Taobao Reviews 

Taobao only supports criminal activities.

Support will not help you if you have been a victim of illegal practices conducted by the merchant such as bait and switch, sending you counterfeit items, fraud etc.

In fact taobao will go out of their way to help them even if the seller has violated their policies. The seller would get personal phone consultations and no time limit to reply if a case is opened against them. Meanwhile a victim must reply within 24 hours or the case is dismissed.

If a seller has send you illegal counterfeit items instead of the real ones, taobao will tell you to ship them illegally if you want your money back. They encourage criminal activities and actively support as well as protect those who engage in it.

I recently bought items on Taobao and specifically asked the seller to ship them in good condition. However, despite receiving an item with obvious flaws, my refund request keeps getting rejected.

Even though I requested them to contact me via calls or app messages, they simply sent a text message informing me that the refund was rejected, with no willingness to communicate further.

I also reached out to live chat support, but they confirmed that Taobao firmly stands by its refund policy, leaving little recourse for customers. After checking the App Store, I noticed many 1-star ratings echoing the same frustrations.

Taobao is shit. Recently Taobao is offending the Muslim world by selling a Mickey Mouse T-shirt With Islamic Logo On It bearing the name 'Allah' & 'Muhammad' We will boycott Taobao and those that think they can play around, make fun with Islamic Religion logos and thought that this is a joke. I am putting 1 star, well in fact, I don't even want to give any star for a crap rubbish App that love to make fun and insult Any Religion. 👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽 Will make sure this shit app will go down.!

I was scammed by a seller on taobao. I consulted with the seller before i made my purchase, i was reasured that the product was the correct headlights. I made my purchase and in a few days, I received my package. Unfortunately they were the wrong headlights, so I applied for a refund but the seller refused and rejected my application. I contacted customer services, and stated my case. After providing evidence, the seller decided to make scratches on the headlights and claimed that he found traces of installation (which was a lie),which he used as part of his "evidence", and that is is why he rejected my refund. I requested for toabao's intervention to handle the matter, but sadly the platform sided with the seller. The seller sent back the headlights and taobao/customer serviceses also suddenly stopped responding to my messages all together.

Till now, nothing has been done since, and is clear that sellers are more protected than consumers. I was scammed and the evidence was there, so worst aprt is that taobao did nothing about it. So i would advice any not to making any large purchases on taoboa, because the refund policy is not for us (the average joe/consumers) it is there to mostly protect the seller. So be aware!!!

**I'm typing this as a foreigner currently in china, so you must know how little they care about consumers, even less if they know that you are a foreigner.**

This is so sigma because i know chinese
customer service are so chill

Taobao is a fantastic online shopping platform that honestly misunderstood by international customers.

You get the service that you pay for. I have bought many expensive and fragile products from verified or trustworthy vendors on Taobao. All of them so far arrived without fail, and most of them arrived without even a bump on the protective packaging. Shipping fees are also transparent and reasonable, the only complaint is the buggy and confusing tracking update.

Taobao and Cainiao also smoothly handles the customs process, which is a big plus.

Scam website. The seller will say everything is in order until you pay and you will see all kinds of issues. Be prepared to wait up to 6months or more. Their online chat agent is equally useless. Do not purchase from this site.

I have been buying from Tao bao for a long time and the recent purchase of a table top cabinet with lots of defects and dead fish stink was thrown to me as a foreign customer and they knew afterwards the trigger of a local return will be void , forcing foreign buyers to just make do and the slogan of 七天无理由local return . I was blocked from leaving a review with this cheating merchant and the 维权is full of nonsense , I closed my account with Tao bao and hopefully those who buy from Tao bao should be prudent with fraud and distain merchant . Do not buy furniture or big amount of Product

Taobao is not a good service. If something happened, they help sellers more than the buyers... The information safety is not safe. They switched my credit card number to others.. so don't buy anything in Taobao... after all it's China.. They will steal your information you don't know!

Taobao sucks, verification doesn't work.

