Who writes this, who gets paid, and what neither of us can do for you
An independent guide to one operator, written by one person, funded by referral links that are disclosed on this page rather than buried in a footer nobody opens.
Corrections and complaints about anything on this site go to [email protected]. Complaints about an order go to the operator, because this site has no way to see one.
The operator
Operator reference ยท dated capture
What a buying agent is, and the three lines that make this one findable
A buying agent is a company that purchases from Chinese marketplaces on your instruction, receives what arrives into its own warehouse, and forwards it abroad when you tell it to. It manufactures nothing, stocks nothing of its own, and never owns the goods in any sense that helps you. The seller is somebody else, and that single fact shapes almost every rule on the rest of this site.
The panel beside this paragraph is the part worth noting. A registered company name, a registration number and a registered address in Hong Kong, printed rather than implied. All three can be checked against a public register by anyone who cares to spend ten minutes on it.
That matters more than it sounds. A good deal of this industry runs through accounts rather than companies, and an account cannot be written to, invoiced or held to anything. A registration does not promise good service, because it is a fact about paperwork and nothing else. What it tells you is who a disagreement would be with, which is the question people only think to ask once they already have one.
Seven things people want, and which of us can actually do them
The division is sharper than most sites in this category admit, so it is worth setting out as a table rather than as a disclaimer. Read the middle column as the limit of what any amount of goodwill here can achieve.
| What you are trying to do | This site | Only the operator |
|---|---|---|
| Find something and see what it costs | Points you at the catalogue and the aisle it sits in | Prices it, because only it can read the live listing |
| Place an order | Cannot. There is no basket anywhere on this site | Takes the instruction and takes the payment |
| Look at the inspection photographs | Explains what they cover and when it is worth looking | Holds them, attached to the item row inside your account |
| Change or cancel something | Tells you what is still possible at the stage you are at | Decides, and at some stages has to ask a seller first |
| Find out where a parcel has got to | Cannot look anything up at all | Has the tracking, the weight and the route |
| Argue about a charge | Can tell you which notice the rule is written in | Is the party the argument is with |
| Correct a mistake on this page | Yes, at the address below, usually the same day | Has nothing to do with it |
A test worth applying to any site of this kind, including this one. If it cannot take your money, it also cannot lose your parcel, and neither of those is a virtue. It only means the risk sits somewhere else, and knowing where is the useful part.
Disclosure
One sentence that cannot be checked, sitting on top of three that can
The company panel opens with a claim about itself. It is worth quoting, not because it is remarkable, but because the contrast with what follows it teaches the only durable skill in this hobby.
OOTDBUY is a global leader in proxy shopping services from China
No register anywhere certifies a global leader. The claim can be neither confirmed nor disproved, which means it carries no information, and it is best read as the sort of sentence every company in every industry writes about itself. Directly underneath it sit a company name, a registration number and an address. Those are checkable in an afternoon. When you are weighing up any operator in this category, skip the adjectives and read the small print they are sitting on.
The same standard applies here, so: this site is independent of the operator and is run by one editor. It is a partner site. Every link out of it identifies this site as the referrer, and registering or ordering through one of them may earn a commission, which costs you nothing extra and is how the writing is paid for. No page here has been bought, and nothing on it has been softened by an arrangement.
The test of that is not a promise. It is the section naming four situations where you should use someone else, which a site paid for placements would not publish, and the log of four contradictions found inside the operator notices, which it would not publish either.
The four questions worth asking of any site like this one
What was read and when it was read is the update log. What the operator publishes and where each rule lives is linked from every page that quotes one.
Are you the operator?
No. Different company, different country, no access to your account and no way to take a payment from you. If any sentence on this site reads as though it will handle something on your behalf, that is a fault in the writing and the address below takes reports of it.
Who actually writes it?
One editor, working through the operator notices one at a time. Not a rotating team and not a content mill. Every page carries the same address, which is the whole point of putting it there: a correction reaches a person rather than a queue.
How does it pay for itself?
Through the links out to the operator, which identify this site as the referrer. Registering or ordering through one may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. Nothing here has ever been paid for as a placement, and the section naming four situations where you should use someone else is on the choosing page to be held against that claim.
Why will you not tell me which agent is the best one?
Because saying so honestly would mean measuring several of them, and this site has measured one. What it has done is read that one set of published rules closely and report what is in them, including the four places where they contradict each other. A ranking without measurements is an opinion with a table drawn around it.