Hangzhou one-offs
Taobao sells single units from millions of independent sellers and consolidates the domestic leg per order rather than per seller, which makes it the default source for one-off items. Domestic freight from a Hangzhou seller to the consolidation warehouse ran at ¥10.00 for a 1.2 kg parcel in our record, roughly £1.10 at the rate we applied, and the seller dispatched in 2 to 3 days.
1. Check that the listing shows a single-unit price rather than a tiered wholesale figure. 2. Note the seller location, because a Hangzhou seller and a Guangzhou seller put your parcel on two different domestic lanes. 3. Confirm the dispatch window before paying, since a listing released on a 7-day advance notice adds a week to every later stage.
Enter the packed weight and the carton dimensions of every Hangzhou single before the second-leg payment, then run the two-figure check the desk uses. 1. Multiply length, width and height in centimetres, divide by 5000, 6000 or 8000, and round the result up to the next 0.5 kg. 2. Bill whichever figure is larger, that volumetric result or the scale reading. A 40 x 30 x 20 cm carton holds 24,000 cubic centimetres, which is 4.0 kg volumetric on a 6000 divisor, so a 2.6 kg scale reading still pays as 4.0 kg, and our own 3.8 kg line worked out at £5.26 per kilogram from £20.00 of freight (Recorded). First weight opens at £8.40, and inside the 12 rate re-checks we ran between 2026-08-01 and 2026-10-02, four same-route first-weight figures moved, the largest by +£1.60 (Recorded). Speed separates the lines less than weight does: across 24 UK parcels in the 2026-08-01 to 2026-09-30 window, route medians ran from 8 days on a route carrying 4 parcels to 19 days on a route carrying 3 (Recorded). One Hangzhou single tagged at £120 settled at £108.34 for us, from £84.60 goods, £20.00 freight, £6.13 service fee and £3.50 packaging (Recorded), so the tag was never the number that left the account. Ask for the divisor on the packing note; three of those 12 re-checks carried none (Not verified).
Weidian dispersed
Weidian listings come from individual sellers who each ship separately, so three items from three sellers means three domestic parcels and three intake scans. Domestic freight on three separate 0.4 kg parcels ran ¥8.00 each in our record, ¥24.00 in total against ¥10.00 for the same weight consolidated on one Taobao order, and dispatch ran 3 to 5 days per seller.
1. Group your items by seller before you place anything, so you know how many domestic parcels you are creating. 2. Add the per-parcel freight rather than the per-kilogram rate, because small parcels are priced per parcel. 3. Expect the intake scans to arrive on three different days, which pushes the free storage deadline out for the last one rather than the first.
Log the inbound scan date of every Weidian parcel the moment it appears, because the free storage window starts there and not at the seller's dispatch note. Scattered sellers rarely land together: of the 24 items we tracked across the window, 8 sat past the free window for between 1 and 14 days, and the longest single storage line came to roughly £2.80 at a Community-reported £0.20 per item per day, a daily rate we have not checked ourselves (Community-reported). If a parcel is still unsent while its siblings are already scanned, book consolidation against the slowest expected parcel rather than the fastest one that has arrived. Credit notes behave the same way: 14 events inside the window, 9 of them landing within 3 days and the rest taking up to 11 days (Recorded), so do not fund a top-up from a credit that has not appeared. Two voucher codes were refused during the window with no reason given, and we still cannot explain either refusal (Not verified). For inspection, name the item, the size, the colour and the exact area to re-photograph: six re-shoots carrying that level of detail came back in 6 hours, while vague requests took 2 days (Recorded). Across 85 curated entries, 23 flags were raised and 11 of them were label problems (Recorded), which is the first thing to confirm when a Weidian parcel arrives in an unbranded bag.
1688 batches
The 1688 channel is built for bulk, so a single-unit order is often refused or priced at a sample rate. On a 5-item order of 3.2 kg the domestic freight came to ¥18.00, which is cheaper per kilogram than Taobao at ¥8.33 per kilogram against ¥8.33 on the smaller parcel, but the goods value crossed the UK £135 threshold and the import process changed with it.
1. Ask the seller whether a single unit is available before building a basket around the listing. 2. Compute the goods value in pounds before you add freight, because the £135 line is measured on goods rather than on the delivered total. 3. If the basket crosses the line, budget for import handling on top of the freight figure rather than inside it.
