Avoid fakes on Taobao

[Manuel]

I've been using Taobao quite a bit recently and have wasted large amounts of time mainly trying to filter out fakes. Generally speaking, popular products are bound to have fakes in China. Some times the price is blatantly low so that you know it's a fake, the problem is when fake is sold as genuine. For example, today I wanted to buy some Schwarzkopf hair styling clay on Taobao, and later I learnt that most Schwarzkopf products on Taobao (and most markets) are knock-offs. I find this futile search for genuine products massively irritating, tedious, frustrating, exhausting and boring.

Fakes are OK if the retailer makes it clear that it is a fake, this way the real manufacturer's reputation is not affected AND the buyer is not lied to. But fakes sold as genuine products, no thanks. You might think "well there are also fakes on eBay". I'd say that most of those fakes come, not surprisingly, from China.

These cheats rank next above spammers and child molestors in the food chain. What are your views anyway?

[panpan86]

I usually just trust the '信用‘ and '成交’ ranking... I figure if hundreds of people have already bought it and have lived to tell the tale, it's probably safe

[langxia]

Well according to my girlfriend taobao has a policy that if you happen to buy a fake product that you can send it back and will get your money back. Thus that taobao themself are trying to keep it as fakefree as possible.

As I don't use taobao much I can't tell if that really is the case or not. But what she also told me is that often such cheap products come from the same factory and that it is that the factory produced more than the buyer asked them to and the surplus is sold cheaper on a secondary market.

[方便面]

See what other people in CHina think:

http://www.facebook.com/groups/360759013944855/

[yialanliu]

Boring? Interesting for that one hehe.

Anyways, I'd just buy from major stores such as Walmart/Carrefour as they don't sell fakes, and when found will take care of it to best of their ability.

If you can't find it, then use taobao. Although if it's a rare product, I'd use something more common like a local brand over a froeign boutique brand.