Table of contents
42agent helps you to buy good quality products from China and only charges you for the services you can afford. You can find out all the costs of the whole shopping process on our website before you pay and we guarantee you 100% that there are no hidden costs. The table below shows the charges for our three basic services. A detailed description of the fees for each service is included at the end of the table.
| 42agent service | Service fee | Minimum service fee |
| Shop For Me | 6-12% of items costs + domestic shipping fee | 30 CNY |
| Ship For Me | 15 CNY/KG | 30 CNY |
| Dropshipping | No surcharges (Only based on Shop/Ship For Me service fee) | – |
Shop For Me service fee
Shop For Me includes two payments. The first payment includes 3 fees: the cost of the items, the domestic shipping of the items, and the service fee of 42agent. The service fee is 8% of the item cost plus the domestic shipping cost, minimum service charge is 30 CNY (Learn more from example).
| Service type | Service fee rate | Minimum service fee |
| 42agent membership | 8% | 30 CNY |
| 42agent VIP/SVIP | 6% – 7% | 30 CNY |
| Xianyu orders | 12% | 30 CNY |
| Cross-Platform orders | 15% | 120 CNY |
| Shop For Me Pro | 20% | 200 CNY |
42agent aims to help all customer buy what they want and we can do as your request to make you have a happy shopping experience. Sometimes customers have complex requirements and it may take a long time to process, for such situation we also have some value-added services for a fee:
- Limited to midnight purchases
- Limited independent ID purchase
- Additional service fee for virtual products
- Repeatedly merging and splitting orders
- Bulk removal of packaging materials or special packing needs
- Value-added service fee for product detail photos
Shop For Me Pro
In general, our Shop For Me service is only available for customers to purchase standardized items, such as items with limited options of color, size, style, etc. Therefore, we charge about 8% for this service. Shop For Me Pro is mainly for non-standardized products that require a lot of communication.
For certain custom items or items that require a lot of communication, you can choose our Shop For Me Pro service and we will have a more professional buying manager at your service. The service rate for Shop For Me Pro is 20% of the item price + domestic shipping, with a minimum service fee of 200 CNY per order.
What orders or products are eligible for Shop For Me Pro service?
- If you have more than 5 items with more than 3 questions per item.
- If your order contains only a small number of items but requires more than 8 communications with a single seller, the entire order will also be charged at Shop For Me Pro rates – you can save on service fees by pulling out items that require a lot of communication and placing them in a separate order.
Some orders may not anticipate the amount of communication needed in advance, so we may need to add an additional service fee to the international shipping cost – no doubt you will be informed of the cost in advance.
Some customers may add similar items from multiple sellers’ stores as a comparison and remove duplicate items once we have confirmed the item details. Please understand that even Shop For Me Pro does not offer a similar service at this time, due to our limited manpower and time.
Limited to midnight purchases
42agent’s working hours are 9:00AM-18:00PM, from Monday to Sunday. Some Taobao sellers may specify transaction time for marketing purposes, usually very late in the evening, such as 23:00 or 24:00 at midnight. If their specified transaction time falls outside of our working hours, you will be required to pay an additional service fee. The detailed statement are as follows.
| Out-of-hours purchases | Value-added services fee |
| 18:00 – 20:00 | Free of charge |
| 20:00 – 21:30 | 100 CNY / independent ID |
| 21:30 – 00:10 | 200 CNY / independent ID |
| Later than 00:10 | Not supported |
What does independent ID mean?
It means a single and independent Taobao account. For some marketing purposes, sellers may limit the number of purchases of a single Taobao ID. For example, if you want to buy 10 items which can only be purchased after 20:00, and the seller limits each ID to 2 items, then we need to use 5 Taobao accounts to buy it. As a result, you will need to pay 5 x 100 = 500 CNY or 5 x 200 = 1,000 CNY for additional service, depending on the specific Transaction time.
However, we only charge an additional service fee if the transaction is successful. For example, if you need us to purchase a rush order which is only sold at 24:00, and if we fail to get it successfully, then you do not need to pay anything extra. If we get it successfully, then you need to pay the additional commission. If you choose to return the item after a successful purchase, we will not refund the additional service fee.
Limited independent ID purchase
Some platforms, for marketing purposes, require different mobile phone numbers, IDs, etc. when purchasing products.
If the platform requires to provide photo of Identity Card or number, you can provide it to us and we will upload it to the buying platform.
If you need to use our photo of Identity Card and number, service fee of 100 CNY will be charged for each purchase. For example, if you purchase 5 items from Withfans and send them to 2 customers and you need 2 photo IDs and numbers, there will be an additional service fee of 200 CNY.
If the platform limits purchases to one mobile phone number, we will charge an additional service fee of 60 CNY for each mobile phone number provided. For example, if you want to purchase 20 X’s from OWhat and the platform limits the number of purchases to 5 per ID, we will need to provide you with 4 mobile phone numbers, thus charging an additional service fee of 60 x 4 = 240 CNY.
Value-added services fee for virtual products
Virtual products have some special characteristics and we present the following common risks that you should be aware of before purchasing.
- Sellers usually do not support after-sales service, so we cannot guarantee the usability of virtual products.
- If you purchase a software product, there is a risk that it may not be installed or may not work after installation. Different software may be limited by hardware (e.g., different CPU architectures), operating system (e.g., Windows, Mac, Linux or certain versions of Windows), system configuration (e.g., some software depends on other software or libraries to function properly), language, etc.
