We will charge a 15% service fee for cross-platform orders, the minimum service fee is 120 CNY.
The cross-platform order is an order which cannot be placed directly through Taobao, Tmall, 1688, or Xianyu, but requires to cooperate with the seller to purchase in a specified manner, at a specified time, through a specified payment process, or through a specified channel.
Some sellers sell goods in very complicated ways, such as requiring consumers to first join a QQ group or follow the seller’s Weibo account. Then they wait for the seller to announce in the QQ group or Weibo when they can reserve the goods. Within the specified time, customers need to submit their personal information in the specified way, and then pay the deposit.
After the deposit is paid, there is a long waiting time for the final payment. These sellers sometimes delay the final payment several times, and some malicious sellers even abscond with the money. Even if honest sellers, they sometimes delay as well. So we need to check the QQ group or Weibo information many times and communicate with the seller, then keep you updated. We’re lucky if it’s postponed three times or less. Some sellers even postpone more than 10 times, which could be six months to 1 year in terms of time.
Even if the seller finalizes the balance payment and after we pay, it may still be late. Except the balance payment, some sellers will even ask for shipping charges separately. So buy 1 such order there are at least 3 payments to seller: deposit + balance + freight. And each payment needs to follow up, if miss their payment time the previous payment will be invalid and you get nothing finally. This why we charge extra service fee for such orders, you know that it takes much more time than normal Taobao orders.
Why do these sellers not mind the hassle of selling items in such a complicated way?
Quite simply, they want to keep the consumers in their hands in this way. If you just purchase an item from Taobao, you may not remember this seller. The next time you shop, maybe a competitor will steal your attention.
However, when we join a seller’s QQ group or follow his Weibo, he can send a lot of information directly to the consumer which may have nothing to do with the currently purchase, buy we have to read it in order to do so. As for the subsequent continuous postponement, it is often just a weak control of the seller’s supply chain, but we have to spend a lot of time to follow up on these orders.
Let’s see another example. A seller solicits customizations for a toy from costumes.
- Post a solicitation link on Taobao or Xianyu.
- Interested users need to join a QQ group first.
- Pay a deposit.
- The seller posts the design and asks the group members to vote.
- The design is selected and delivered to the factory for proofing.
- Factory samples are released and voted on in the QQ group to finalize the draft.
- Pay the final payment.
- Pay the freight.
- Delivery to the factory for production and shipping.
Considering our extra effort and time on such orders, we will charge 15% service fee for these cross-platform orders, and a minimum service fee of 120 CNY for each order. Thanks so much for your kind understanding!