Costs
Rowbuy fees, rate and the total you can know in advance
Every charge on a Rowbuy order in the order you meet it, the exchange rate, the payment methods, and the blank where the service fee rate should be.
The three parts Rowbuy names, plus the one it does not
Help article 7793 divides the total into three parts. Goods cost means the shop's price plus the shop's own delivery charge to the warehouse. The service fee pays Rowbuy for purchasing, handling, photos and storage. International shipping depends on the checked weight and size of your parcel and the line you choose. Coupons and discounts come off on top.
The fourth part is not Rowbuy's to charge: import duty and tax in your country. And inside the three named parts, one number is missing. No public page gives the service fee rate, so the honest way to read a Rowbuy total is goods plus freight plus an unknown fee that appears at checkout.
Keep an unpublished service fee as “not yet known” in your budget. It is not a zero and should not disappear when comparing two agents. Save the item subtotal and the later freight quote separately, then ask support which additional charges apply to that specific order before funding it.
Worked example: how one jacket becomes a parcel bill
Take a quilted jacket listed at CNY 189 with CNY 8 seller delivery, packed alone into a carton of 50 by 40 by 12 cm weighing 1.3 kg. Payment one is CNY 197, about $29.08 at the 21 October rate. The carton's size weight on the Canada line is 24,000 divided by 8000, or 3 kg, which beats the scale. Freight is CNY 30 plus 30 steps of CNY 7.10: CNY 243, about $35.87. Known so far: CNY 440, roughly $64.94, before the service fee, before any coupon and before Canadian duty.
This is a planning example using the dated rules above, not a current quote. To adapt it, replace the selected variant price, seller delivery, destination and packed dimensions together. Changing only the jacket price leaves the freight assumption untouched. Check the same inputs in the ledger calculator, then compare the final account quote against the line’s billing units.
The same box to Chicago would be billed on 24,000 divided by 6000, or 4 kg: CNY 135 plus seven steps of CNY 39, which is CNY 408. That one jacket shows the whole ledger in miniature: the freight can outweigh the goods, and the box decides it.
The jacket's ledger, Canada line
- AOrder placedLink, picture search or Fill&buy formPayment one: goods + seller delivery
- BWarehouse inboundOrder status reaches StoredNo charge listed; storage clock starts
- CQC photosYou approve or raise a concernPhotos free; count unpublished
- DParcel builtApproved pieces combined and packedUnpack-and-count option at USD 0.00
- EFreight paidUS or Canada line, checked weightPayment two: international line
- FArrivalTransit, customs, the doorstep7 to 11 days quoted; duties are yours
Known: CNY 197 goods side + CNY 243 freight = CNY 440 (about $64.94). Unknown: service fee, duty. Coupons not applied.
Yuan on the listing, dollars on the card
Rowbuy shows prices in yuan and bills in US dollars. Rowbuy's rate feed gave 1 CNY = 0.1476 USD on our 21 October 2026 reading, which is about 6.78 yuan to the dollar. No page explains how that rate is set or how often it changes, so the rate on the day you pay is the one that counts.
Canadian buyers pay in US dollars too, so their card adds its own conversion from USD to CAD on top. Check your card's foreign transaction fee before a large haul.
Cards, balance and declined payments
Help article 7829 says Rowbuy accepts international credit and debit cards, billed in USD, plus other methods shown at checkout; there is also an account balance you can top up. The footer of every page shows PayPal, Visa and Mastercard marks. No surcharge for any method is published. If a card is declined, the article suggests asking your bank whether overseas online payments are switched on, or trying a different method.
Coupons, spins and what they actually reduce
Every Rowbuy discount on the public pages targets freight, not goods. New accounts get a shipping coupon bundle without a stated value. The Lucky Wheel gives a percentage off one parcel's international shipping. The affiliate programme pays you a share of the shipping fee of people you refer. None of them touches the service fee or the price of the goods, so a big coupon on a light parcel saves little.
