For those of you who don't know what Taobao is, you really should. In short, it's China eBay and they sell practically everything and anything. Well, basically, 90% of the things you own or wear comes from China. The thing about Taobao is that we (as in those of us who don't live in China) can't order the items directly from the website and we have to use an agent to place our orders. There are many agents who do Taobao sprees. Just do a quick Google search and all the agents will appear magically. I ordered this through smoochiezzsprees, which I will rant about their service later.
Everything on Taobao is fucking cheap, that is if you know how to search for the exact item that you want. The only catch here is that you have to know how to type in Mandarin. I finally feel like I didn't learn Chinese in school for ten years for nothing.
I had to go down to the P.O. to collect my parcel because I always opt for registered mail and somehow, whenever a parcel is delivered to my house... nobody is ever at home.
Here's the Boy London tee I bought from the amazing China eBay. I paid around $11 for it, inclusive of the domestic shipping and agent fees etc.
The quality of the tee was average but considering how much I paid for it, all is forgiven. Okay, the quality of my photos are also average but pardon the poor iPhone camera.
Now, let's talk about the service of smoochiezzsprees. Customer service wise, they were prompt in replying emails and polite. But other than that, everything else was pretty bad.
Seeing that I spree-ed with them once for Threadless and everything was fine, I decided to spree with them again. It was probably one of the worst decisions I've ever made. The waiting time for the Taobao spree on their website states 4-6 weeks, which was considered as pretty damn slow if you compare it with other agents, but I went along with it anyway because I decided to be patient. I paid for everything, including the 10% agent fees. Anyway, just so you know, everything was more expensive if you spree-ed with them because of their low exchange rate for currency.
Apart from this tee, I actually ordered another item, which was a pair of JC Spike Litas. Well, "inspired" anyway. This was what made me really upset about their service.
The updates of my order was generally fine until I realized it had been a month and I didn't receive any notifications of whether my items were being shipped out or what, so I decided to email them to ask about it. Thankfully, they replied to my email within a day or so, telling me that they update the statuses of shipping and arrival together, and at the same time reminding me that the seller speed was between 4 to 6 weeks. They also told me that they were expecting the arrival of my items by the end of next week, which is the end of week 5.
At the end of five weeks, I went back to check the website for my order statuses and I was so happy when it said that my items have arrived. I was beginning to feel happy and smoke rainbows until I read their email... which told me that my shoes were OUT OF STOCK.
Excuse me, you had five weeks to order my shit and you only told me my shoes were out of stock at the end of five weeks? Furthermore, that was an agonizing month of endless waiting because I was anticipating my shoes for the whole time. Man, that was really some service.
They did refund me the money pretty quickly, which I guess was the only other redeeming factor about the service.
I still wanted my shoes badly, so I ordered them through 65daigou along with my existing orders, which by far, is such a much better agent.
I have a huge ass Taobao parcel coming my way and I can't sleep because of it.
Just kidding. Hope you enjoyed reading this post!
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