The inspection is real, it is narrow, and its default answer is that nothing is wrong
One official page defines what a quality inspector is allowed to look at when your goods reach the warehouse. It runs to a few lines, it is unusually specific, and it excludes by name the two complaints people raise most often. This page walks through it in order.
The scope is written per item type, so what you buy decides how much of it applies to you.
Before anyone looks
A parcel is received and logged before anybody judges it
Your seller ships to the warehouse on a domestic courier. The parcel is received, counted and logged against your order. None of that is an inspection. It is bookkeeping, and it is the step that turns a shipment into a line on your warehouse listing.
The check comes afterwards, and the official page calls it a basic appearance check. The scope it names is colour, large-area damage, stains, size, model and version number. The same page says the inspectors send the arrival picture for the user to confirm, which is the moment the job quietly changes hands.
Both words in that phrase are doing work. Basic sets the depth. Appearance sets the surface. Everything this page goes on to discuss follows from taking those two words literally, which is what the people applying them do.
Six things are inside the scope, and two are named as outside it
Rewritten from the official inspection scope page, read 2026-09-21. Under each line is the part the page does not spell out: what it leaves sitting on your side of the table.
Inside the basic appearance check
- ColourAn inspector looks at the colour of what arrived. Compare it against the listing photographs yourself: the check confirms a colour is there, not that it is the one you had in mind.
- Large-area damageLarge-area is doing the limiting. A scuff, a pulled thread or a short tear is not large-area, so that level of detail has to come out of the photographs instead.
- Stains and contaminationThe line most likely to catch a real problem before you pay to fly the item across the world.
- Size, meaning the size it is sold asThe label is read. Whether the piece actually measures that is on the other side of this page.
- ModelWorth having on anything sold in several revisions.
- Version numberCheck that the revision on the box is the revision you ordered. Nobody else will.
Named as not within the scope
- Slight colour differenceScreens, lighting and dye lots all move. Nobody raises this for you, and raising it afterwards turns into an argument about the word slight.
- Actual size deviationA garment that measures two centimetres short of its own chart passes. Ask the seller for measurements before you order, not after.
Those two deserve a second read. Slight colour difference and actual size deviation are the two most common complaints about clothing bought online, and both are written out of the scope by name. That is not an oversight and it is not hidden. It is published, in plain words, on a page almost nobody opens before ordering.
Electronics and digital goods sit in a third position that is neither of these columns. They are checked from the outside only: no power-on test, and accessory completeness is not checked either. An item checked from the outside has not been proved to work. If you are buying anything with a battery, a screen or a serial number, the useful move is to decide in advance which photograph would answer your question, and to ask for it while the goods are still on the listing.
When nothing can be verified, the rule reads it as agreement
The inspection scope page closes with a sentence that changes how everything above it should be read. Where information cannot be verified, it says, for example where there is no obvious damage or contamination, it will be assumed that you have reached an agreement with the seller.
From the inspector position that is reasonable. Somebody holding an item for a few seconds cannot prove a negative, and a service that stopped every order it could not prove would stop every order. From your position it is something else: the absence of a finding is recorded as consent, and it is recorded whether or not you were looking.
So the check is not a gate that holds your goods until you approve them. Nothing pauses. Nobody is waiting for an objection, and no message goes out saying a decision is due. The only person auditing the outcome is you, and the only time you can do it is while the route back to the seller is still open.
The clock you get
The warehouse listing gives you a countdown, a weight and a shipping class
Three separate pieces of information sit on this strip, and none of them is labelled. The first is a storage counter. On the day this was captured it read 68 of 90 days with Remaining Storage underneath. The listing does not explain what the 90 stands for and this site is not going to guess at it. What the strip proves is narrower and still worth knowing: storage is counted, and it runs down.
The second is the quantity and the weight, here five pieces at forty grams. Weight is not decoration. It is the input the second bill is calculated from, and it is visible to you long before that bill arrives.
The third is the orange tag at the end, Common Goods. That is a mailing classification, and different classes move differently. It is the earliest warning you get that a particular item may not travel by the route you assumed.
Two limits that decide what a passed inspection is worth
The first is something the warehouse can do to your order. The second is something it says plainly it cannot do at all.
- Marked
Goods the warehouse decides it will not send
Items judged unsuitable for shipping are given a special mark on the order, and the mark is there to prompt you to negotiate a return with the seller.
Read the verb carefully. The mark prompts. It does not open a case, it does not contact anybody and it does not stop your storage counter. Everything after the mark is yours to start.
- Unverifiable
Material and category, yes; genuine or fake, no
Two separate official pages say the same thing. Staff can verify the material and the category of the goods, and cannot determine whether an item is genuine or counterfeit. The order form itself carries a note saying the service finds the seller behind a link and cannot judge the quality or the authenticity of what that seller sends.
The consequence is written down too. Where a parcel is seized as counterfeit or prohibited, the official wording puts that on the recipient. A completed inspection is not an opinion on authenticity, and it was never offered as one.
Five things the scope page does not spell out
Will the check catch a garment that is one size off?
No. Actual size deviation is named on the official scope page as being outside the inspection. The size line that is inside the scope covers the size the item is sold as, not whether the finished garment measures up to it.
The place to solve this is before you order, by asking the seller for the measurements of the actual piece. How to read a seller goes through what else is visible on a listing before you commit.
Is my electronic item switched on and tested?
No. The scope page states that digital and electronic goods are checked for appearance only, that accessory completeness is not checked, and that no power-on test is carried out. A passed inspection on a camera or a pair of earbuds means the outside looked normal.
Can I ask for a closer look at one particular thing?
The free set is three to seven high-definition photographs. Extra or reshot images are a separate request rather than part of that set, so ask for the angle you want while the item is still sitting on the warehouse listing.
Nothing was reported. Does that mean the item is fine?
It means nothing was found within a scope that excludes slight colour difference and size deviation. The wording goes further than that: where information cannot be verified, the page says it will be assumed you have reached an agreement with the seller. Silence is the default outcome, not a verdict.
The item is fine, but I have changed my mind. What now?
That is a different route with a different clock and a different person deciding at the end of it. It opens when the order status turns to stored in the warehouse and it does not stay open long.