Costs
The real bill: fees, currency conversion, and optional cover
The item price is rarely the whole bill. This page lines up Lolobuy's published fee structure, the exchange rate it applies at checkout, and the optional protection add-on, so the total is not a surprise at payment time.
Fee structure
Lolobuy's help centre states a flat 0% purchasing service fee on items bought from any platform inside China — you pay the domestic seller's price, not a marked-up agent price. Where the money actually goes beyond that:
- Payment processing: varies by method — card payments through the site's listed processor run a standard 4% (occasionally discounted to 3.5%), a European bank-transfer option charges 1.65% plus a flat per-transaction fee, and PayPal, PIX and a crypto channel are also listed, each with its own terms.
- Storage, past the free period: charged per item per 30 days once the free window lapses — see the exchange-rate and storage note below for why the free-period length itself is not a single number.
- Packaging add-ons: basic minimalist and carton packaging, and shoe-box removal, are listed as free. Vacuum packing runs CNY 15 per item, a corner protector CNY 5, a moisture-proof bag CNY 5, EPE foam CNY 3, an air column CNY 2.50, stretch film CNY 2, a shoe stretcher CNY 2, and bubble film CNY 2 — all small individually, but worth adding up if you are ordering several fragile pieces at once rather than one.
- Shipping: covered in full on the shipping page — this is usually the largest line item after the goods themselves.
Free storage: three different numbers, one account. "Free Storage Period," the dedicated help article, states 180 days. The homepage repeats 180 days in its hero copy. But a separate how-to-purchase guide says 90 days, and the "What is LoloBuy?" FAQ section mentions a 300-day figure in one of its own headers. We are not resolving which is correct — check your own account's storage countdown rather than trusting any single published number, including this page.
Currency conversion, not a published rate
Lolobuy prices goods in CNY and converts at checkout using its own published rate list, not a mid-market feed you can check independently beforehand. That is normal for a China-based agent — the rate is set by the platform, not pulled live from a public source — so budget using your own bank's CNY conversion as a rough upper bound, and treat the in-account rate as the one that actually applies.
ShipCare's fine print, in the two parts we could read
ShipCare is an optional paid add-on, priced at 5 to 6% of the merchandise value plus the international shipping fee. It covers four situations — loss, damage and partial loss, customs seizure, and delivery delay — each with its own payout cap and conditions. The excerpt below shows the rules for two of the four: customs seizure compensates up to merchandise value plus shipping, capped at RMB 3,000, but explicitly excludes seizures caused by false declarations or prohibited items; delivery delay pays a flat RMB 50 shipping voucher, and only for delays caused by the carrier, not by address changes, customs holds, or peak-season congestion on the buyer's side.
