Terms, questions, and where to get help
The vocabulary first, because most beginner confusion is vocabulary. Then the questions we see asked most.
The vocabulary, in the order you will meet it
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| QC | Quality check. The photos the warehouse takes when your item arrives. An appearance check against the listing, not an authenticity or function test. |
| W2C | Where to cop. Means "where can I buy this", and by extension the catalogues that answer that question with links. |
| GL | Green light. Community shorthand for an item judged good enough to order after people have looked at QC photos of it. |
| RL | Red light. The opposite call: visible problems in the QC photos, do not order. |
| Haul | One consolidated parcel containing several orders, and by extension the photos people post when it arrives. |
| Consolidation | Packing several separate orders into one international parcel. The main reason the warehouse step exists at all. |
| Stock-in | The moment the warehouse logs your item as received. Several clocks start here, including storage and, with some agents, the return window. |
| Volumetric weight | Billable weight calculated from parcel size rather than actual mass. A light bulky parcel is charged as if it were heavier. |
| Declared value | The value written on the customs form. It decides whether duty applies. Understating it is a customs offence and is excluded from every insurance clause we read. |
| Line | A specific shipping service, usually named: a carrier, a route and a speed bundled together. Agents list dozens and they are not interchangeable. |
Questions
Do I need an agent at all?
For most listings on these platforms, yes. Checkout expects a Chinese payment method and a Chinese address, and plenty of sellers will not ship abroad. The other reason is consolidation: six sellers means six parcels unless somebody combines them.
How many times do I pay?
Twice. Once for the goods and domestic delivery when the order is placed, and again for international freight when you decide to ship. Any total you see before the parcel is weighed is an estimate.
Which agent is cheapest?
That question needs your destination and your parcel weight attached. In our sampled grid of 55 destination and weight combinations, eight different agents came out cheapest, and all eleven countries changed their answer somewhere between 250g and 5kg. The picker on the shipping page will answer it for your case.
Why do agents advertise no service fee?
Because it is true and because it is not where the money is. Most of them take the margin on the exchange rate instead, which does not appear as a line on your invoice. Compare the all-in figure rather than the fee.
How long can my items sit in the warehouse?
The advertised free period runs from 60 to 300 days depending on the agent. The number that matters more is the hard ceiling in the terms: one agent allows 90 days free and 180 days maximum, after which goods are treated as abandoned.
Will I pay customs duty?
Possibly, and nobody will promise you otherwise. Every set of terms we read excludes duties, taxes and fines from compensation. One agent states plainly that it cannot guarantee a parcel will not be taxed, and that its own threshold table was collected from the internet and is not authoritative.
What happens if something is missing or broken?
It depends on the clauses, and they are specific. One agent requires a claim within three days of delivery and will not accept one without an unboxing video. Record the unboxing before you cut the tape, every time.
Is it safe to click agent links from Discord or a comment?
Treat any unsolicited link as unverified regardless of who appears to have sent it. Find the address once from a source you trust, bookmark it, and start from the bookmark afterwards. This ends a whole category of risk.
Why does your site not rank the agents?
Because a ranking would have to ignore your country, your parcel and the date. There is also no reproducible public data on which agents handle problems well, so any trust score would be invented. We publish the sample, the date, and a tool that reads it for your case instead.
How current are the numbers here?
Each one carries the date it was sampled and a link to the live source. Fee figures were sampled 2026-10-02 and route figures 2026-10-07. They move: one agent's markup changed by about seven points in ten weeks.
Where to get help, and in which order
A question about your specific order: the agent, not a forum
They can see the parcel. Nobody else can. Every agent in our list runs a ticket system or a live chat, and most also run a Discord.
A question about what a clause means: the agent, in writing
Ask in the ticket system rather than live chat, so you have the answer in text with a timestamp on it.
A question about whether something is worth ordering: the community
This is what QC photo threads are genuinely good at, and it is a question agents cannot answer for you.
A question about which agent to use: the numbers
The picker for your route, the six checks before you commit.
A problem after delivery, outside the claim window
Usually nothing works. The windows are short and they are enforced. This is why the video habit matters more than any comparison on this site.
Something on this site wrong or out of date? Write to About this guide and corrections. If a figure disagrees with its own source link, that is a bug and we want to know.