Comment on How To Buy Directly From Taobao:The Complete Guide by Natasha.
This really isn’t that complicated at all. I shop on Taobao all the time and here is how I explain it to people. Taobao sellers do not ship directly internationally, so if non-China residents want to buy from Taobao they have to choose CSCL as their “mail forwarding service.” The initial shipping fee you pay with your order is to cover the shipping cost of your item from the Taobao seller to the CSCL mail forwarding warehouse. The warehouse is able to forward items to anywhere in the world, so they are the ones who will mail out your package to international locations. The second shipping fee you pay covers the cost to ship your items from the CSCL warehouse to your house. If you think of the CSCL warehouse as a mail forwarding service, it really in not that complicated. Otherwise, without using the CSCL service you will either need to use an independent shopping service or other mail forwarding service to buy items from Taobao as the sellers on Taobao DO NOT ship items directly internationally.
