Is MochiBuy Legit? How to Check Any Taobao Agent Before You Pay

Searching for "is [any agent] legit" is the right instinct. The Chinese shopping-agent industry has grown fast, and not every operator deserves your money. Rather than asking you to take our word for it, here is the checklist we would use on a competitor — apply it to us too.

1. Can you identify the company?

A legitimate operator tells you who you are contracting with. Look for a named legal entity, a registration number, a registered address and a warehouse location.

We publish our company details on the About page. Where a detail is not yet published, we say so rather than inventing one. If an agent hides behind a nickname and a Telegram handle, that is your first red flag.

2. Where does your money sit?

This is the single most important question, and the one the industry learned the hard way.

• Per-order payment — you pay for one order, the agent buys the goods, the money moves on. Low risk.
• Prepaid wallet / top-up balance — you deposit money into an account balance the agent holds. The agent is now holding a pool of customer cash. When a large agent collapsed, customers with wallet balances lost everything, while customers who had paid per order mostly recovered their goods.

We do not operate a prepaid wallet. You pay per order. There is never a customer cash pool sitting with us. If an agent pushes you to top up "for convenience", understand that you are lending them money without security.

3. Do they show you the goods?

An agent that never photographs your items cannot prove they arrived, arrived intact, or arrived at all. Anyone can send a stock photo from the seller's listing.

Ask what you get free:

We provide three QC photos per item free of charge, taken in our own warehouse, and you can buy extra close-ups or a power-on test for electronics. Read our inspection standard — it states plainly what we check and what we cannot.

4. Is there a written refund and compensation policy?

"Contact us and we'll sort it out" is not a policy. You want a document that says what happens when:

• the seller ships the wrong item;
• the parcel is lost in transit;
• the parcel arrives damaged;
• the agent's own measured weight is higher than the estimate.

Ours is at Refunds & Returns and Insurance & Compensation. Read whichever agent you are considering and check whether the answer is a number or a shrug.

5. Are the terms, privacy policy and prohibited-items list published?

Three documents separate a business from a hobby:

1. Terms of service — the contract. Who is liable for what.
2. Privacy policy — what personal data is collected, and who it is shared with. Note that your recipient name, address and phone must be printed on the shipping label; an agent claiming total privacy is not telling the truth.
3. Prohibited items — a serious agent will refuse to ship counterfeits, weapons and drugs, and will say so publicly.

All three exist on this site: Terms, Privacy, Prohibited items.

6. The red flags that actually matter

• A wallet with a balance you cannot withdraw quickly.
• "We can source any brand, any replica." That is a customs seizure and a chargeback waiting to happen.
• Photos that are obviously the seller's listing images, not warehouse photos.
• No weight ever shown. You are paying for weight; you should see it.
• Support that only exists in one chat app, with no email address and no ticket history.
• Prices far below everyone else. Freight has a floor. Someone is subsidising it with your deposit.

7. Test before you commit

Order something cheap and awkward first: a single T-shirt, or a small item with a specific size and colour. Then judge the whole chain — did the photos arrive, was the variant right, was the weight honest, did support answer, was the parcel packed properly?

If all of that works on a ¥50 item, it will work on a ¥5000 one.

8. What we are not

We are a shopping agent, not a marketplace and not a brand. We buy from third-party sellers on your instruction. We do not authenticate goods, we do not warrant that a seller's "original" is original, and we will refuse to buy counterfeits.

We also charge 0% service fee — our margin is in the international freight we negotiate. That means our incentive is to pack tightly and ship reliably, not to inflate your item cost.

Next step

Paste a Taobao, Tmall, JD or 1688 link into the box on our homepage, choose a delivery speed, and submit your order confirmation. Nothing is charged at that stage: we review the goods, quote the freight, email you, and you decide.

If anything on this page does not match what you see in practice, tell us. hello@mochibuy.com.