The format, and who shares it
HooBuy uses numeric platform code in the path — /product/1/ for Taobao. That is one of thirteen distinct URL families across the forty agents in the converter above, and the reason a spreadsheet built for one agent does not open in another without help.
The three digits, and why they matter
HooBuy product URLs read /product/1/675330534906. The second segment is the platform, written as a digit: 0 is 1688, 1 is Taobao, 2 is Weidian.
Nothing about that is guessable from looking at a link, which is the entire problem. Every other format in the converter either names the platform (shop_type=taobao) or wraps a URL that names itself. HooBuy's is the only one where the platform is a bare integer with no label attached.
How this shows up in a shared sheet
The failure is specific and recognisable. Someone finds a Weidian item, copies a HooBuy row that happened to be a Taobao link, pastes the new ID over the old one, and ships the sheet. The row now says /product/1/ — Taobao — with a Weidian listing ID in it.
Nobody notices at the time because the URL is well-formed. It surfaces weeks later as “this link is dead”, and the usual conclusion is that the seller delisted the item, when in fact the item is fine and the digit is wrong. Paste the row into the converter and the original ID comes back out with the correct platform attached.
What we know about HooBuy itself
3.9 out of 5 on Trustpilot across 560 reviews, no commission advertised, 90 days of free storage. Middling on every axis and unremarkable in a category where remarkable usually means something went wrong.
560 reviews is a reasonable middle sample — smaller than MuleBuy's or Joyagoo's, several times larger than KakoBuy's. A 3.9 on that base is a fair description of a fair service.
Getting from a row to a parcel
One habit removes this entire class of problem, and it is not specific to HooBuy.
Never edit an agent URL by hand. Not the ID, not the platform, not the parameters. Every format in the converter has its own way of failing silently when edited — HooBuy's digit is simply the most opaque version of a general problem. Convert instead, every time, and the failure mode disappears.
If you maintain a shared sheet, add a column holding the plain Taobao, Weidian or 1688 address next to each agent link. Anyone can then re-route a row without touching a format they do not understand, and the sheet survives whichever agent goes next.