Sad News Inside
So many of you have seen the whole ‘Aliexpress is not allowing the sale of tea in 2017’ going around. Well, King Tea just announced they will no longer sell tea through Aliexpress. Dang that sucks. Talk about one of the largest selections and best response times.
But, good news! John said they are going to have their own website :)
Seriously though, imagine how much work some shops have ahead of them because of this.
I already have the address to his new shop if anyone needs it.
He doesn’t have it all in there but here is the initial site.
http://www.dhgate.com/store/products/19861941.html#st-navigation-products
King Tea having his own website may be better. He will no longer have to pass on Aliexpress fees to his customers. His tea may get a little cheaper, even if only by 2 or 3 percent.
Not sure on paypal but John will do something I am sure. He could simply invoice you through paypal and then you could pay that way bypassing the dhgate. Paypal would still offer protection if you were invoiced for goods and not friends or family.
I wonder if this move could be because of the amount of fakes available on Aliexpress, you know the 40 year old ripe for $9.99 or less.
i read on a reddit thread about this issue that tea export is currently prohibited on taobao and that aliexpress is also trying to get in line regulation-wise with the chinese government. unfortunate that this issue means no more great tea for us if this is true. :(
You read that the Chinese government is trying to prohibit tea exportation? That is hard to believe. That would virtually put out of business all the Taobao Agents who specialize in getting Taobao Tea to Western markets. I find it hard to believe that the Chinese government would want to ban tea exportation. There is too much money in this for the Chinese Government. I am sure all these exporters like King Tea have to pay a tax to the Chinese government. If they really did that it would have vast consequences all over the world. While most drinkers of tea bag tea are no longer getting product from China that would in theory put companies like Yunnan Sourcing out of business.
Yes. In China, the supplier should meet 2 requirements for tea exporting: the first is the tea should come from a government registered plantation; the second is to get a phytosanitary certificate from the CIQ. Online stores like taobao and now alibaba are not allowing tea sales online any longer because it is hard to crack down on non official exporters and I assume they are under pressure to do this.
I’m sorry I see that my initial comment was a little confusing. I meant that I was reading about this and found conversation regarding taobao a company similar to alibaba who refuses to allow tea sales as well.
I don’t know about Taobao not allowing international tea sales. I thought that Taobao had no international sales and that anyone not from China had to buy through an agent. I have bought Taobao tea through an agent several times. I could see the possibility that some of the sellers on Aliexpress not meeting government regulations but that doesn’t explain a total ban on the sale of tea.
Maya is right on; sometimes dealers on Taobao can’t ship me tea because SF Express (an express delivery company) says the tea can’t be shipped to Hong Kong, even though we are a special adminstrative region of China. I’ve had several shipments returned by SF Express before they even made it to Chinese Customs because of this issue. Other large dealers have no problems, so it really depends. Similarly Taobao’s own cargo consolidation system won’t let me export tea, although due to some kind of glitch a few weeks ago I managed to get tea through their system, as well as a bottle of vermouth(!).
Taobao agents can get away with it since they use the postal service, which doesn’t seem to be an issue right now, but that might change at any time if they decide to ban tea exports through the mail. That would pretty much wipe out online sales of tea from China overnight! :o
I might get myself a mailing address right over the border to skirt this issue and just go up to Guangdong once a week or every two weeks for a haircut, lunch and to pick up my tea packages!
Shenzhen would be easier. :) Toby, yeah, I know what it means up there. I mean a real haircut, not the fun kind.
This doesn’t address the issues the pu-er lovers are anticipating, but here’s a response I got from one of my favorite Ali Express tea sellers, Hello, Teatime:
“Hi Nicole!Thanks for your message.Yes,AliExpress will not allow sale of tea in 2017.But we will keep our store in Aliexpress and if you want to buy tea,you can leave a message to me.And we will also set our store in a new platform like ebay and we will set our own on-line store.I will tell you our new store when available”
If there is a seller you particularly like, you might just message them and ask what their plans are if you haven’t yet.
Please consider this conversation I had on Reddit:
AliExpress Product listing policy (Updated 17 November 2016).
11.2 The listing of all food and beverages, apart from tea, coffee and dried fruit and nuts, is prohibited on the Site.
Basically, vendors are using that nov’17 update to scam customers
into believing tea was newly prohibited, when clearly it was not.
junk mail that went out to ali tea consumers was after that date.
some items should be newly prohibited – such as chinese truffles,
but even those may get away with the tea&dry.fruit&nuts category.
A seller (New source trading Co.,Ltd.) sent me that: “Hello, is not true, please rest assured”.
This is really confusing. I had messages with five honest sellers that maintain the 2017 tea ban. Puzzled.
It will all move over to EBay. If not, something else will spring up. Too many people making money taking photos with their phones at the tea mall and buying the tea when someone orders.
Update, King tea has a new store under development. He will be adding more things in soon and paypal is an option. Store is found here.
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