All along, i assumed that sea freight shipment is the cheapest way to ship your Taobao stuff from China. If you’re shipping one cubic metre (usually with allowance of up to 500kg) of stuff, that is confirmed the case. If you are using 65daigou however, it may not be the case. The shipping rate for under 30kg (volumetric weight) of goods is $1.30 per 500g, whereas the shipping rate for economy air is only S1.69 per 500g. The difference is only $0.39! That’s not all, i just found out that for sea freight, 7% GST will be applied for ALL parcels ON TOP OF THE SHIPPING FEE (i.e. 65daigou’s shipping fee is included in the calculation of GST), which means that most likely you will end up paying more, for slower shipping!
Without checking the bill carefully, i went ahead and shipped sea freight, and only realized something didn’t seem right after making the payment. I paid $33 to ship $56 worth of goods.. gotta consider more carefully next time. Anyway, i made an enquiry and got the following response.
Dear customer,
For Ship-for-me service: 7% GST applies for all sea/sensitive sea shipment orders. For air shipment orders, 7% applies if the parcel’s total amount of declared value, shipping fee and insurance is more than S$400. GST will be shown and collected when submitting a parcel to ship.Hope it explains, thanks.
So, the moral of the story: it is probably never worthwhile shipping via sea freight on 65daigou unless the weight (keep in mind that it is volumetric weight) of your goods is more than 30kg.
Also, come to think of it, i should have shipped via Taobao’s consolidated shipment, since my parcel included 2 pillows which are bulky but not heavy, and Taobao’s consolidated shipment goes by actual weight which would have been more worthwhile. Duh!
Anyway, for ease of comparison and calculation, here’s a table that shows you the total value of goods below which it will be worthwhile to ship by sea freight. As you can see, when the goods are under 10kg, it is very unlikely that sea freight will be worthwhile.
In general, if your items are light and bulky (provided it does not exceed the maximum allowed dimensions), ship via Taobao’s consolidated shipment. If your items are heavy and cheap and bulky (which contributes to the volumetric weight), ship via 65daigou’s sea freight. Otherwise, ship via 65daigou’s economy air.
| Weight (kg) | How much more the shipping cost for economy air is than sea freight | Total value of goods below which GST applied will be less than the savings from choosing sea freight (i.e. sea freight will be worthwhile if goods total cost is below this value) |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | 3.90 | 42.71 |
| 10 | 7.80 | 85.43 |
| 15 | 11.70 | 128.14 |
| 20 | 15.60 | 150.85 |
| 25 | 19.50 | 213.57 |
| 30 | 47.40 | GST will be applicable for economy air also |
| 35 | 55.30 | GST will be applicable for economy air also |
Update 7 Jan 2017
Received this email today:
So, no more sea freight. If you need to ship bulky stuff, you shouldn’t be using ezbuy anyway. Use 86OF. See my review here.
Update 26 Mar 2017
Apparently, Sgshop was acquired by ezbuy, and they offer sea freight shipment. I suppose their business volume is low enough for them to be able to handle sea freight on top of air freight. So, whatever I have discussed in the posting above applies to Sgshop. I suggest you try 86OF instead though.
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