Watch first
The OOTDBuy Spreadsheet guide, starting with the official walkthrough
OOTDBUY films the whole flow itself, subtitles included. It runs two and a half minutes and covers registering, finding an item, both payments, and tracking. Everything written below this video expands on what the video shows, with the official page named each time a number appears.
The service
What is OOTDBUY?
OOTDBUY is a shopping agent for Chinese marketplaces. It is not a shop. It holds no stock, sets no prices and writes none of the listings. What it sells is the work in between: buying from a domestic seller who will not deal with you directly, receiving the goods, checking them, holding them, and putting them on a plane.
The practical consequence is that every complaint about an item belongs to the seller, and every complaint about a parcel belongs to the agent or the courier. Knowing which of those you are dealing with saves a lot of time when something goes wrong.
The company describes itself as a one-stop purchasing service covering search, purchasing, payment, inspection, international transport and door-to-door delivery, with direct access to manufacturers at wholesale prices.
Description condensed from the official About OOTDBUY page. Checked 2026-08-03.
Which marketplaces it reaches
OOTDBUY takes links from Taobao, Weidian and 1688. Its own tutorial also walks through Tmall and JD so that you can judge where a listing came from before you buy it.
The difference between those marketplaces matters more than beginners expect. Tmall keeps a high bar for opening a store and prices accordingly. Taobao is where individual sellers live, which is where the range and the risk both come from. 1688 is the wholesale layer, cheaper per unit but built for people buying several of something. Community finds lean heavily on Taobao and Weidian.
Marketplace notes summarised from the official OOTDBUY tutorial. Checked 2026-08-03.
The operator
Who you are actually dealing with
Anything with your money in it deserves a name and an address. OOTDBUY publishes both.
| Detail | As published by OOTDBUY |
|---|---|
| Operating company | GLOBAL BUYPAL UK TECHNOLOGY LIMITED |
| Registered number | 16688410 |
| Registered address | 7 Copperfield Road, Coventry, West Midlands, England, United Kingdom, CV2 4AQ |
| Support email | [email protected] |
| Support hours | 09:00 to 21:30, UTC+8 |
| Community | Official Discord invite |
| Stated reach | Regions in 45 countries, with offices on several continents |
Taken from the official About OOTDBUY page and the site footer. Checked 2026-08-03.
Who is actually holding your money
Anything with your money in it deserves a name you can look up. OOTDBUY publishes the operating company, GLOBAL BUYPAL UK TECHNOLOGY LIMITED, with a UK registration number and a Coventry address. The same details appear on the contact page, which makes it the most checkable claim on the site.
Official disclosure
Scroll the panel sideways to read it at full size.
What the service actually gives you
Four things a buying agent does that you cannot do from outside China. None of these is a promise about price, and none of them is unique to OOTDBUY, but all four are documented.
It buys where you cannot
Domestic sellers who take no foreign cards and ship to no foreign addresses become reachable, because a person inside China places the order.
It looks before it ships
Every parcel is opened for prohibited items and checked against your order, then photographed so you can see what turned up.
It holds your things
Ninety days of free storage on a normal parcel, counted from the moment the order shows as received.
It merges parcels
Several sellers become one box, which is where most of the freight saving on a multi-item haul comes from.
What the agent says it does not charge
The official line is that nothing is charged beyond the product fee, the international shipping fee and customs clearance. There is no purchasing commission in that list.
Worth pairing with the currency question: independent testing has found agents that charge no service fee can still take a margin on the exchange rate, so read this page as what it says, which is a statement about fees rather than about total cost.
Official fee statement
Scroll the panel sideways to read it at full size.
Why choose OOTDBUY, and when to choose someone else
Almost everything an agent does is the same everywhere: buy, receive, inspect, store, consolidate, ship. Comparing on the shared parts tells you nothing. These are the parts that are genuinely specific, and the parts where another service may suit you better.
