Date: May 25, 2020

I am crazy about buying things from Taobao. Because I can buy a lot of toys and gadgets at very very affordable price.

But there is this mystery I am trying to figure out. Is how do you set the “Delivery option” to be “Consolidated Shipping” on my iPad or iMac. So far, only my Taobao app on my iPhone gives me these option.

To learn about Consolidation shipping. Go here.

https://www.you.co/sg/blog/taobao-shipping-guide/

Some how, when you use iPad or iMac (I don’t know about others) Taobao App and place an order, the default method is to use Direct shipping from the merchant. This is not the recommended way. The recommended way is to use the Consolidated shipping. This is to ask every one to ship (mostly ship free locally) locally to a central collection center in Guangzhou, and then, after all your shipment has arrived, then, you repackage it and ship it to Singapore.

For example, when your package arrived at the collection center in Guangzhou, you will receive a notification about this.

And you have options to ship using Air freight or by ship. Usually the difference is minimal for smaller items. So, I usually ship using Air. And the fees is only RMB29 to RMB 79 (more heavy shipment). If you buy a few things and the shipment is about SGD$5-$10 by air, just ship by air lor.

From time to time you can check whether all your items has arrived at the collection center. Either by Air or Ship. I have both. Most of the electronics items will usually by ship/sea. Non-electronics items are ship via Air freight.

See, if you ship direct. They use the China Post, and it is RMB36.50 for this item. But if you do consolidate shipping, it is much cheaper. And by Air or Sea is almost same price.

By Air usually it takes about a week. By Ship takes about 2-4 weeks.

So, my mystery that I couldn’t solve is this. If you use iPad to search for same item, it does not give you consolidate shipping option. It straight away do Direct shipping.

I have tried download Taobao App for iPhone and run it on the iPad, it does not work. So, the Taobao HD (for iPad) or Taobao Mobile (for iPhone), if you run it on iPad, the consolidation shipping option just won’t show up.

It is a very interesting thing to solve. I try to delete it and reinstall it again, same thing.

I tried setting the country to China, to Singapore or to other, it won’t help too.

So, my only method now is, I will click “Add to Shopping Cart” on my iPad, iMac, and then, when I need to pay, I go to my Taobao app on iPhone and click check out from the shopping cart and check everything, and the consolidated shipping option pops up.

Ya, very puzzling. Hahaha