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Whalebuy ordering guide: barometer pick, warehouse, front step
You found a rain shell or a fleece hoodie on one of our shelves. Here is the whole route from that card to the parcel at your door, in the order Whalebuy's own screens present it, with the weather-specific choices marked along the way.
The guide follows Whalebuy's official tutorials from July and August 2026, its help centre as read on October 21 to 24, 2026, and the 2 min 12 s ordering video the company posted on its YouTube channel. Where a screen is only visible after login and no official image exists, the step is written out in full and the picture is left for later. Steps six and seven now carry drawings of those signed-in screens, built from the help text and our own estimator quotes, and each is labelled as an illustration.
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Account creation and welcome coupons
Open whalebuy.com and use Sign up at the top right. The form wants an email and a password of your choosing, and it links to the user registration agreement, which is worth a skim: it is the document that governs refunds and disputes. The button below opens that sign-up page; the link adds nothing but a tag naming this site as the referrer.
New accounts receive a set of shipping coupons. The official homepage banner promises 40 per cent off the freight of a new account's opening parcel. The coupon window in Whalebuy's August tutorial shows a 25 per cent coupon with no minimum and fixed-amount coupons that only unlock on freight bills from USD 82.70 up to USD 496.20. Coupons apply to freight, not to goods, so they matter most for the bulky dry-cold parcels on this site.
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Paste a 1688 link or search in Chinese
Whalebuy's search bar takes either a product name or a full link from 1688, Taobao or Weidian, shown by the three small badges inside the bar. There is also an image-search button. Every card on this site already points at a 1688 listing inside Whalebuy, so you can skip this step for our picks; you need it when you find something yourself.
Searching in Chinese finds far more than English. Our shelves came from searches such as 冲锋衣 防水 for rain shells and 加绒 卫衣 for fleece hoodies. The listing page then shows the yuan price, the seller's domestic delivery fee, the minimum order quantity and an estimated warehouse arrival date, which is the first date to check against your forecast.
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Option menus and the order form
This is where most ordering mistakes happen, and it is why every card on our shelves carries a menu note. Chinese sellers use the colour and size menus for anything they like. On our thirty listings the menus hid linings, hem shapes, children's versions, a camisole, three different umbrellas and a 500-piece wholesale entry. Whalebuy's own tutorial shows a size menu with adult S to 3XL and children's 110 to 150 cm side by side.
After choosing, the confirm page lists each order line with two useful links, Custom Photo and Custom Video, where you can ask the warehouse for extra shots at the time of ordering, plus a remark box and the coupon selector. For weather gear, use the remark box: "photo of inside shoulder seam" on a shell, "photo of fill label" on a vest.
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Checkout counter countdown
After you submit, the Checkout Counter appears with a clock running down from 72 hours; unpaid orders are cancelled when it runs out. You choose a currency first, which filters the payment channels. The tutorial screenshot shows the account balance, Klarna, Google Pay and a card processor taking Visa, Mastercard, Diners Club, Discover, American Express and JCB.
Two cost notes. Whalebuy converts at a rate tied to Bank of China's published figure and adjusted during the day, so the dollar price can move slightly between browsing and paying. PayPal top-ups carry a fee that two help articles state differently, USD 0.30 plus 4.5 per cent in one and USD 0.30 plus 3.7 per cent in the other; Wise top-ups are accepted in USD, GBP, EUR, NZD and AUD.
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Warehouse arrival and inspection photos
Once paid, the order is bought within six working hours when paid in the Beijing daytime window of 08:00 to 18:00, or before 2 pm the next day otherwise. The seller ships, the parcel crosses China, and the warehouse signs for it. Staff unpack it, compare it with your order line, take three free photos and move it into your warehouse list. Inspection takes about a working day.
Order Detail holds the photos; Consult opens a chat with the buying staff about that order. From the day the status changes to received, the 90-day free storage clock starts. If something is wrong, the seller's return window is 120 hours from the Stocked-in status, and you pay postage both ways unless the seller offers free returns.
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Packing a waybill and settling freight
Nothing ships until you ask. From the warehouse list, tick the items for one parcel, choose packaging and services, then pick a freight line and pay. Packaging options include a standard carton, minimalist bag packing, a vacuum bag for compressible clothing, a moisture barrier bag, bubble film and corner protectors; shoeboxes can be folded or removed. A rehearsal packing at CNY 20 weighs and measures the parcel within 24 hours before you commit to a line.
This step is where the weather on your shelf matters most. Summer parcels are light and ride the lowest lines. Winter parcels are bulky; without compression a 2.6 kg box was charged as 6.3 kg on most lines in our test. Whalebuy also cautions that customs officers tend to classify boxes near 10 kg, or full of identical units, as commercial imports, so split a big haul across two boxes.
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Tracking, sign-off and after-sales claims
After dispatch, My Package in the user centre shows Logistics Details for each parcel. Some routes stay silent for several days before the first scan and then go quiet again for three to ten days while the parcel changes carriers; Whalebuy flags the slow routes under the parcel. Customs duty and import tax are charged by your country and are not included in the freight price on most lines; some lines are marked as tax-inclusive in the estimator.
When the courier arrives, check the box before signing. Whalebuy's receiving notes ask you to open the goods with the courier still present whenever the outer box looks damaged, to hold on to the carton and its tape, and to file any damage report with the post office in your country no later than two days after delivery. Delivery closes the shipment from Whalebuy's side, so do this on the doorstep, not a week later.
Second orders and habits worth keeping
Second orders go faster: your address is saved, your coupons are visible, and you know which lines reach you. Two habits from this site's shelves are worth keeping. Buy a season early and let items wait in storage, because the free 90 days cover most of a season's lead time. And read the option menu as carefully as the photo.
For money questions, the costs page breaks a bill down line by line. For photos, the QC page lists what to request per reading. The help shelf covers terms and frequently asked questions, and Whalebuy's own help centre has the official text for every policy quoted here.
