There are many shopping agents out there. These companies do an important job when it comes to ordering from China. They range from mom and pop stores to operations with thousands of employees. They differ in services offered and shopping services they cooperate with and how much everything costs.
In this guide we want to give you unbiased information about them, so you know what to look out for.
An Agent’s Job
Step 1: Ordering
You order from taobao.com or another chinese website through your taobao agent. Taobao is the most common choice, but most agents also have expert shipping services where you can order from any site in China, such as Yupoo, Weidian or from WeChat.
Step 2: Processing
The agent receives your item and takes quality control (QC) pictures of it. They also check the tags to make sure you get the size you ordered and check the material for any defects. You now have the option to return or exchange an item
Step 3: After-Sales
This includes services to get your parcel ready for shipping it to you, such as bubble wrapping, moisture protection, repacking or adding gift cards. You can also work together with your agent to prepare a customs declaration for you.
Step 4: International Shipping
You can choose between different shipping services and your agent mails the parcel to you, providing you with a tracking number.
Shopping without an Agent
Shopping without an agent is possible, but we strongly advise against it, unless it’s from a trusted seller who provides you with QC pictures. It might save you some money at first sight, but it’s too risky to ship without someone checking that you got the right item and showing you QC pictures.
Generally, the more expensive items get the more you should make sure that you have an agent inspecting it for you. When you do direct, international shipping you loose the option to return an item. There are many instances where sellers sent the wrong size or items got damaged. With an agent you can return them for free and then choose to buy them again or choose another seller.
Agent Choices
- Superbuy – (trust verified)
- CityGoBuy – (not trusted yet)
- Yoybuy – (not trusted)
- usgobuy – (not trusted)
These agents are ordered by size, Superbuy is the one with most results on google and yoybuy is the one with the least. The Trust rating is our own personal opinion after personal research and testing and not influenced by others.
Disclaimer: Logos are used for the editorial content of this article. We do not endorse any of the sites and brands mentioned. All links are to be expected to be affiliate links.
More agents on the world wide web
As you can imagine, there are more agents available. Some agents are just one single person, forwarding parcels, so the barrier to open a shopping agent website isn’t very high.
We understand it as part of our quest, to find new agents, better deals and new opportunities wherever we can, to present them to you, our visitors. Please take a look at these agents, that we found, that were previously largely undiscovered.
These agents are not in any particular order, and obviously, since they’re new, you have to be careful what you do. Think about your privacy, and know your options when it comes to chargebacks and claims, in case something doesn’t go well.