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.

Updated 2020

This is a preparation for a video series on our YouTube Channel.

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

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