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Background reading
Other agents by kind, and moving a haul off a silent one
The kinds of service that buy from Chinese marketplaces for overseas customers, how each kind tends to fail, and what moving an order to another service actually involves.
Other shopping agents, by kind
Pandagoo was one of many services that buy on Chinese marketplaces for overseas customers. Rather than list names that change month to month, it helps to know the kinds you will meet, because each kind fails in a different way.
- Long-running agents with their own systems. They have years of saved pages, a named company and printed fees. If one stops, there is usually a notice and a wind-down.
- White-label agents. Brands built on software rented from a provider, often sharing the same screens and wording with other brands. Pandagoo's saved text, with "platform" where the name should be, is this kind. They can appear and vanish quickly.
- Forwarders. The buyer pays the seller directly and has the goods posted to the forwarder's warehouse; the forwarder only ships. Money for the goods never passes through it.
- Marketplace shipping programmes. Some marketplaces offer their own international delivery for some countries and some goods.
Moving an order to another agent
There is no transfer between agents. Warehouse stock belongs to the agent's account, and sellers ship to the address on the order. So moving an order means one of two things.
Rebuying. With your saved listing links and IDs, place the same order through another agent. You pay again; recovery of the first payment is a separate matter with your payment provider. This works best for goods with many listings.
Forwarding. If you can buy directly from a seller who ships within China, a forwarder's warehouse address replaces the agent. Pandagoo itself ran a forwarding service, and its saved text warns that a forwarding parcel must be matched to an order quickly or it is treated as unclaimed, so register any forwarding order before the goods arrive, with whichever service you use.
Questions to ask a new agent after an outage
- Is the company name on the terms page real, and does an online search find it outside the site?
- Are fees printed as numbers, including payment handling and any service fee?
- How long is storage free, and can you ship whenever you like?
- Where do refunds go: to a balance, or back to the card or PayPal account that paid?
- Does it give you the international tracking number as soon as the parcel ships?
Write the answers down with a date. If they change later, that change is worth noticing.