Read the tier boundary above the packed weight before a 1688 bulk consignment leaves the warehouse, because the six-line table runs from 0.5 kg to 10 kg across nine steps with boundaries at 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and 10 kg. 1. Weigh the packed carton and round the chargeable figure up to the next 0.5 kg. 2. Add filler only where the table is flat: we recorded 8 kg and 8.5 kg both at £43.60, and 10 kg and 11.5 kg both at £54.60 (Recorded), so a carton reading 8.1 kg can reach 8.5 kg without a higher freight line. Cost per kilogram falls as the step rises: £43.60 spread across 8.5 kg is £5.13 per kilogram, against £5.26 on the 3.8 kg line we noted earlier (Recorded). First weight is £8.40, and the mid-table figures we re-checked are £13.20 at 2 kg, £19.60 at 3 kg, £26.40 at 3.8 kg, £31.80 at 5.1 kg and £34.80 at 6 kg (Recorded); anything at 14 kg is quoted on the same step structure rather than a separate tariff (Recorded). The same 3.8 kg chargeable weight therefore shows two numbers, £26.40 in the table and £20.00 on our own order record (Recorded), and that £6.40 spread is still unreconciled, so we treat the table figure as the planning number and mark the gap Not verified.
Reconcile every 1688 settlement line against its fee base before the goods are released, because small columns are where bulk costing drifts. Our £120 consignment carried a £6.13 service fee, described as 6% of goods plus domestic freight; 6% of the recorded lines implies a base near £102.17, roughly £17.57 above the £84.60 of goods, and the two domestic receipts on the same movement, ¥12 and ¥8, are far too small to account for that difference (Recorded lines, Not verified gap). 1. List goods, service fee, packaging, freight and each domestic leg as separate rows. 2. Rebuild the 6% base from those rows before paying, and hold the parcel if the rebuild misses by more than a pound. Packaging shows as £3.50 on a single consignment in our records, so we treat it as a per-parcel line rather than a per-item one (Not verified beyond that order). Volume, not the headline tag, decides the rest: a £210 bulk lot settled at £167.93 for us, about 20% under the tag (Recorded), while a £40 item settled at £48.75, about 21.9% over it (Recorded). If you are weighing a split, price both shapes first: our table puts 8 kg at £43.60 and 6 kg at £34.80 (Recorded), so two parcels only win when a single 14 kg quote lands above £78.40, and that threshold is worth agreeing in writing before the warehouse seals anything.
Guangzhou pooled
Sellers on all three platforms ship from Guangzhou, and when they do the domestic leg is identical whichever platform you used. A 1.8 kg parcel from a Guangzhou seller cost ¥12.00 to the warehouse in our record, took 2 to 3 days, and appeared on our own £120 order record as £1.30 of the £84.60 total.
1. Read the seller location before the platform name, because the platform does not decide the lane. 2. Use one domestic freight figure per parcel rather than per platform. 3. Where two sellers sit in the same city, expect their parcels to arrive within a day of each other and plan one combined release.
Split a Guangzhou shared carton by chargeable weight rather than by item count, and settle the divisor before the box is sealed. Measure the assembled box, multiply length by width by height, divide by the divisor the line declares, then compare that figure with the total scale weight and bill the larger one, rounded up to the next 0.5 kg at parcel level. A 50 x 40 x 30 cm shared box holds 60,000 cubic centimetres, which reads 12.0 kg on a 5000 divisor, 10.0 kg on 6000 and 7.5 kg on 8000, and our recorded anchors of £43.60 at 8 kg and £54.60 at 10 kg (Recorded) show how far one divisor choice moves the bill. Three of the 12 rate re-checks between 2026-08-01 and 2026-10-02 carried no divisor at all (Not verified), which is why we now ask for it on the packing note rather than in a chat message. Inspection detail matters more inside a shared box: of 23 flags raised across 85 curated entries, 6 concerned edges or borders, 5 of those 6 were lighting artefacts, and the remaining flags split 4 hardware and 2 stitching (Recorded). If a shared parcel holds one release decision, an apparent border mark can hold back every item inside it until a re-shoot settles the question, which is our reading of the sequence rather than a published rule.
£60 apiece
Put one £60.00 basket through all three sources with the same 1.4 kg weight. Taobao: £60.00 goods, £1.20 domestic, £3.67 service fee at 6%, £14.90 freight, a total of £79.77. Weidian at the same goods value: £3.60 domestic across three parcels, £3.82 service fee, £14.90 freight, a total of £82.32. The £2.55 gap comes entirely from the domestic leg.
1688 changes shape rather than size. A 5-item lot at £150.00 goods pays the same 6% service fee at £9.00 and the same freight at £14.90 for the weight, but crosses the £135 goods line, so the £60.00 basket and the £150.00 basket are not two sizes of the same transaction.
1. Compute the service fee on goods plus domestic freight, not on goods alone. 2. Add the domestic legs as separate rows, because we have never seen them merge into one row on a multi-seller order. 3. Compare the totals only after the weight and the goods value are both fixed, since changing either one moves the answer more than the platform does.
The data point behind this note
On our £120 order record, a 1.8 kg parcel from a Guangzhou seller cost ¥12.00 of domestic freight, about £1.30 of the £84.60 goods-and-service total, while the same weight split across three Weidian sellers paid the per-parcel fee three times (Recorded).
Rates last checked 2026-10-02. Where a figure is community-reported we say so; where we could not verify it, we write Not verified instead of estimating.