Two bills, one confirmation, and the order in which they happen
The steps themselves are not complicated. What catches people is the shape of the payments: one bill early, when everything is still cheap and reversible, and a second one later, when it is neither. Between them sits a single screen where you are asked to decide something.
The shape of it
Three steps, as the operator counts them
Place Orders, Submit Parcels, Sign Delivery. That is the whole service as the operator describes it, and as a description of the shape it is accurate. It starts one step later than you do, though: before anything can be pasted into an order form, somebody has to have found the item, which happens on a Spreadsheet site you browse by category.
What it flattens is the money. Paying for the goods sits inside step one, paying for international shipping sits inside step two, and the two are separated by however long it takes a domestic courier to reach the warehouse and an inspector to take some photographs.
The second thing it flattens is you. QC Confirm is written into step two in the same breath as Global Shipping, as though the two happen together. In practice one of them needs you and the other does not wait for you.
The first bill covers the goods and getting them to the warehouse
The four rows add up, and adding them up is the quickest way to see what this bill is for. The goods are 2.26. The handling fee is zero. The domestic leg, from the seller to the warehouse, is 0.78. Together they make the 3.04 actually charged.
Every one of those legs happens inside China. Nothing in this panel moves your item any closer to your country, which is the single most useful thing to understand about it.
The currencies are worth a glance too. The listing itself is priced in yuan with an approximate conversion shown beside it, while the checkout totals up in dollars. The rate sitting between those two views belongs to the operator and it moves, so the figure your bank finally settles will not match to the cent. This site does not publish a rate and does not attempt to predict one.
The second bill has no domestic row, and nothing added on top
Two differences from the first panel carry the whole point. There is no domestic shipping row, because that leg was bought and paid for weeks earlier. And Actual Payable equals Payable exactly, so nothing has been quietly added on top of the freight quote.
The size is the other thing. These two screenshots are not necessarily from the same order and should not be read as one receipt, but the shape they show between them is the shape people get wrong: a few dollars of goods, then a freight bill in a different order of magnitude.
That gap exists because international freight is priced from a parcel rather than from a product. The inputs appear on your warehouse listing, as a weight and a mail restriction class, and they are knowable before you order. This site does not price shipping and will not estimate customs or duty for you, but the most common reason people abandon goods in a warehouse is a freight quote that arrived after they had stopped budgeting.
The one decision
Between the two bills, one screen asks something of you
Read top to bottom, this block is the entire order: a price, the hours in which it will be spent, the first leg, the second leg, and at the bottom, almost as an afterthought, the photographs.
The photographs are the only part of that sequence where the system is waiting on a human, and the human is you. Everything above them is automatic once paid for. Everything below them is automatic once confirmed.
How to read the QC photos properly is a page of its own, because three to seven images is not many and the order you look at them in changes what you notice.
Who holds the money, the goods and the decision at each step
The same eight steps, laid out so it is clear at which points you are a participant and at which points you are a spectator.
| Step | Where it happens | What is yours to do |
|---|---|---|
| Find the item | A Spreadsheet site, browsing by category. | Pick the listing. Nothing downstream re-picks it for you. |
| Paste the link | The agent order form. | Set colour, size and quantity, and add a note where the listing needs one. |
| Pay the first bill | The agent checkout. | Pay before the deadline the checkout states, or the order is cancelled. |
| Purchasing | The agent buys from the seller, 09:00 to 18:00 UTC+8. | Nothing. This is the longest stretch in which you have no move. |
| Arrival and inspection | The agent warehouse. | Read the photographs. This is the decision point, and it is the only one. |
| Submit the parcel | Your warehouse listing. | Select items and submit, which closes the reading window. |
| Pay the second bill | The parcels page, once there is a weight. | Settle it. The statuses Payment Pending and Clear Balance are where an unsettled parcel sits. |
| Delivery | Your address. | Inspect before signing, and know that a 72-hour clock starts the moment delivery is recorded. |
Questions about the two bills
Why am I paying twice?
Because the two costs are not knowable at the same time. The goods have a price the moment you order. The international shipping does not, because it depends on the weight and the size of a parcel that does not exist yet.
Which currency am I actually charged in?
The goods price is quoted in yuan, with an approximate figure in your currency shown beside it. The yuan figure is the real one. The second number is a conversion for orientation, and the exchange rate behind it moves, so treat the difference between the two as an estimate rather than a quote.
I paid at two in the morning. Was my item bought at two in the morning?
No. The product page states that purchasing is carried out between 09:00 and 18:00 UTC+8. Payment starts a queue; it does not start a transaction.
How much will the international shipping cost?
This site does not price shipping and will not guess at it. What it can tell you is where the inputs come from: the weight shown on your warehouse listing, and the route you choose when the parcel is submitted. The operator publishes an estimation tool at its own site.
What happens if I never pay the second bill?
The parcels page carries statuses called Payment Pending and Clear Balance, which is where an unsettled parcel sits. Meanwhile the storage counter on the warehouse listing keeps running down.