Sorry to hear about your bad experience. Both sellers have quite good rating (above 4.8) which I think should be ok. I have used Amcon twice to ship my items and they are quite good and so far no such incident yet. There was once the seller did not send me some items that I bought but they insisted that they have sent. Anyway it's not so expensive and I just gave up on explaining to them. And one of my boxes were missing from my first shipment but it's with Amcon as the seller did not put my name outside the box. Thus I just need to go Amcon to collect it. For your bad encounter 2, it's quite common that some sellers provide free shipping to a distribution center and you need to go to self collect. I ordered a swing chair from taobao and the size is big and I'm aware that they only provide free shipping to a distribution center (I also read the same from the review). Thus I talked to the customer service and paid additional charges for them to ship to Amcon's warehouse and they did. There's always risk to shop at any online shop and not only taobao but it also provide significant savings if you select the right seller. I invited quite some friends over to my house for house warming parties and they are really impressed with the stuff I bought from taobao. The parties normally end up to be a "taobao discussion" and now I have to organize another round of taobao purchase for my friends.