Specific to OOTDBUY, and documented
- No separate purchasing commission. The stated total is goods plus international freight plus the customs declaration fee, with value added services optional
- A rehearsal option: pay 20 CNY, let the warehouse pack the box, and see the real freight before you commit to a line
- Ninety days of free storage on normal parcels, with an email warning before it expires
- A UK registered operating company with a published number and address
Look elsewhere when
- You want a service with staff in your own timezone, since support runs 09:00 to 21:30 UTC+8
- You need the widest possible set of shipping lines, which varies constantly between agents and is worth checking on the day
- You are shipping something fragile, because damage claims are excluded for fragile goods no matter who ships them
- You want the item next week. No agent route is fast
What the warehouse check does and does not mean
People read the word inspection as a promise of quality. It is not. The warehouse verifies that what arrived matches what you ordered, and it looks for things that cannot fly. It does not judge whether a replica is a good one, and OOTDBUY says plainly that colour difference, size tolerance and how something performs in use fall outside the inspection scope.
Where the free storage number comes from
The 90 day figure quoted all over this guide is not our estimate. It is in the agent own step by step walkthrough, alongside the instruction to combine goods before shipping overseas in order to cut freight.
Official step 5
Scroll the panel sideways to read it at full size.
Three things worth doing on your first order
None of these are OOTDBUY rules. They are the habits that stop a first order turning into a support ticket.
Order one cheap thing before you order five expensive ones
The point is not the item. It is watching the status change from processing to purchased to stored, so the sequence stops being abstract before real money is involved.
Read the prohibited list before you fall in love with something
Blades, lighters, magnets, liquids, powders and cosmetics all have rules. Finding out after payment means an aftersale request rather than a parcel. The list, condensed.
Decide your storage deadline on day one
Ninety days sounds generous until a haul is spread over three months. Put the date of the first stored item in your calendar and ship before it. How the clock works.
Definition
What an OOTDBuy Spreadsheet is
It is a product discovery site. Open one and you get a catalogue: categories along the top, product cards below, each card carrying a photo, a short name, a badge saying which marketplace it lives on, and a link. That is the whole object. You browse it the way you browse any shop, except that nothing there is for sale.
The word is a leftover. Years ago people really did swap finds in shared files, and the name outlived the format. What replaced it looks like W2CSpreadsheet: a maintained catalogue, sorted into categories, kept current by people who shop these marketplaces themselves.
Everything on a finds page is somebody's recommendation. It is not a guarantee, not a stock list, and not a price list. Prices live on the marketplace and change without anyone updating the card.
Reading one entry
Four parts, and each one deserves a different amount of trust. The photo comes from the seller, so treat it as a hint. The name is usually a paraphrase written to be searchable. The marketplace badge is the useful part, because it tells you what kind of seller you are about to deal with. The link is the only thing OOTDBUY needs.
Two ways to get from a find to an order
The link route is the one finds pages are built for. Copy the link, paste it into the OOTDBUY search box, and the order form fills itself in with the colours, sizes and quantities the seller published.
The search route is for when a find is stale or you want alternatives. Type the product name into the same box and OOTDBUY searches Taobao, 1688 and Weidian for you. It is the honest fallback when a link has gone dead, which happens constantly on these marketplaces.
OOTDBUY states it can capture the listing information for the large majority of Taobao, Weidian and 1688 products, so most pastes come back complete.
Both routes are documented in the official Novice Guide, step 1. Checked 2026-08-03.
Why use the spreadsheet sites instead of searching yourself
You can skip them entirely. Paste any marketplace link into OOTDBUY and it will buy the item. The question is how you find the link in the first place, and that is harder than it sounds from outside China.
These marketplaces are indexed in Chinese. The words that work are not translations of the words you would use, sellers title listings for the domestic search engine rather than for you, and the same item sits with dozens of sellers at prices that vary by a factor of three. Image search finds you things that look similar. It does not tell you which seller ships reliably.
A finds page is the shortcut past all of that. Somebody already searched in Chinese, already picked between sellers, and often already bought the thing. What you get is a starting point with the language problem removed.
It is a starting point and nothing more. Nobody on a finds page has handled your item, the price on the card is not the live price, and a link that worked last month may be dead today. Treat it as a tip from someone who shops here, because that is exactly what it is.
Using it well
Four habits that make finds pages worth the time
Open the listing before you decide
The card is a pointer. The listing has the measurements, the seller rating and the current price, and those are what you are actually buying.
