Ok, well I may be stuck now.
Everything up to this point has been perfect. I saw my package getting delivered to the TaoBao warehouse. (My only complaint here is that I did not get an email that it had arrived at the warehouse... I had to log in to TaoBao and check the status every day or so. Not a big complaint, just an FYI.)
So then there was a simple button for me to pay the shipping fee from the warehouse to forward to me in the US. I pressed it and was feeling great. Then it sent me to Alipay and things got stuck.
I had successfully setup an Alipay account to originally pay for my TaoBao purchase. I saw that my US account processed it fine and I was billed exactly what I should have been. Now, when I go to Alipay, it says that my account is locked and no matter what I do, I cannot log in. It keeps telling me to call customer support and gives me a 95,188 number.
I am currently trying to find an email that I can use to send Alipay an email. If my Alipay is locked and I cannot pay for the forward of my items, I know that I will lose them eventually.
I will post updates but if anyone has a contact for Alipay / knows what I am going through / has any advice, please let me know. Thanks!
Overall, this is an Alipay issue, not a TaoBao issue.
That stinks. I've been lucky when paying shipping from the warehouse to me with alipay. It always takes me a couple tries, and then I think it still didn't work but magically shows up as paid. Even though it appears straight forward the transition to make the payment is less than ideal.
Yep... no worries though.
I am still trying to find a way to make it work but I have hit a few more detours / road blocks. I downloaded the Alipay app on my phone and I was actually able to get past the "Your account is frozen screen". It asked me to put in my "bank card number" to verify my account. After researching, it appears that I would have to open a Chinese bank account in order to get a bank card. I read somewhere that there apparently have been some Chinese banking regulations over the last few years requiring AliPay to get more information from users.
I thought, ok, Chinese bank account it is. Well everyone says how easy they are to open (even to foreigners), by just walking into a Chinese bank and filling out the necessary paperwork with a Passport. Well, living in the US with no international travel plans in the six months, it appears that there are no Chinese banks to walk into to open an account and no mail in applications to open an account via the mail. Furthermore, from what I have seen on applications that you must fill out at the bank, most have minimum account balances you must hold or you get charged low balance fees. The Bank of China commercial bank appeared to be 1,000 yuan (almost $150 usd). I am not sure if I want to lock up that much money right now just to hold open an account for AliPay.
Anyway, I just wanted to detail some of my adventures with all of this so that if anyone comes along and thinks to themselves (like I did), "Hey, I am fine taking some time to do that," that you know some of the pitfalls and challenges. If you have a valid AliPay account, the TaoBao cargo service is rather easy to use... but maybe not the most user friendly with notifications.
If anyone knows that I am wrong in my research, please let me know.