The payable amount consists of 3 parts:
1) Cost of item + shopping service fees
2) Shipping to You
3) Insurance (optional)
The following explanation is meant to help you to understand what are the costs involved and to estimate how much you will be spending. The actual payment amount may differ slightly due to various factors and I will issue you a payment breakdown and the payment link for the confirmed amount upon receiving your order by email.
1) Cost of item + Fees
- Consists of Item price + Domestic shipping fee within China.
- Listed prices are in RMB / yuan.
- Buying multiple items from the same store usually entitles you to combined domestic shipping discount.
- There may be additional costs for certain products there are not visible from the listing (e.g. custom-sizing fees for cosplay costumes).
- If the price looks unreasonably cheap or expensive, it is most likely not the actual price.
- I will calculate for you exactly how much you have to pay before confirming your order so don’t worry
Let’s use this listing from Taobao as an example.
299rmb is the product price and 8rmb is the domestic shipping. The domestic postage would depend on the location of the warehouse. I actually have a few different locations which I switch around in light of Covid-19 restrictions, but I wouldn’t worry about it too much as most sellers these days absorb the cost of domestic postage. Moreover, the difference in value is usually almost negligible.
(a) Open this Mastercard Currency Conversion Calculator
Input the values in the following format.
For certain atypical orders that are more complex e.g. commissioned cosplay where I have to communicate your desired design / measurements to the seller, preorders where I have to be added into some messenger group, or Xianyu orders, the service fees + platform payment fees is 15% instead of 10%.
High-value one-time transactions that are 2500 rmb and above including domestic postage will enjoy a discount on service fees. Please ask me.
(b) Open this Paypal fee calculator
Continuing with the example above, input the following values:
- Users who can use Singaporean platforms like local bank transfer and Paynow need not pay the Paypal fees.
- One-time transactions smaller than 50 rmb inclusive of domestic postage will incur an additional 3 SGD handling charge.
2) Shipping to you
This payment will only be required when your purchases are ready for shipping. This portion includes shipping fees, packaging costs and associated administrative costs (e.g. some couriers charge customs clearance fees). I do not charge additional service fees on top of these, but Paypal fees and payment platform fees (around 3%) are billable expenses.
You can choose between DHL, Fedex, UPS, EMS, registered airmail and registered SAL. Please note that there are ongoing shipping restrictions to some countries due to Covid-19 and not all shipping methods may be available to you at the time of shipping.
I no longer publish the shipping fees rates list due to fluctuating currency rates and shipping rates. However, in the case of private couriers like DHL, Fedex and UPS, my corporate rates are much more affordable than private customer rates. At the time of shipping, I will recommend the most economical and reliable shipping method to you. If you have any preferred shipping methods, please let me know in advance.
You may ask me for a shipping fee estimate when you place your order, and I will try my best to provide it. That said, please understand that most shipping methods charge by volumetric weight instead of physical weight, so it is difficult to estimate the shipping fees since I would not know the volumetric weight of your package until the items are actually packed for shipping.
3) Insurance (optional)
You can purchase in-house insurance for your package at an additional fee. You will be compensated for missing packages or damaged contents. Please note that fragile, breakable items are not covered by insurance. Please do not buy breakables if you are unable to accept the risk of them breaking during transit.
Personally, I do not think you have to worry about damages as all packages are professionally packed with safety in mind. See this page for more details). However, if you are purchasing high-value products, it may be a good idea to insure them for loss, especially if the option of a more reliable and reputable private courier like DHL is not available to you.
Please state your interest when you place your order and I will provide you with the details. It’s important that you do not wait until after the purchase to request because I work with a number of different warehouses and not all of them offer in-house insurance. If you only express your interest after your purchases have arrived at the warehouse, and said warehouse does not offer in-house insurance options, you may have to pay warehouse transfer fees.