Great! For all not Chinese out there. This platform is built for china so ofc the overseas is a bit terrible, i recommend you to deliver to another shipping service to deliver to your country if you can, and Taobao has many sellers so you can’t put all the shame one the entire website.

I paid $223 RMB for the order, waiting for 2 months they ask me to pay the shipping $2,295 RMB. The shipping cost 10 times higher then the order, I asked to cancel the order, they calculated the return cost higher then the order itself.
They should give the shipping cost quote before I pay the order, not after, because I can make decision buy or not. Now they charge after you paid the order, obviously this is related to cheating and fraud.

Can't browse without opening an account.
Endless security checks and asking for ID simply to make a purchase.
Incredibly difficult to pay for anything.
Terrible website from a usability perspective.
I honestly don't understand why they are so popular.
In the end I gave up after wasting hours of my time.

the taobao website is pretty trash, the app, although you can't translate it from chinese, is still easier to navigate than the website. if you want to purchase from taobao, then download the app do not bother with the website.
1. you have to pay for shipping after you have paid for the items you want, usually it takes a week or two for your order to be ready to ship. shipping is usually quite expensive cause its calculated by weight and also depends on what country youre ordering from (im from australia). when i first brought from here i didnt know that you had to keep track of your package yourself so i didnt pay for the shipping fee until months and months later, so dont forget about your order. shipping usually takes a month or two. its a long time to wait for items but i can find so many clothing items i love as a very picky person when it comes to fashion. its a bit frustrating though cause IT IS long and there always seems to be shipping delays.
2. use the image search option. on the search bar, theres a little photograph icon, upload a picture of what youre looking for, its very helpful.
3. the layout of the app is kinda complicated (at least to me) but you'll get use to it and navigating it will just become muscle memory
4. reviews- on the top part of the page when you open the review section of a product, theres words in chinese that you'll need to translate if you cant read chinese. they'll help you see if majority of people think the product is good or bad, and you can also view images people have uploaded of the item. use google translate if youre looking for a general product, i find it almost always brings up items that im trying to search for
so yeah use the app

Force you to checkout using alipay.
Most functions of Alipay are only available through their mobile app, which is a bloatware that quickly fills up your phone storage.
Whenever you check out using a bank card, Alipay compels you to link that card to your Alipay account. No option given.
Auto debit-> deduction without your knowledge.
Website is a piece of juink. Server frequently ‘overloaded’. Whatever you do, be prepared to suddenly have the QR code to download their mobile app pop up with no options to continue the web.
Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.

Great website, nice quality of items. Way, way better than international Chinese drop-shipping websites.
I love Chinese fashion and it’s my go-to place to buy clothes for more than 5 years now.
My favorite shops are: 11shop97, crazygirl, rayohopp, pinksavior
Plus size friendly: nange, boolibyo, guott, newforces, 穎宝 studio

People who are complaining clearly don’t understand how to use taobao right.

It’s a Chinese website. With a delivery INSIDE China and to the countries close to it.
If you are far away or just want to be safe in quality of item, trustworthy of the seller or simply pay with PayPal, use an agent. I recommend Pandabuy.

I bought a book one week ago on Taobao.com, since then my credit was charged for continuous three days! One day I was charged by ten times, amounts from 1 dollar to 120 dollars. Obviously someone in Taobao.com illegally purchase stuff using my credit! And I got no response from the customer service of that company! Huge disappoint! 我对淘宝太失望了，简直就是一个诈骗团伙

Talking to taobao customer service is useless ! Even more disappointing is it appointed GDEX as local courier (Malaysia) for last step delivery. This courier should be banned from delivery contract. Previous couriers like ABIX or BEST can did deliveries in 2 days but GDEX must sometimes took 4 days. Taobao please take action to rectify the disappointments of your customers

Got scammed but platform protect the scammer, HOW FANTASTIC! Reacted to customer service but what they do is asking me to wait and wait and wait. Never provide any useful help! Submitted refund several times but all got denial. F***king garbage