What UIDBuy charges, line by line
The total you pay, split into the parts UIDBuy names, plus the two places where its own pages disagree about fees.
The parts of a UIDBuy total
The help center gives the formula: total cost equals the item cost plus international shipping plus customs charges, with item cost being the product price plus whatever the seller charges to deliver to Xiamen. International shipping depends on weight, line and destination. Customs charges depend on your country and, on some lines, are collected from you on delivery.
Around that core sit optional extras with listed prices: a rehearsal pack to learn the real parcel weight before you choose a line (20 RMB per parcel), a photo of the parcel before and after sealing (5 RMB per parcel), and detailed photos of an item (1 RMB each, at most 20 per request). Custom work such as consolidation of assembled products or custom packaging is quoted on request.
The service fee: zero on one page, eight per cent on another
Here the official pages part ways. The help article on charges says UIDBuy offers a free purchasing agent service and charges no service fee on orders from regular shopping platforms beyond the item and shipping costs. The User Registration Agreement, which you accept at sign-up, says a platform service fee is charged at 8% of the purchase price of the goods and 8% of the shipping.
We cannot tell you which one your order will follow. What you can do is look at the order confirmation and payment pages, which itemise the order fee and any handling fee before you press pay. If a line appears that you did not expect, ask customer service which rule it comes from before paying, and keep a screenshot.
Paying, card checks and the handling percentage
The help center lists PayPal, credit cards and Google Pay, with a prepaid balance for frequent payments, and says any currency can pay by card. The payment page in the official guide shows more names than that, including Apple Pay and a card processor, so the exact list may depend on your country.
A separate article says a "certain percentage" handling fee is charged on cross-border transactions because of exchange rate swings and bank fees. We looked for the actual percentage and came up empty. In the official guide's payment example the handling fee line reads $0.00 with the wallet selected; we could not see how it changes with other methods.
Card payments may go through a verification step. The order shows "Verifying", and if it has not moved within 24 hours UIDBuy may be waiting for documents from you; with no reply in 72 hours the order can be cancelled and refunded to the original method.
Dollars on screen, yuan underneath
UIDBuy shows prices in US dollars by default next to the original yuan price (the official product page example reads CNY36.00 next to USD6.03). We found no published exchange rate rule or markup on the site, in the help center or in the terms. That leaves two practical checks: compare the dollar figure on a product page with a mid-market rate on the same day, and remember that your card issuer may add its own conversion on top.
The "certain percentage" handling fee above is the only cost UIDBuy itself links to exchange rates. If you pay often, a balance top-up in one go means one conversion instead of many.
Balances, top-ups and money coming back
Refunds for cancelled or withdrawn orders go to your UIDBuy account balance, according to the order status descriptions. So does the difference when a shipping deposit turns out higher than the final freight. Should the seller's price or the domestic delivery end up higher than your payment, the status turns to Clear Balance, and nothing moves until the shortfall is paid.
UIDBuy also runs a membership growth program: every account starts as a Standard Member and earns honor points, one per yuan spent on international shipping or value-added services, plus 100 points for each confirmed cross-border order. Points released after confirmation decide your tier. It is a loyalty scheme, not an affiliate program.
