Guide

Guide: the order route, account to delivery

Tomebuy publishes a public nine-step written Tutorial, starting with selecting a product. This page regroups those steps into seven stages, built from Tomebuy's own Tutorial and Shopping Agent Guide pages, with a screenshot wherever one was possible to take without an account. Where a screen sits behind the sign-in, an annotated illustration drawn by this site stands in for it, and each one is labelled as a drawing.

Official Tomebuy buying guide — written steps, checked 25 October 2026.

Stage five, arrival and QC, is where free storage starts counting down and where the inspection-photo count matters. If you read nothing else before your first order, read that one.

Seven stages of a Tomebuy order, grouped by what changes in your account

Stage 1 · Make an account

The sign-in and registration entry sit behind the same page, reached from the user icon in the header. Automated browsers get a Cloudflare check here; a real visitor in a normal browser gets past it and reaches the account form. There is no separate /register.html, so do not look for one.

Once you are in, set up your shipping address and, if you have one, enter an invitation code at registration, which Tomebuy's own help centre says can earn you a shipping coupon.

The Cloudflare check an automated browser sees on Tomebuy's sign-in page, 22 October 2026 — Captured 22 October 2026. A person in an ordinary browser gets past this screen; the screenshot exists because an automated one does not.

Stage 2 · Find and submit the item

Tomebuy lists four ways to start an order: hand over a product link copied from Taobao, Tmall, 1688 or Weidian, search by name or keyword, search by photo, or use the DIY Orders form for anything else (the help text names Xianyu, Pinduoduo and Yupoo as examples). DIY Orders asks for a product name, a link if you have one, specifications, and an image, then treats the request as a consultation rather than a guaranteed match.

Whichever method you use, the next screen is the same: pick the model, colour, size and quantity, and note any shipping restriction the listing itself flags.

Tomebuy's DIY Orders form, for products outside the directly supported platforms, 22 October 2026 — Captured 22 October 2026. The three numbered steps along the top are Tomebuy's own.

Stage 3 · Pay for the order

Payment at this stage covers the item itself plus the seller's delivery to Tomebuy's domestic address, not the international leg. Tomebuy's published payment channel is an international credit card routed through PayPal; its help pages do not list a full menu of alternatives. If you already hold account balance from a top-up or a refund, that can cover part or all of this payment before a card is charged.

This screen only exists once you are signed in, so no public screenshot of it exists yet. The field layout is left as an open slot below until one can be captured from a real account. Until then, the picture below is this site's annotated drawing of the checkout, put together from Tomebuy's written help rather than captured.

Illustration of a Tomebuy checkout: a leather tote and a tooled belt from one Taobao shop, the seller's delivery charged once, card or balance as payment, no service fee, freight deferred to a later parcel, and a lettered side panel explaining each part — Our own drawing of the checkout step, not a capture from a signed-in account. It separates the two bills a Tomebuy order produces: this one covers the goods and each seller's delivery to the warehouse, while international freight is paid later, per parcel. Two items from the same shop paid in one purchase order carry that shop's domestic delivery fee once, according to Tomebuy's Order Questions. A euro total depends on the site's fixed rate; the settings feed read on 21 October 2026 held CNY 7.5 per euro, 6.5 per US dollar and 8.6 per pound, so compare it with a market rate before topping up. Item prices are left blank because these listings carry none we could verify.

Stage 4 · Staff buy it on your behalf

A buyer on Tomebuy's side purchases the item from the seller once payment clears, then has it delivered to Tomebuy's own warehouse. You can follow the order's status on the Orders page during this stage, and a contact button on that page reaches the buyer handling your order if something needs clarifying.

This is also the stage where a DIY Orders request can stall if the seller the request named turns out not to ship the item, or asks for a price Tomebuy's buyer judges unreasonable. Tomebuy's own guide frames DIY Orders as a consultation rather than a guaranteed match for exactly this reason, so a status that sits unchanged here for longer than a standard link-based order is not necessarily a fault, just a slower negotiation.

Illustration of a Tomebuy Orders list filtered to Purchased: sunglasses waiting for the seller to dispatch, a sweatshirt already shipped to the warehouse, a DIY order still at Paid, a six-part status bar and an order remark — An illustration made for this guide rather than a real Orders page. The status filters use Tomebuy's own purchase-order names, from Pending payment through Available for shipment, and the highlighted order sits at Purchased: bought, or being bought, and not yet sent by the seller. Tomebuy's help puts a normal seller dispatch at 3 to 7 days, longer for made-to-order or pre-sale goods. Until the seller ships, cancelling goes through customer service and the money returns to your account balance; after that, getting it back depends on the seller agreeing to a return.

