Taobao - The Ultimate Account Setup Guide

In case you haven't realised, Internet Shopping is the new black. Online eCommerce providers like Amazon, Taobao, Lazada and Luxola are giving the regular brick-and-mortar businesses a run for their money. These online retailers link-up small businesses with consumers. Thus, it is no surprise that you can find anything and everything online these days.

In our guide, we will focus mainly on creating an account on Taobao. We will take you through the account creation process and the important things to take note, before making your first Taobao purchase.

Create an Account

Browse to Taobao (We recommend using Chrome for its inbuilt google translate functionality) and select the "Register for free" (免费注册) link. 

- Translate the page to English for ease of use.

- Put in your mobile phone number (this is important)

- Input the captcha to prove you are not a robot

- Check the "Create your Alipay account..."

- You will receive an sms or email confirmation (depending on whether you used the "Register with your E-mail address" option).

- Follow the link or input the passcode into the page to complete the registration

Update Your Delivery Address

If you have followed the above steps diligently, congratulations, you are just halfway there to an endless shopping paradise. Complete the following important steps to ensure your purchases get delivered to the right address.

This video will show you how to setup your delivery address:

Note: Remember to ensure the mobile number is correct. This mobile number will also be used for your parcel notifications and POPStation collection PINs. (See our 4PX, POPStation guide)

Start Shopping !!!

Now that we have completed our Account setup, update our delivery address, we can proceed to enjoy our shopping. As you may already know, Taobao is basically a consumer-to-consumer e-commerce platform. They do not physically deal with the goods or purchases. However, as with most shopping platforms, Taobao does provides some form of buyer/seller protection via its Alipay Escrow services.

Only when your purchases are received, in good order, will the payment be released to the seller. Hence, even though there is a risk of receiving a lemon or a purchase that does not match its descriptions, you could possibly get a refund. In fact, some sellers on Taobao actually do provide 7-day returns (no questions asked).

Do check out our Taobao buyer's guide on how to shop effectively. This will greatly reduce the chance of buying a poor or defective product. In the event that you actually do (hopefully not), remember to raise a complaint so that the funds will not be released to the seller and you can proceed with the refund/returns procedure.

Happy Taobao-ing!