So, I’ve seen a few things that have irritated me lately related to dolls, and I figure this is probably the best place, my personal blog, to rant about it. Rest assured though this has nothing to do with fandom.
I’ve noticed this for a while now since I’ve spent some time on TaoBao, but it’s only recently come to really bother me, and that is the fact that sellers on TaoBao jack up their prices in their English language shops. Take for example this skirt and top set in a Taobao shop (whose name I am witholding for search reasons but you can find out easily enough on your own). The list price is 88 Chinese yuan as you can see below.
88 yuan is roughly $14.19 based on the last check of the exchange rate, which you can easily find out by just googling “_insert number_ yuan to USD”. Google actually has a built in exchange rate calculator that pops up that will even show you the exchange rate trends from the past few years.
Now above we have the exact same item in this particular seller’s English language store and it’s listed as being $39. ( ಠ ಠ ) Yeaaaaah….Now I will give them the benefit that they offer “free shipping” on all their goods. Usually this just means they have calculated the price of shipping into the goods, and this is fine, I have no problem with that, but we all know that a small mailer packet for two pieces of doll clothes is not going to be $25.
Now I am willing to pay good money for quality goods, but I am going to have to say that I had purchased from the above seller in the past and for the quality of item I would have been better off to have bought from an independent crafter on etsy who had a better quality product at a better price.
So now that I’ve had it out, I hope you will be a smart shopper and stop patronizing stores who jack up the prices for Western customers because they think they can get away with it. Go buy instead from independent crafters or doll companies with with good customer service and fair and equitable pricing globally.