Search the name as well as clicking the link
The same item usually sits with several sellers at different prices. The card shows one of them, not the best one.
Judge on landed cost, not item price
A cheap heavy thing can cost more to receive than an expensive light one. Freight is decided by weight and volume, not by what you paid.
Collect a list before you order anything
Consolidation is where the freight saving is. Buying one thing at a time is the most expensive way to use an agent.
A finds page and the OOTDBUY search box do different jobs
They are complementary, and using the wrong one for the job is a common source of frustration.
| Question | Finds page | OOTDBUY search |
|---|---|---|
| What is worth buying at all | Strong. Curation is the product | Weak. It returns everything |
| Is this link still live | Weak. Cards go stale quietly | Strong. Dead links fail immediately |
| What does it cost right now | Never authoritative | Reads the live listing |
| Which marketplace is this | Shown on the card | Shown in the results |
| Can OOTDBUY buy it | Not answered | Answered when the form fills in |
W2CSpreadsheet category and search routes verified live before publication. Checked 2026-08-03.
What a finds page is good for, and what it cannot tell you
A useful way to hold it: the card covers the first box of your bill and nothing to the right of it. Goods price it can show you. Weight, freight and duty are decided later, by the warehouse and the border.
Trust it for
- Discovery, which is the thing it is actually built to do
- Seeing which categories are busy and which sellers keep appearing
- A starting point when you have no idea what to search for
- Getting a link into the OOTDBUY form in two clicks
Do not trust it for
- Current prices, which move on the marketplace without the card changing
- Stock, since sellers delist without warning
- Quality claims, because nobody on a finds page has handled the item
- Sizing, which belongs to the seller's own measurement table
From a card to a paid order
Four steps, and the third one is where people commit money without meaning to.
Copy the link from the card
On W2CSpreadsheet the card links straight through to the marketplace listing. That URL is what OOTDBUY wants.
Paste it into the OOTDBUY search box
The form fills in with the seller's own options. Choose colour, size and quantity there rather than in a note, because notes are read by a human and options are not.
Check the confirm screen before paying
The summary lists the goods and the warehouse freight inside China. It says in small type that the international shipping fee is not included. That line is the difference between an expected bill and an unpleasant one.
Wait for it to reach the warehouse, then decide about shipping
Nothing else is due until you submit a parcel. That is also when the storage clock starts. What happens in the warehouse.
Ordering
How to order from OOTDBUY
An OOTDBUY order has two halves that people tend to merge in their heads. The first half buys the goods and gets them to a warehouse in China. The second half, which may happen weeks later, puts those goods in a box and flies them to you. Only the first half is covered by the payment you make today.
Everything below is the documented flow, condensed and annotated. Where a screen is involved, the screenshot is OOTDBUY's own from their tutorial.
The two ways in, as the agent describes them
Method 1 is the one experienced buyers use: find the listing on Taobao, Weidian or 1688, copy the URL, paste it into the search box. Method 2 is typing a product name and picking from what OOTDBUY recommends.
The screenshot is the agent own interface with the search field circled. Worth noticing what sits directly underneath it in the official image, because the promotional banner is part of the real page too.
Official step 1
Scroll the panel sideways to read it at full size.
The order, step by step
Five steps to a stored item. The warehouse does two of them.
Paste the link, or search by name
The search box at the top of ootdbuy.com takes both. A pasted marketplace link fills the form in automatically; a typed name searches Taobao, 1688 and Weidian and hands you results to pick from.
OOTDBUY tutorial screenshot of the search bar. Choose colour, size and quantity on the form
Use the option selectors rather than writing your choice in the remarks box. Options travel with the order automatically; remarks have to be read by a person and are for genuine special requests.
Read the confirm screen, then pay
The summary breaks out the goods price and the warehouse freight inside China, then shows the amount payable. Next to it sits the line that matters most on your first order: international shipping fee not included.
Amounts are OOTDBUY sample values from their own tutorial, not a quote for your order. A purchasing agent places the order with the seller
This is a person, not a script. If the seller needs something clarified they will reach you through the order enquiry thread, or by message or email.
