Buying well: the shop, the listing, the traps

Judging the shop behind the listing

You are not buying from Tomebuy. You are buying from a shop on a Chinese marketplace, and the agent is a courier with a camera. The shop is the variable that decides almost everything.

Six signals, in the order we check them:

1. How long the shop has traded, and what its seller rating looks like. A brand new shop is not automatically a bad one, but it is unproven, and freight is what you pay to find out.
2. Buyer photographs in the reviews. These are the only pictures on the page that were not styled. If every review image looks like the listing image, treat the reviews as decoration.
3. An option menu that matches the photographs. Menus padded with unrelated goods, gift boxes or odd extras mean one page is being used for several products.
4. Where the shop is. Tomebuy's own dispatch guidance is about one working day from the Pearl River Delta, three from the Yangtze Delta and up to seven elsewhere.
5. Whether questions get answered. Ask the agent to put a question to the seller before you commit. Silence is an answer.
6. The minimum order. Wholesale suppliers often sell only in batches, and Tomebuy flags this specifically for 1688.

Picking the right one once the shop is sound

Sizing is the first problem and it is bigger than it looks. Labels from different sellers do not agree with each other and often do not agree with the size chart on the same page. The chart is usually in centimetres and measured flat, so a chest figure is half the circumference. Take your own measurements from a garment you own and compare numbers to numbers.

Photographs come second. A listing with one studio shot and a long description is showing you less than a listing with six awkward photographs on a tiled floor. Look for the things a seller does not usually bother to stage: the inside of a collar, the stitching around a pocket, the underside of a sole.

Price is third, not first. An item far below the going rate for its category is telling you something, and the thing it is telling you is rarely good news.

Shopping mistakes to avoid

Things that go wrong on this route, in rough order of how often we have seen them cause trouble:

• Ordering one small item. The international leg has a floor price, so a single cheap object is poor value whatever the agent charges.
• Forgetting the restricted list before paying. Perfume, anything with a battery and anything magnetic narrow your routes. Check first.
• Leaving no order notes. The inspection compares the goods against your order. An empty order gives the inspector nothing to compare against.
• Planning around the longest storage figure. Three are published. Use the shortest.
• Letting the balance run to zero. The post-packing adjustment comes out of it, and a parcel with an unpaid difference does not move.
• Buying many identical items in one parcel. It is one of the two triggers Tomebuy names for a parcel being treated as commercial.
• Expecting an authenticity verdict. The inspection does not provide one, and the anti-counterfeiting policy means orders judged inauthentic can be refused outright.

The last look before you pay

A short list, in the order the questions arise. It takes a minute and it is the difference between a boring order and an interesting one.

Can it travel on the routes you need? Is the option chosen the one you meant, with a note for anything ambiguous? Is everything from this seller in a single order so domestic postage is charged once? Does the shipping date you have in mind fall inside sixty days? Will the finished parcel stay under ten kilograms? Have you decided how to declare it? Is there enough in the balance to cover an adjustment?

Reading a catalogue listingWhat the inspection will and will not catchWriting order notes