What a catalogue price becomes once it is an order
Two stages, five components in the second one, and a list of optional services you control completely. All amounts below were read from official pages on 10 October 2026.
Stage one
Stage one: getting the item into the warehouse
Three parts. The seller's price, which the agent pays as listed and adds nothing to. The seller's domestic courier fee to the warehouse, which the agent also pays through at cost and which some shops waive. Then a purchasing service fee that depends entirely on where the item came from.
| Where the item is bought | Purchasing service fee |
|---|---|
| Taobao, Tmall, JD.com, 1688 | no service fee |
| Xianyu, Paipai, Zhuanzhuan | flat CN¥20 per item |
| Kongfz and other second-hand platforms | 10% of item value, minimum CN¥10, maximum CN¥20 |
| Platforms not on the list | 10% of item value, minimum CN¥10, maximum CN¥20 |
| Shipping Expert, for pre-sales and limited editions | 10% of item value, minimum CN¥20, maximum CN¥300 |
| Xiaohongshu, Pinduoduo, Dewu, Douyin, Bilibili | may carry extra fees or purchase restrictions, confirmed on the order before buying |
The mainstream platforms carry no service fee at all, which is worth sitting with for a moment: on a Taobao order the agent earns nothing at this stage. The money arrives later, in shipping and in optional services, which is also why the shipping line you pick matters more to your total than the service fee ever will.
The operator's own worked example on that page: an item at one hundred yuan with ten yuan of domestic shipping, no service fee, and three yuan of detail photos, comes to one hundred and thirteen yuan for this stage.
Stage two
Stage two: five components, none of them about the item
When you submit the parcel, the bill is rebuilt from scratch: a first-weight charge, an additional-weight charge for every further unit, a customs clearance fee, a fuel surcharge expressed as a percentage, and an operation fee for handling the parcel.
The operator's published example makes the shape clear. A one-kilogram parcel on the Hong Kong UPS economy tax-free line came to four hundred and twenty-eight yuan: three hundred and twenty for the first half kilo, fifty for the next half, and thirty-eight in customs clearance, with fuel and operation both at zero.
Consolidating several items into one parcel is free, and it is usually the single biggest lever you have, because the first-weight charge is paid once per parcel rather than once per item.
Add-ons
Optional services, and the guarantee attached to all of them
This is the part of the bill you decide. Prices as published on 10 October 2026:
| Service | Published price | What it adds | Opens the packaging | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard inspection | free | Prohibited-goods screen, then style, quantity, colour, size and model, plus damage and obvious defects. Three photos. | no, sealed items stay sealed | helpId=1172 |
| Standard photos | free | Three angles: front, back, and the side or logo. Completed within 24 hours of arrival. | no | helpId=1406 |
| Detailed inspection | CN¥5.50 per item | Linings, pockets and seams; the zip is tried by hand; sleeve and leg lengths compared; accessories counted; a shelf life under one month is flagged. | yes, by default | helpId=1390 |
| Detailed photo | CN¥2.00 per photo, half price from the third | One chosen angle or detail per photo. Measurements are taken with a wooden rule, a soft tape or a steel tape, and you can say which. | yes, by default | helpId=1112 |
| Re-inspection | CN¥6.00 per item | The standard checks again after the item is already in storage, with three fresh photos. | yes | helpId=1447 |
| Power-on test for 3C and appliances | CN¥12.00 per item | The device is switched on, indicator lights and the on/off cycle are checked, and one photo is sent by message and email. No functional testing beyond that. | yes | helpId=1392 |
| Model try-on photos | CN¥30.00 per item | A live model matched as closely as possible to the height, weight and shoe size you give, photographed front, back, left and right. Not offered for swimwear, intimates or very revealing clothing. | yes | helpId=1393 |
| Product video | CN¥20.00 per item | A 360-degree video of the item. | yes | helpId=1446 |
Every add-on above carries the same promise: if Superbuy misses its own window it credits ten times what you paid to your account balance, non-withdrawable, issued the following Tuesday. Delays caused by something waiting on your confirmation, by risk-control review, by force majeure, by public holidays or by a site-wide promotion are excluded.
Ten times the fee is a small amount of money on a two-yuan photo, and that is rather the point: it is a promise about turnaround, not a meaningful insurance policy. Treat it as a signal that the twenty-four hour window is taken seriously internally, not as compensation worth chasing.
What closes which gap, category by category, is the check on the inspection page.
Currency, and the quiet cost of changing it
Everything above is quoted in yuan because that is the currency the operator bills in. What you actually pay depends on how your money becomes yuan, and that conversion is where agents in general earn margin that never appears on a price list.
The practical habit is to compare the yuan total against your bank statement once, after a first order, and work out your own effective rate. One measurement of your own beats any published rate, because it includes your card issuer, the payment route and any cross-border fee in a single number.
Superbuy's own help centre has a short article on cross-border transaction fees and lists the payment methods it accepts, which is the right place to check before assuming a card will work.
How other shopping agents charge, and what is worth comparing
Other shopping agents monetise in the same four places: a percentage on the item, the currency conversion, the shipping margin, and optional services. A house that charges nothing in the first place is earning somewhere in the other three, and that is not a criticism, it is arithmetic.
So the comparison worth making is never service fee against service fee. Price the same basket end to end: identical items, identical destination, identical line class, and the same inspection choices. Then compare the number your bank shows.
This site does not rank agents, and will not. Ranking requires evidence that is reproducible, and for service quality, speed and dispute handling there is no public dataset worth the name. What can be checked, and is checked here, is what a given operator publishes and whether its own pages agree with each other.
Three places where the operator's own numbers disagree
Listing these is not a gotcha. Any operation this size runs several pages written at different times, and knowing where they diverge is what stops you from feeling misled later.
First, the detail photo. The help centre prices it at two yuan per photo with half price from the third; the pricing page's worked example bills detailed photos at three yuan. Second, the currency: the help centre prices add-ons in yuan, while the pricing page prices some of the same family in dollars, so switching packaging appears as thirty-three cents rather than a yuan figure. Third, the clocks: both sources agree on ninety free days and a hundred and eighty maximum, but only the help centre mentions the sixty-day clock for parcels that arrive without an order.
Where sources disagree, this site shows both and names them. Quietly picking the friendlier number would make the page tidier and the reader worse off.
