Most comparison pages for China buying agents publish the same four fields, and almost none of them agree on what the fields mean. We spent a while pulling nineteen of them into one table, and the useful output was not the table itself -- it was the list of ways the numbers mislead.
The fee base is the whole argument
Three agents can each publish a service fee and still not be comparable, because each one measures it against a different subtotal:
- Cart total including domestic freight
- Item subtotal only
- Item subtotal plus the domestic leg
The published percentages might read 0%, 4% and 6%. Sorted by percentage the ranking looks obvious. Sorted by landed cost on one fixed cart it flips twice, because the zero-fee agent collects the difference somewhere else.
If you take one thing from this: write the fee base down before you compare any percentage.
Volumetric weight decides more than the rate
Freight is quoted per kilogram, but billed against whichever is greater -- actual weight or volumetric weight. Volumetric weight is just the three dimensions divided by a divisor, and the divisor is set per line.
40 x 30 x 25 cm = 30,000 cm3 30,000 / 5000 = 6.0 kg (harsh) 30,000 / 6000 = 5.0 kg 30,000 / 8000 = 3.75 kg (friendly) The same 5 kg parcel bills as anywhere between 3.75 kg and 6 kg depending on the line you picked. A cheap per-kilo rate on a harsh divisor loses on shoes, outerwear and anything else that arrives in a big box.
Multiply the dimensions and divide before you compare rates, not after.
The exchange rate is part of the fee
A zero-commission agent still has to earn. The usual place is the conversion rate applied at checkout. A 1.22 markup against a mid-market rate of 7.20 is roughly a fifteen to eighteen percent effective take on the converted amount, and it never appears on the fee page.
The practical check is cheap: convert your cart at the mid-market rate, compare it to the invoice total, and add the gap to the service fee. That gap is your real take rate.
What we ended up keeping
Three fields are worth standardising before anything else:
| Field | Why it decides the answer |
|---|---|
| Fee base | Changes the service fee more than the percentage does |
| Volumetric divisor | Decides the freight bill on anything bulky |
| Refund destination | Balance versus card decides whether money comes back |
We keep the dated rows open for anyone who wants to check the work: the comparison hub is at spreadsheet.zone/compare and the raw rows are at spreadsheet.zone/data. Each agent page carries a stamped review date, because these menus drift without announcement.
If you run the same exercise for a different corridor, the divisor is the field that will surprise you.
