From what I gathered from other threads in this site.. Tao Bao sells fakes. Lol.
I can not say that this is 100% true,
I spend quite a lot of time here and I know a lot of Chinese people that run factories here and are familiar with Taobao and just like with ebay, there are premium sellers/ top sellers or however they are called and these are credible people. Of course fakes appear sometimes, just like they do on ebay, but if you know the locals here, your chance of getting legit shoes, clothing or whatever is 110% percent, especially if you are a foreigner, because for a chinese there is nothing more embarassing than giving a business partner something that is fake, that is why they check those things 110%!
I can not speak for the people that posted in the other threads that they sell fakes and of course I do not know, if they know how China works or have ever been to mainland China (Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong is not mainland China, they are just mega cities such as London, NY, LA, Paris and work totally different than mainland China), but this country runs in its own way that is uncomparable to anything else in the World, but in order to understand this, you need to visit the real China. Rumours of China and fakes always come up very quick, partially this is true and partially not.
Even the major companies like Apple, Nike, Adidas never have 100% control over the factories, simply because they do not own them and can control the way of life here, even under the chinese law of 50% maximum foreign ownership they would not be able to do so.
Paying bribes to the local landlords (a practice that was extinguished in Europe around 230 years ago), the police and government are normal practices here, it's just the chinese way of life, so you can be sure that the owners of the factories that produce for Apple or Nike take some finished goods from the production line and give those things away to high officials in order to keep their privileges and there is no way that the foreign customer can intervene, one reason being that they are totally dependent upon them. For example the owner of the Foxcon factories employs over 1.5 million people and maybe some of you remember that around 2-3 years ago 20 workers (that is the common name for assembly line employees) committed suicide by jumping from the top of the factory roofs and basically no one in China cared, but in the rest of the World it was a big outcry and did Apple do something? No they did not, they sent in some high representatives to check the working conditions, but of course they found nothing, because they had no other choice than saying everything is fine, simply because they have no alternate vendor and they care more about the profit than 20 dead chinese workers.
I ain't messing with all that and taking chances. If I can't get them from a legit source, it's simply not worth it to me.