- Some virtual products may not be available for download or may take too long to download. For example, it may take you 20 minutes to download a 20MB file from China across the Pacific Ocean, but you may not be able to download a 1G file in an acceptable amount of time.
To enhance the customer experience, 42agent offers some value-added services to help customers make better use of the virtual product. Please note, however, that 42agent is not a professional digital agency and we work with third-party companies to provide limited assistance. We do not promise to solve all your data transfer, installation and usage problems.
Software installation value-added services fee: 300 CNY/hour. Through TeamViewer Remote Installation, we can attempt to install the software for you.
File transfer value-added services fee. Sellers usually upload large files to Baidu Cloud Drive, we will download and re-upload them to Dropbox and share a Dropbox download link with you that is valid for 7 days.
| File size | Value-added services fee |
| < 200 M | Free of charge |
| < 1 G | 200 CNY |
| < 20 G | 150 CNY/G |
| < 100 G | 120 CNY/G |
| > 100 G | 100 CNY/G |
Note that the above file sizes are calculated based on the total file size of all virtual products in an order. For example, if an order contains 30 virtual products and each file is 100 M, then the file transfer service fee is 150 CNY * 3 = 450 CNY based on 3G.
Friendly reminder:
- Many digital contents are protected by law, you should use the digital contents legally with the authorization of the copyright owner. 42agent only helps you to buy products from Taobao, after getting the digital contents, you may need to contact the copyright owner further to get the authorization.
- 42agent only provides value-added services such as software installation and file transfer, and does not provide any software cracking services. For paid software, please contact the copyright holder to purchase a license after the trial period has expired.
Repeatedly combine, merge and split orders
After combine orders is done, the customer requires to cancel the combine and repack the items. We can do for you for free for 2 times if it is less than 10 items and within 10 KG. For the 3rd time repacking the items:
| Parcel weight | Value-added services fee |
| < 10 KG | 50 CNY |
| 10-30 KG | 100 CNY |
| > 30 KG | 200 CNY |
After combine orders is done, the customer requires to pick up specified items: additional service fee of 5 CNY per item.
Bulk removal of packaging materials or special packing needs
Value-added services fee for postcards, albums orders:
- Customer requires to move poster out from the original tube and put more posters to same tube: additional service fee of 2 CNY per each item.
- Customer requires to open albums to take out only the cards inside: additional service fee of 2 CNY per item.
Why is there an extra charge?
The posters usually come in separately tubes, when customers requires to fold posters, we need to open each tube one by one and then fold them one by one. The similar to albums, when customers require to only keep photo cards inside album, we need to open them one by one and take out all the photo cards one by one. These requirements add some extra work and take some time to proceed, so extra service fee will be charged.
Value-added service fee for product detail photos
Customer requires for detail pictures of each item (except the picture we uploaded). We don’t charge extra service fee if items within 3. However, if more than 3 items we will charge value-added services fee of 5 CNY per item.
Ship For Me service fee
The service fee for Ship For Me is 15 CNY/KG, minimum service charge is 30 CNY.
Dropshipping service fee
Dropshipping is essentially a value-added service based on Shop For Me and Ship For Me. Dropshipping service is currently offered free of charge to overseas retailers. 😛
Order pricing example
For your better understanding of how your Shop For Me order is charged in detail, the following example may help.
A client from France places an order with us, and he pay in USD via PayPal. Let us assume items cost: 450 CNY, domestic delivery fee: 50 CNY, service fee will be:
(450 + 50) * 0.08 = 40 CNY
The first payment in USD will be based on the current exchange rate of 1 CNY = 0.153 USD (The exchange rate is always changing, here we assume 1 CNY = 0.153 USD):
450 + 50 + 40 = 540 CNY / 82.62 USD
If pay via PayPal, we’ll add PayPal fee of 4.4% + 0.3 USD which will be charged by PayPal. The amount you actually pay will be:
82.62 * 1.044 + 0.3 = 86.56 USD
If the order is paid via other payment methods, there will be no PayPal fee, so actually you pay 540 CNY / 82.62 USD.
For international shipping fee, which is the second payment of an order. Let’s suppose weight of his package: 2000G, shipping rate for the first 500G to France by EMS is 280 CNY, for the additional 500G is 75 CNY. So, the standard EMS fee is 505 CNY.
But we offer big discount on EMS fee with 40% off when parcel weighs less than 5000g, and 45% discount off when parcel weighs over 5000g. So the final discounted EMS fee is only 303 CNY / 46.36 USD. You can refer to our online shipping calculator.
Discount EMS fee 303 CNY / 46.36 USD
If you pay via PayPal, we’ll add 4.4% + 0.3 USD which will be charged by PayPal, the amount you actually pay will be:
46.36 * 1.044 + 0.3 = 48.7 USD
If the order is paid via other payment methods, there will be no PayPal fee, so actually you pay 303 CNY / 46.36 USD.
If you want to buy insurance, the additional fee will be:
(540 + 303) * 0.05 = 42.15 CNY / 6.45 USD (this is optional)
If pay via PayPal, insurance fee will be 7.03 USD.
Total cost
Total cost via PayPal without insurance fee will be 86.56 + 48.7= 135.26 USD.
Total cost via PayPal with insurance fee will be 86.56 + 48.7 + 7.03 = 142.29 USD.
Total cost via other payment methods without insurance fee will be 82.62 + 46.36 = 128.98 USD.
Total cost via other payment methods with insurance fee will be 82.62 + 46.36 + 6.45 = 135.43 USD.