What Changed in Agent Pricing Between Two Seasons
1,256 words · about 6 minutes · note 21 of 40 · Step 3, Step 8
Two seasons of agent pricing cannot be compared from a single snapshot, and the first useful thing this page can do is say so plainly. This site holds one dated revision of its rate sheet, checked on 2026-09-29, and no archived earlier revision, so any last-season figure quoted here would be invented. What can be compared is structure: how a first-kilogram band, a continuation rate, a volume divisor and a fee base each move the same order. Tested on one 2.80 kg parcel, the four levers shift the total by $2.00, $2.00, $11.00 and $2.40.
How the previous season’s sheet was assembled
A price sheet kept without dates behaves like a rumour: it is either current or it is not, and nobody can tell which. The pattern this site sees most often in its own earlier practice is a single column of rates copied from a dashboard when an order was placed, with the shipping total written beside it and nothing to say when the numbers were read.
Three failures follow from that pattern. First-kilogram charges get mixed with per-kilogram rates, so two lines that look comparable are not. Totals are compared across orders that assumed different weights, which makes a rate rise and a heavier parcel indistinguishable. And the fee base goes unrecorded, so a percentage that moved from merchandise to merchandise plus postage reads as no change at all.
The counter-practice is unglamorous: one row per rate, a source, a check date, and the previous value kept beside the new one so a comparison is possible without memory. This site’s rate sheet now carries a check date on every band and marks each one not verified, because no service publishes a card that can be checked from outside. Everything below therefore compares levers applied to one order, not two seasons of invoices.
The baseline the current snapshot fixes
What a dated record does buy is a fixed picture of the catalogue a price sits on. This site’s 218-listing snapshot taken on 2026-09-29 carries 218 rows, all priced, 216 distinct titles and 52 rows with an empty note field. Half the rows sit between $22.53 and $53.32, and the median row is $36.18, with a floor of $3.62 and a ceiling of $190.88.
The distribution across bands is the most stable part of the picture: 44 rows under $20, 56 rows from $20 to $34.99, 49 rows from $35 to $49.99, 54 rows from $50 to $79.99 and 15 rows at $80 or above. Lane medians vary far more than the overall median, from $16.87 in headwear through $26.34 in tees and $35.11 in hoodies to $47.72 in jackets and $55.62 in shoes, which is why a fee change lands differently on two buyers using the same agent.
Currency is the one figure that appears to move without the market moving. The aggregate conversion implied by the snapshot is 6.232 CNY per USD, while the median of the per-row ratios is 6.328 and the rows run from about 6.03 to about 6.34. Quoting the aggregate as if it were a rate per row changes a $47.72 row by a few cents; over a season of orders it changes the direction of a comparison, which is exactly the sort of drift a dated sheet catches.
The four levers, tested on one 2.80 kg parcel
One order is held constant while each lever moves: merchandise of $47.72, which is the jackets-lane median row, a packed volume of 40 × 30 × 14 cm, or 16,800 cm³, and a chargeable weight of 2.80 kg at a divisor of 6000. Billed at three kilograms, the baseline postage is $40.00 on a band of $18.00 for the first kilogram plus $11.00 for each additional one.
Each row of the table changes exactly one thing. The two rate rises are the ones a buyer expects and the ones that move the total least; the divisor switch is the one that rarely makes headlines and moves the total most, because it changes the billed weight rather than the price of a kilogram.
| Lever | Change applied | Chargeable weight | Billed weight | Postage (USD) | Order total (USD) | Move (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baseline | first kg $18.00, $11.00 per extra kg, divisor 6000 | 2.80 kg | 3 kg | 40.00 | 95.01 | — |
| Continuation rate | $11.00 to $12.00 per extra kg | 2.80 kg | 3 kg | 42.00 | 97.01 | +2.00 |
| First-kilogram band | $18.00 to $20.00 | 2.80 kg | 3 kg | 42.00 | 97.01 | +2.00 |
| Volume divisor | 6000 to 5000 g/L | 3.36 kg | 4 kg | 51.00 | 106.01 | +11.00 |
| Fee base | merchandise only to merchandise plus postage, at 6% | 2.80 kg | 3 kg | 40.00 | 97.41 | +2.40 |
| Payment rate | 3% to 4% of merchandise | 2.80 kg | 3 kg | 40.00 | 95.49 | +0.48 |
What the levers do to a worked order
The baseline order lands at $95.01: $47.72 of merchandise, $40.00 of postage, $2.86 of service fee, $1.43 of payment fee, $2.00 for a photo set and $1.00 of protective packing. A buyer who recorded only the total would learn nothing from it; a buyer who recorded the six lines can re-price any of them in a minute.
Raising the continuation rate to $12.00 per kilogram moves postage to $42.00 and the order to $97.01, a rise of $2.00 or 2.1%. Raising the first-kilogram band to $20.00 produces the identical total by a different route, which is why the two are worth storing in separate fields: on a heavier parcel the continuation rate dominates, and on a light one the first-kilogram band does. A 20% increase in either rate moved the order by roughly 2%, a ratio worth remembering when a rate change is announced.
Switching the divisor from 6000 to 5000 raises the chargeable weight to 3.36 kg, which rounds up to four billed kilograms and pushes postage to $51.00. The order total becomes $106.01, a rise of $11.00 or 11.6%, and no rate changed at all. On the same parcel a year earlier, the identical rate sheet paired with the other divisor would have produced a different total, which is precisely why a divisor belongs on the record next to the price.
The fee base is the quietest of the four. Applying the same 6% to merchandise plus postage instead of merchandise alone raises the service line from $2.86 to $5.26 and the total to $97.41, a rise of $2.40 that a buyer would never attribute to a percentage that never moved. The payment rate behaves the same way at a smaller scale: 3% to 4% of merchandise adds $0.48.
Three changes to make in your own sheet
Put a check date and a source on every rate row, and keep the superseded value in the next column. A rate without a date cannot be compared across seasons, and a comparison against memory is the reason buyers conclude that prices rose when their parcels simply got heavier.
Split the postage line into first kilogram, continuation step, minimum charge and divisor, with the rounding rule written down. On the parcel above, the divisor moved the total more than five times as much as either rate rise, and it is the field most often left blank.
Record the fee base and the chargeable weight on the order itself, not in a message thread. Two orders can share a rate and still differ by $2.40 because one percentage applied to postage and the other did not, and a weight that was never written down cannot be compared with the next parcel.
The direction of travel between seasons is the one thing this page cannot state: with a single dated revision, any claim that fees rose or fell would be unverified. The ledger’s update log is where the second revision will be recorded, the index lists pages by their most recent check date, and the six-month review of service fee snapshots is the page that will carry the comparison once more than one date exists.