The ninety days between arrival and dispatch

Goods land, get checked, lose the seller's box and sit on a shelf. Three deadlines and six paid services live in that gap.

Storing

What happens in the first working day

A parcel from a seller is signed for, opened, checked against the prohibited list, weighed and shelved. The published receiving rules let the warehouse refuse a delivery outright if the outer packaging arrives badly damaged, and say that goods unsuited to air transport get flagged on the order so you can open a conversation with the seller about sending them back.

The repack is the part people are not expecting. The seller's courier box comes off and the goods go into the company's own sealed bags, which is how a consolidated parcel stays small. Fragile goods, oversized goods, and goods whose courier box is doing structural work keep their original packaging.

Will I get the original box the seller sent?

Posted rule

Usually not. The inspection page says the original courier box is removed after checking and the goods are bagged for storage, with exceptions for fragile, easily damaged and oversized items where the original box is kept.

Read on Whalebuy's Inspection Information page, 21 and 22 October 2026.

In practice

Want the retail box kept? Put that in the order notes before anything is bought, and expect the parcel to grow. Keeping boxes is the fastest way to turn a light order into a volume-billed one.

Misread as

Buyers assume everything arrives as the seller packed it, then open a claim about a missing box. The repack is the published default, not a mistake.

Storing

Two clocks start when the line reads stored

Free shelf time for an ordinary purchase is ninety days, counted from the receipt state, with an email warning before it ends. Past it, the posted position is that unclaimed goods count as given up, and cleared in a batch without any further notice. Parcels that arrive without matching any order get thirty days instead, and nobody can be reminded about those because nobody knows whose they are.

The other clock is shorter and catches far more people: a hundred and twenty hours to ask for a swap or a send-back. It is covered on the fixing page, but it starts at the same moment, so the two are worth reading together.

Four cards reading 120 hours, 90 days, day 60 to 90, and 30 days, each with a short explanation — Four windows, all counted from the same event. Three of them can be missed without any warning reaching you.

Can I pay to keep things on the shelf longer?

Posted rule

Yes, inside a narrow window. The value-added service list prices extra storage at ten yuan per item identifier per month, and limits requests to goods that have already been stored for sixty to ninety days, with six months as the ceiling.

Read on Whalebuy's Introduction to Warehouse Value Added Service Projects page, 21 and 22 October 2026.

In practice

Diary the sixtieth day, not the ninetieth. Ask too early and the request is outside the window; ask too late and the free period has already lapsed.

Misread as

The extension is read as something you can arrange at any point. It is only offered in the final third of the free period.

Storing

Work you can buy at the warehouse

Six kinds of paid work appear in the published list, and most of them are cheap enough to be worth it on a parcel of any size. The rehearsal is the interesting one: the box is actually built and weighed before you commit to freight, and if you cancel before the goods leave the shelf the fee comes back in full.

A table of warehouse services with what each does and the posted price in yuan — The posted figures, redrawn. One wrapping entry prices itself differently in the list and in its own description, so both readings are noted.

What does a packing rehearsal actually get me?

Posted rule

The rehearsal page says you select stored items, choose a packing method and an intended route, pay the fee, and the warehouse packs and weighs within a day. Value-added and protection charges are waived during the rehearsal because it is a simulation. You then pay real freight against a real weight.

Read on Whalebuy's Instructions for the Parcel Rehearsal Function page, 21 and 22 October 2026.

In practice

It converts a guess into a number before you are committed. On a bulky order where the size figure might beat the scale figure, that is the difference between choosing a route well and choosing it hopefully.

Misread as

People expect the rehearsal to lock a price. It locks a weight. A rehearsal left unsubmitted for thirty days is cancelled automatically, and a cancellation you request after packing is not refunded.

Storing

What bundling is worth, with the company's own arithmetic

The packaging page works a real example on a route to the United States. The rate it uses: a first step of two hundred and five yuan for the opening half kilo, seventy-two yuan for each further half kilo, and eight yuan of handling on the parcel. Three items weighing seven hundred, eleven hundred and sixteen hundred grams cost one thousand and seventy-one yuan sent separately. Put in one box totalling three thousand four hundred grams, the same goods cost six hundred and forty-five.

Four hundred and twenty-six yuan of that difference comes from two places: you stop paying the opening step three times, and you stop rounding three part-steps up to full ones. Our bundling calculator runs the same arithmetic on your own figures.

There is a ceiling on the idea. The same page warns that weight and quantity are what a customs service uses to decide whether a parcel is personal or commercial, and puts a ten-kilo box firmly on the wrong side of that line, along with large counts of one identical item.

Why will the system not let me put everything in one box?

Posted rule

Two published reasons. Goods with route restrictions limit the whole parcel when you select everything at once, and any item with a side of ninety centimetres or more is automatically flagged to travel on its own.

Read on Whalebuy's Why can't the products in my warehouse be submitted and shipped together? page, 21 and 22 October 2026.

In practice

Group by restriction, not by order date. One bottle of something liquid can cut a long box down to a short list of routes, and a single long item will leave the group whatever you do.

Misread as

The restriction is read as a glitch. It is the route filter doing its job, and the reason shown on the route you wanted is the place to look.

Next: the photographs that arrive before anything flies.