Costs
Fees, insurance and the exchange rate
Four things add up to what a parcel costs, and the one nobody publishes is often the largest. Figures below are quoted from the official pages with the month they were checked.
Components
What the total is actually made of
A finished parcel costs the item, the domestic leg inside China, the international leg, and whatever your own customs decides. Only the first two are predictable at order time.
The international leg is where the surprises live, and it is driven by weight rather than price. That weight might not be the weight on your scales, which is the next section. Customs at your end is outside everyone's control: Basetao clears the China side and states that duty and clearance at the destination are the recipient's.
There is also a small per-parcel fee to create a forwarding parcel, in the region of a couple of yuan, which is mentioned on the parcel submission page rather than anywhere you would look for pricing. It is not a meaningful cost; it is mentioned because people notice it and assume something is wrong.
- DEWhich customs is whose
Basetao handles clearance on the China side. Duty and clearance at the destination are the recipient's.
Customs and tax, checked October 2026 Paraphrased from the customs and tax page.
Weight
When a light parcel is billed as a heavy one
This is the single most common reason a shipping quote comes back higher than expected, and it has nothing to do with the agent.
Carriers charge for the space a parcel occupies as well as its mass. The volumetric figure is length by width by height in centimetres divided by 5000, and DHL, FedEx and Aramex all bill on whichever number is larger. A down jacket weighing a kilo can occupy the space of four, and you pay for four.
Two things follow. Compressible items are worth compressing, which is part of what the remove-packaging option is for. And a parcel that is mostly air is the wrong parcel to send by express line at all; the published advice is to keep bulky goods away from those three carriers.
- CAHow volumetric weight is calculated
multiply the length (in centimeters) by the width (in centimeters) by the height (in centimeters), and then divide the result by 5000
Shipping cost calculator, checked October 2026
The calculator is public and needs no account. It takes a declared value, a weight and a destination, and it has tick boxes for the eight commodity attributes that change a quote.
Insurance
What each insurance level pays, and when
Insurance is offered at 2% and 4% of declared parcel value, and the payout depends on both the level and what went wrong. The table is Basetao's own, reproduced here because the shape of it is the interesting part.
| What happened | No insurance | Basic, 2% | Full, 4% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broken item | none | 100% | 100% |
| Lost parcel | none | 33% | 100% |
| Customs issue (China) | none | 50% | 100% |
| Customs issue (worldwide) | none | 33% | 100% |
| Returning fee | none | 33% | 100% |
Read the payout conditions for each cause of loss or damage, the excluded goods and the maximum covered value. Choose protection according to those terms, not an assumption that a particular carrier will lose or break a parcel.
Two limits worth knowing before you rely on this
Electronics are inspected from the outside only, and the inspection page states that functional problems are therefore not covered by insurance at all. Separately, the insurance applies to parcels up to a stated maximum declared value, so a single high-value item may sit outside the scheme entirely. Both of those are on the official pages rather than in the checkout flow.
The unpublished one
The exchange rate, and how to measure it yourself
Here is the gap in the published figures, and it is the one that usually costs the most.
Everything on the platform is priced in Chinese yuan, you pay in your own currency, and the rate used for that conversion is not published anywhere on the site. Not on the about page, not in the cost calculator, not in the terms. Agents in this market commonly apply a margin on the interbank rate, and on an order of any size that margin can exceed every explicit fee combined.
Since it cannot be looked up, it has to be measured. It takes one small order:
- Note the item price in yuan on the listing.
- Note the interbank rate for that day from any independent source, before you pay.
- Pay, and note what your card or account was actually charged in your own currency.
- Divide. The difference between that and the interbank rate is the margin, expressed as a percentage.
Do it once and you have a number for this agent that no guide can give you, including this one. Do it on two agents and you have a comparison that actually means something, which is more than any review score will tell you.
Why this page does not simply state a figure
Third parties publish measured margins for various agents, and those measurements drift with the date, the payment method and the currency. Quoting one here as though it were Basetao's published rate would turn somebody else's single measurement into a fact about your order. The method above is reproducible. A borrowed number is not.
Paying
The ten payment methods, and how to pick one
Ten payment methods are listed on the about page, which is wider than most agents offer and includes several European bank-transfer systems that often get skipped.
| Method |
|---|
| foreign credit cards |
| PayPal |
| Sofort |
| Giropay |
| WesternUnion |
| eNETS |
| Bancontact |
| Multibanco |
| Crypto |
| Alipay |
Compare the checkout fee, conversion rate, refund destination and processing conditions for each payment method available to your account. Keep the payment receipt and use the provider’s published dispute process when applicable.
