The format that makes ACBuy the odd one out
Most agents encode the source platform inside the same parameter run as the ID. Nine of the forty agents in the converter above use a query string shaped ?shop_type=taobao&id=. ACBuy splits it: the ID goes in id=, and the platform goes in a separate source= flag — TB for Taobao, WD for Weidian, AL for 1688.
Nothing is wrong with that design, but it has a practical consequence. When someone copies an ACBuy link and swaps the digits to point at a different item, the source flag stays behind. Change a Taobao ID to a Weidian one without touching source=TB and you get a URL that looks perfectly valid and resolves to either nothing or an unrelated product.
What is actually in an ACBuy spreadsheet
The same thing that is in a CNFans sheet or a KakoBuy sheet: rows of product IDs with a photo, a price and a note. Whoever built the sheet happened to be using ACBuy when they saved the links, and that is the only reason ACBuy appears in the URLs.
This is worth internalising because it changes how you treat a sheet you were handed. The agent in the link is not a recommendation and it is not a constraint. Paste any row into the converter and the underlying ID rebuilds against every agent still trading — including the ones with better free-storage windows or better ratings than whoever made the sheet was using.
Reading an ACBuy sheet that has gone stale
Sheets age in two ways, and only one of them is fixable.
- The listing is gone. The seller delisted it. No converter helps — the ID no longer resolves anywhere. Search Taobao by the Chinese product name from a surviving row, or look through the supplier catalogues.
- The price has moved. Common and usually mild. Treat every price column in a sheet older than a few months as an indication rather than a quote.
- The link points at a dead agent. If a sheet predates 2024 it may carry PandaBuy or WeGoBuy URLs. Both are closed — but the IDs inside them still work, which is what the recovery page covers.
Where ACBuy sits, and what we could not verify
This is the part where most comparison pages publish a score. We are not going to, because we do not have one we can stand behind.
The fee, rating and free-storage figures on our fee calculator come from a named July 2026 third-party comparison covering eight agents. ACBuy was not among them. We have no verified service-fee rate for it, no Trustpilot figure we have checked, and no confirmed storage window — so it does not appear in that calculator, and it does not get a number here either.
If you have ordered through ACBuy and know its current rate, tell us on WhatsApp. A figure from someone who actually paid it is worth more than one copied off another site.
The costs a sheet never shows
Whatever agent you route through, the goods price in the spreadsheet is the smallest of four numbers. After it come the exchange rate the agent applies when converting your payment to yuan — typically two or three percent against mid-market and invisible on any receipt — then international freight, then import charges at your border.
Freight is usually the largest, and it is the one you can most easily reduce. Carriers bill volumetric weight, length × width × height ÷ 6000, whenever that exceeds the weight on the scale. Four boxed sneaker pairs measure roughly 40×30×20 cm, which bills as 4 kg against about 1.8 kg actual. Asking for the boxes to be removed and the shoes vacuum-packed drops it below actual weight and costs nothing. Run your parcel through the shipping calculator with dimensions filled in before you pay.
From sheet row to parcel
- Check the row is live before doing anything else. A dead ID converts perfectly into forty dead links.
- Convert the ID rather than reusing the sheet's agent by default.
- Send your foot measurement in millimetres if it is footwear — see the size converter. Sizing is the largest single cause of QC rejections.
- Work the QC photos against the 12-point checklist. Rejecting at the warehouse costs domestic Chinese postage; rejecting after freight costs more than most items.
- Consolidate before shipping so the first-weight charge is paid once.