The warehouse receives, checks, photographs and stores it
Every box is opened to check for prohibited items, contents are verified against your order, the original courier box is usually removed in favour of an OOTDBUY sealed bag, and the item is weighed and stored. It then appears under My Warehouse.
The agent splits the job into five stages, and two of them are payments
This is the opening frame of OOTDBUY own tutorial video. The useful part is not the steps themselves but where they put the money: stage 03 is the first payment, covering the goods and domestic shipping inside China, and stage 05 is a second payment for international freight, charged after the warehouse has your box and can weigh it.
Anyone budgeting from the checkout total alone is budgeting for stage 03 and will meet stage 05 later.
Official video
Scroll the panel sideways to read it at full size.
What the seven step bar is telling you
The progress bar across the top of the order screens is worth reading once. It names the whole journey: select products, confirm order, pay for products, inspection and warehousing, submit parcels, pay international shipping fee, wait for receipt.
Two of those seven steps are payments, and they are separated by however long your goods sit in storage. When someone says an agent order felt like it had hidden costs, this is almost always what they met: not a hidden cost, but a second documented one arriving later than they expected.
Order states
What each status means and what you can still do
The status on your order page decides which remedies are open to you. OOTDBUY publishes this ladder in its aftersales notice.
| Status | What it means | What you can still do |
|---|---|---|
| Process pending | Submitted, nothing bought yet | Cancel yourself. Refund goes to your wallet immediately |
| Processing | Being handled, possibly not yet bought | Cancel yourself. If nothing was purchased, refunded within one working day |
| Purchased | The agent has paid the seller | Request an aftersale. The seller must agree, usually about three days |
| Seller sent | The seller claims it is shipped | If the tracking is fake, request an aftersale. Usually about seven days |
| Stored | Received, checked and in the warehouse | Five days to request a return. Approval is not guaranteed |
From the official How to apply for aftersales notice. Timings are OOTDBUY figures. Checked 2026-08-03.
Paying for the goods
Payment methods are listed at checkout and in the official top up notice. Fees and supported currencies are OOTDBUY figures and change without notice.
PayPal
Supports Visa, Mastercard, American Express and JCB. Converted through US dollars and credited in real time. The stated fee is 4.5 per cent plus 0.3 USD.
Wise transfer
Five currencies: USD, GBP, EUR, NZD and AUD. Each currency has different recipient details, so check before sending.
Cards and bank transfer
International credit cards, domestic bank cards and bank remittance are listed as accepted methods.
When something will not go through
Support runs 09:00 to 21:30 UTC+8 and there is an official Discord. Payment problems are the fastest thing to resolve in chat.
Order everything at once, or order as you find it
Both work. They fail in different ways, and the storage clock is what decides which failure you get.
Order as you find things
- You never miss a listing that disappears
- The warehouse holds each item free for 90 days from its own received date
- You can consolidate later, once you have enough to justify a box
- Risk: the first item's 90 days expires while you are still shopping
Wait and order in one go
- Every item starts its storage clock at roughly the same time
- One purchase payment instead of several
- Simpler to reason about when the freight quote finally arrives
- Risk: sellers delist, and finds go stale while you wait
After you pay, before you ship
Between the two payments the parcel is somewhere you cannot see it. This is the part of the process worth understanding in advance, because everything that happens here happens without you.
Why this one
Why use this Spreadsheet
There are many pages offering to explain OOTDBUY. Four things separate this one, and all four are constraints we accept rather than features we sell.
It is independent, and says so
This guide is not run by OOTDBUY. We hold no orders, take no commission on what you buy, and cannot see your parcels. That is a limitation, not a sales pitch: it means nothing here is written to move you toward a particular checkout.
Every number carries a date
Agent fees, warehouse windows and courier rules change without notice. Each figure on this site says where it came from and when it was last checked, so you can tell a current rule from one that has quietly expired.
Discovery and ordering are kept apart
Browsing happens on a finds catalogue. Ordering happens on ootdbuy.com. We point at both and pretend to be neither, because the two jobs fail in different ways and mixing them is how beginners lose track of who owes them what.
Written for the first order, not the fiftieth
The pages assume you have not done this before. Where a step is genuinely awkward, it says so instead of smoothing it over, because the awkward steps are the ones that cost money when you meet them unprepared.