy to help you do online shopping on Taobao, so there's a lot of stuff you can do, and I really had a good experience shopping. That's my video, thank you for watching. If you've got any more questions, then please ask them in the comments. I'm also going to put a written version of this video in the comments, because I'm a bit incoherent, and I don't script my videos, so I'm very sorry about that. I ramble a lot. But regardless, thank you for watching. I'll see you guys next time!