Stage 5 · Arrival, inspection and storage

Once the item reaches the warehouse, Tomebuy inspects it for appearance (model, style, size) and photographs it. This is also where the free-storage clock starts, and where the two biggest conflicts in Tomebuy's own documentation show up: the photo count and the storage length.

QC covers what the inspection does and does not check, and Storage and returns covers the three-way storage conflict in full, including what counts as abandoned and when.

Practically, this is the stage to slow down at rather than rush through. The photos that post here are the only inspection record the order gets, the storage clock that starts here determines how much time is available for every stage after it, and the five-day return window, if one ends up being needed, is counted from the same “in storage” moment.

Illustration of QC photos for a stored leather tote: a main photo with thumbnails and a buy-more-photos tile, an inspection checklist, the 60, 90 and 180 day storage figures side by side, and the five-day return window — Drawn by us to show where the inspection record lands; it is not a capture. Tomebuy's pages give two free-photo counts (3 to 5 in the Tutorial and on the home page, 5 to 7 in the Shopping Agent Guide) and three free-storage lengths counted from the in-storage status: 60, 90 and 180 days. The picture shows every figure instead of choosing one. Two short windows also open here: 5 days to ask for a return, where a return with no quality fault costs shipping both ways plus USD 0.75, and 14 days for an exchange if the seller accepts it.

Stage 6 · Ship it: pick a method, pay freight

From the Warehouse page you choose which stored items to ship, enter a recipient, and pick a shipping method. Items can go out separately or combined into one parcel; Tomebuy's own help pages recommend combining where possible because the saving can be substantial. The freight quote at this stage is provisional: it is based on the item weight already on file, and gets corrected once the parcel is physically packed.

The consolidation calculator replays Tomebuy's own combined-versus-separate example if you want to see the saving before you submit anything.

Some stored items may be restricted from combining with others, flagged by Tomebuy's own shipping-restriction checks at this stage rather than earlier. If an item you expected to ship with the rest of a parcel is missing from the eligible list, that is usually why, and splitting it into its own parcel is the normal fix.

Illustration of the Tomebuy Warehouse page: four stored items ticked into one 2,200 g parcel, a masked US address, two recommended lines without prices, extras to ask about first, and a worked example of combining versus sending separately — An illustrated Warehouse page, not a screenshot; the shelf weights are example figures. Tomebuy publishes no live freight table, so the line list carries no prices. The side panel instead reuses the rates from the example on Tomebuy's Packaging page (GD-EMS to the United States: USD 30 for the first 500 g, USD 10 for each further 500 g, USD 1 per parcel). On those example rates, posting the four items one by one would come to USD 144, against USD 71 for a single 2.2 kg parcel. The same page warns that a parcel over 10 kg, or one packed with identical items, is more likely to be treated as commercial.

Stage 7 · Packing, the international leg, and confirming receipt

Once freight clears, warehouse staff pack the box, put it on a scale, and measure its dimensions. Whichever is bigger, the scale weight or the volume-based figure, becomes what you are actually billed. Any difference between the provisional and final charge is refunded to or deducted from your account balance. The parcel then ships internationally; once it arrives, you confirm receipt from the Parcel page, which is also where after-sales requests start if something is wrong.

International shipping carries its own risks that sit outside Tomebuy's control once a parcel leaves the warehouse: customs delay, confiscation, damage in transit, or outright loss. Tomebuy's own pages are direct about this rather than promising otherwise, and the optional insurance covered on Storage and returns is the main way to offset it. Confirming receipt promptly once a parcel does arrive matters too: it is what closes the order and starts the five-day return window if anything needs to go back.

Illustration of a Tomebuy Parcel page after packing: a progress list from freight paid to receipt confirmed, a box weighing 2.46 kg but billed at a 3.00 kg volume weight, the balance settling the gap, checks to make at the door, and confirm-receipt and reward buttons — Illustration only: this site drew the Parcel page to show how a final freight figure is reached. The example box weighs 2.46 kg on the scale but measures 40 × 30 × 15 cm, so at a divisor of 6,000 its volume weight is 3.0 kg (3.6 kg at 5,000), and the larger figure is the one billed. Tomebuy does not publish the divisor it uses; both numbers are common carrier values, not Tomebuy rules. Any shortfall against the provisional freight comes out of the account balance. At the door, Tomebuy's After-Sale help asks you to inspect the box in front of the courier, and compensation claims must be lodged within 7 days of delivery or 45 days of shipment.

A 49-second silent walkthrough this site assembled from its own drawn screens, following stages 2 to 7 above: options, payment, order status, QC and storage, building a parcel, and packing. Tomebuy had no part in making it and has published no video of its own, and no frame in it is a recording of a real account.

What you pay, stage by stage Shipping, customs and consolidation in detail