Did You TaoBao Today?
Once notorious for its pervasive, unsolicited, hard-to-remove IE plugins, www.
taobao.com seems to have now made its comeback with a cleaner nose and better reputation. With 3721, Yahaoo Assistant, and BaiDu Search Engine still being regarded the most disgusting "bastard softwares" today, TaoBao has certainly managed
to bail out from the disrepute lock, stock, and barrel, and transform into a large-scale online Wal-Mart. It now has everything to sell -- including the kitchen sink, and has become many Internet addicts' real Best-Buy.
Yet it takes more to win over the unthankful Internet users' heart than simply
giving up the policy of the unwelcome offerings of IE plugins. Yup, you are no
longer disturbed by IE plugins from TaoBao, are you? But your heart-strings are
that easily played upon. You've long been aware of what this kind of B2B or C2C thing is about -- Indeed, you have been tricked and caught in such old con games a couple of times at some of such websites and you swear you won't buy that story any more. Honestly though, deep inside you confess that you were trapped mostly because you were too credulous and were too unwary of the trick, forgetting that fly goes only for cracked eggs.
TaoBao knows very well where the problems are and how strong the demand there
is to shopping over Internet from mouse potatos. People were watching and sitting on fense when it first introduced its what is today seen the key to its success, www.alipay.com (Zhi Fu Bao), but were flocking into the pool soon after they
realized that Alipay actually worked. Alipay has become TaoBao's open sesame.
Currently it supports as many credit cards as 9 from different banks. Business
has snowballed since it got into the right orbit, with online sellers and buyers
hailing that there is such thing as free lunch. Some rivals followed suit but
our ancient sages were not kidding when saying it's the early bird that gets the
worm.
The simple power that Alipay possesses is that under rules of the system, purchasers are not to be tricked. Cases of fraudulence have been reported occasionally, but that won't dethrone the king of 21st century's electronic business.
Not wanting to be looked down upon as the last anachronistic jerk in the world
, this traditionally conservative Pan finally jumped in and got his feet wet the
other day. He registered in, got an Alipay account, then uttered a sigh of relief. It took some doing but once all was done, things became as easy as rolling
off a log. He picked up a bunch of DVD-R disks and did the only payment -- at
much lower prices than that in the local computer market, and he was delighted to be informed the next morning that the goods had already been there at the doorman's.
How long the delivery takes depends much on the distance between the two dealers, though. That's not hard to understand. The tips are: choose sellers that boast high ratings and are not far from where you live.
It's cheaper; it's more convenient; it saves time; it has everything from soup
to nuts. Most importantly, it's no dream. You can do it, too. It doesn't take a tech-savvy to make the deal, but forget about it if you are unfortunately a
computer-illiterate.
Let's go Taobaoing!
Panpanpan.