Using a credit card may be the only way to deal with TradeTang.com. They intentionally convert to accept credit card payments through PayPal, which will accept complaints, but they can take the transaction past your credit card companies time limit for contesting the 'dispute', putting you at the mercy of PayPal who owe you nothing.
Here is my experience with TradeTang. I ordered product on February 17, 2009. Trade Tang sent sketchy information that my order had been approved on 2/20 and shipped on 2/23, asking me to wait up to 8 days to receive the order and additionally indicating the seller's tracking number would be active in 2 or 3 days. The tracking number was never valid and after waiting over 10 days, I asked them to follow-up at which point they asked me who the seller was which made me determine I needed to file a 'dispute'.
TradeTang.com, which I found through an ad on Salehoo.com, was anything but helpful, referring me back to their dispute system. After contacting PayPal with my 'order number' and 'receipt' supplied to me by TradeTang.com, PayPal indicated I had 45 days to file a dispute with them for non-delivery of my order, however, as mentioned before, your credit card company will not fight for you unless you let them know you contest a charge before you pay it on your next bill. You can still file a contest with your credit card company, but your chances of prevailing are not as good as if you contest the transaction before you pay it.
Yesterday, Monday March 9th, TradeTang indicated they would give me a refund if the order/shipment/ dispute was not resolved in 24 hours. Today, 36 hours later they put the onus back on me saying they would consider the matter resolved if I did not resubmit a continuation of the dispute, which I just did.
As with DHGate and others, TradeTang.com offered to apply the refund to another product, but if some of their merchants are not vetted, what are the chances of you getting anything of value you can resell.
Another interesting note, is that I looked at some of their other offerings including knock-off guitars (copies of Gibsons and Fenders) and found that the more I looked, the more the prices dropped, staring at close to $400.00 for one guitar and dropping to the mid-$200s while reviewing the other offerings over 45 minutes. Logging out and back in produces the same results. That is very suspicious, since the price gets tempting enough to give them an order just to see if they can produce a reasonable Gibson Double-neck SG clone and deliver it for less than $300.00.
Too good to be true is the old saying. Don't walk, run away from these folks. They may advertise on Salehoo, but that is no guaranty they are legit. As Jimmy's posts stress, make sure you pay by a method that protects you and don't buy-in to thinking PayPal will help you if the transaction goes bad. Don't wait until it's too late to contest the order either.
For a couple of thousand dollars ($2199), you can fly to mainland China for a 10-day stay at 4-star hotels and meals and meet business contacts that you can depend on. If you are going to do any serious purchasing from China, you want faces and phone numbers rather than websites.
