Thanks for the heads up. I guess everyone will be affected by this, all users of Taobao. Strange though that your order got refunded. Did you mark the order as 'confirm receipt' so the seller gets their money? This is how I've done things with my preorders i.e. quicker payment means likely to secure the PO sooner as opposed to waiting for Taobao to do it automatically.

If you have done the same as above, there must be a setting in Taobao that refunds all orders which haven't been 'sent' then?

 

I don't mark an order as "confirm receipt" if it hasn't shipped and I haven't received it yet and never had issues doing it this way.
Either way I don't it won't make a difference. If it hasn't shipped then at the end of 1 year your preorder order automatically gets cancelled and refunded.

 

Isn't that the point though? A pre order payment of 30 yuan or whatever, will never get shipped. My thinking is marking it 'confirm receipt', trumps the fact it hasn't been shipped. I thinking some Taobao purchases can be completed without ever having to ship i.e. think local China where someone can meet face to face. I tried it once with some shoes and the seller cancelled and refunded as payment was cash on delivery and they wouldn't deliver.

I only started doing confirm receipt after someone on this thread mentioned it a while ago.

 

Hey guys. LBP finally shipped out my FT-44 , he also charged me 980 yuan minus my 30 yuan preorder. I have not ordered anything though taobao for a while now. My shipping costs are way more than I remember. Is this a normal thing? Last year a package with the weight of about 7.8kg was 391 yuan. This order I'm having shipped is 7.3kg and is 673 yuan. Am I missing something here or did the official air freight shipping increase that much?

 

For preorder, the seller should ship it with a fake tracking number in a sense that the tracking will show something delivered and after certain number of days, the transaction will be completed. As a buyer, you can “confirm receipt” to facilitate the process but it is not necessary.

For some stores who sell figuarts, they actually send buyer a “preorder card” by mail just to make sure something is shipped so the transaction is complete and they get the money.

@ChromeMagnus receives refund because Thor Toys never marked the preorder shipped so Taobao automatically refunds you after a year. Your preorder with Thor Toys is still valid but I am afraid nobody knows what will happen with FT now, so Thor Toys chooses to ask you do nothing as in the worst case, it doesn’t matter as FT may not release any products in the near future, if not forever.

 

That seems right as the shipping is roughly doubled if not more after pandemic

 

Was that PO with them ever "dispatched"? Technically you're supposed to "confirm receipt" of the deposit like what @minstral says, but you've been getting by because the alipay system automatically confirms the receipt of dispatched item after 30 days. In your case it sounds like Thor Toys didn't even do the fake dispatch, otherwise it'll be auto-confirmed before the system can ever do this refund

 

If a seller does this fake dispatch, you'll have a 'view logistics' option on your pre order transaction.

 

No idea, from what bumpouz says below, I'm not the only one. That's one of the flaws with TaoBao pre-ordering. Once you,ve made your 30 yuan pre-order, you really have no record of what the original promised price was (unless you keep a screenshot of every purchase) and even if you do, it's all but impossible to negotiate with sellers via Google Translate. I'me pretty sure this isn't the only time my final total has been higher than the original estimate, or even different to what other buyers where charged. International buyers pre-ordering through TaoBao is really a bit of a wild west/unregulated market and there's not a lot we can do about it. And with FT increasingly screwing with prices, pre-order volumes, Chinese seller embargoes, low production runs... it's only getting worse.
Having said all this, I'm not THAT bothered by it, as the final price I paid for Thomas is still less than half the going rate from Show.Z or other stores. I am starting to lose confidence in the long term feasibility of FT orders =through TaoBaop. I expect in the next year or two that it will become all but impossible to get FT products through the platform. Other companies seem to be fine and there's still plenty of other great stuff to pick up there, but I really feel like ZFT stuff is going to be increasingly impossible.

All shipping prices from and to all parts of the world have risen substantially this year thanks to the pandemic. Things cost more, take longer and deliveries seem more prone to issues... and it's not limited to TaoBao.
I think that's part of why a lot of US based buyers are moving to purchasing agents like Superbuy. Ive looked into it and for me, in Aus, TaoBao shipping is still a fair bit cheaper, but a lot of others are finding an agent to be an essential addition to the process.

 

LBP has still not asked me to pay for my FT-44. I suspect I'm put back in the queue cos I gave up on Nicee. (I pre-ordered FT-44 in Apr 2019.)

What price are other TaoBao sellers charging? 1,000 yuan is US$151. That's pretty high.

 

for thomas? po $1000 rmb????

 

So I have a question for the group. I pre-ordered FT Jazz, Mirage, Huffer, Cliffjumper, Blaster, and Rumble/Frenzy from LBP. I found a seller that has some of them available but I would have to pay full price right now. I can't tie up all that money for something right this moment. Is that one that is definitely coming out soon that I should pre-order at the full price?

 

My seller preorder price is also 980 yuan, I have seen anywhere between 900 and 1000 yuan.

Thomas is coming in different batches. You may want to check with LBP if your preorder is still valid. I know FT cut the number of order for some sellers but maybe LBP in large enough to avoid that. Just check with him.

I wouldn’t pay full price for any FT products until they are more transparent about what is going on now. Just my opinion.

 

How easy is it to use Superbuy? And do you have to buy through them, or can they ship to you if you've already bought it and it's at the warehouse?

 

I've asked a few times. The response is always the same, wait for the notification.

I believe I pre-ordered much earlier than most people here (Apr 2019), yet I'm at the back of the queue.

 

I was getting the wait for notification or please wait patiently. On the advice or others here I put screenshots of my preorder details in my messages and got better results. I did have to pay via the Nicee link. LBP assured me it was Thomas.

 

Well that's a relief that my preorder is still intact then. If Taobao's system automatically sends the refund will I have to pay Thor Toys another preorder deposit?
Should I click "Confirm Receipt" for all my current outstanding preorders for all sellers?

Do you really think something has happened to FT? If so what makes you believe so?

 

I think it's good practise to accept all preorders. No harm to you right?

Re FT, I think it's sky is falling syndrome. I seem to recall earlier this year they said no more reveals. And because they weren't at the recent con and some figures are delayed, people think there's a bigger issue. The appearance in the weijiang copyright infringement doco seemed to fuel these doomsday theories. There's also the issue of FT cutting preorders.

It's all theories though and I wouldn't pay for FT upfront at this stage.

 

I want to know whether or not if I click "Confirm Receipt" on a preorder will prevent Taobao from cancelling & refunding the preorder after 1 year if the preorder has not been fulfilled.

 

I have a PO from 29 August 2019 and it hasn't been refunded. It has the remind the seller to ship link but it's all good as I think I confirmed receipt. It was over a year ago so can't remember for sure.