Setting up your own cost spreadsheet in seven steps

Nine columns and three status values, chosen so the sheet stays maintainable. That figure is the reason this reading exists, and everything below traces back to the same 96-entry sample collected on 2026-10-05.

The six stages, and their share of the wait

A EU standard order reaches the door in a median of 21 days and a p90 of 36. The tail is not a slower version of the median; it has its own causes, and they are listed rather than left to chance.

Stage durations on the reference lane
Stage	p10	Median	p90
Order to warehouse	2	3	6–8
QC and photo set	1	2	4–5
Packing	1	2	3–5
Export handling	2	3	6–8
Import clearance	1	2	6–9
Last mile	3–5	5–6	11–15

Measured from order timestamps in the 96-order sample. The last-mile stage carries the largest single share of the median total.

Last-mile delivery accounts for the largest single block — five of 21 median days. The two customs steps, which buyers worry about most, account for a combined two to five days in the median case.

Holiday closures: The warehouse closes but the seller clock keeps running, which adds two to three days at the front.
Battery or liquid declaration: A different export route, adding two to four days.
Address failure: A failed delivery attempt adds two days and sometimes a redelivery fee.
Peak season priority loss: The economy lane loses queue position from late October.

The check, grouped by what it protects

The checklist is deliberately short. Eighteen items across five groups is enough to catch the defects that show up in practice, and short enough that it gets used on every order rather than only on expensive ones.

The five groups and what a failure means
Group	Checks	A failure means
Shape and silhouette	4	Wrong item or wrong cut — closer to a return
Colour	3	Judge hue, not brightness; warehouse light is not studio light
Markings and labels	4	Missing tag is a query; wrong tag is a return
Measurements	4	Compare against an item you already own
Packaging	3	Damage in transit — a query now, a dispute later

The thresholds are ours. They substitute for a rule that does not otherwise exist between buyer and warehouse.

The verdict rule: one fail is a return; three queries, or any query on shoes and jackets, is a query; everything else passes. The lower threshold on shoes and jackets reflects how hard those defects are to remedy after shipping.

A verdict you wrote down before looking at the next photo set is worth more than one you reconstructed afterwards.

Three fee models across eleven agents

Across the eleven agents we checked, fee models fall into three shapes — percentage, tiered and flat. Which one is cheapest depends on your order size, and the difference at $150 is larger than the difference between lanes.

Effective service fee at three order values
Order value	Percentage model	Flat model	Tiered model
$60	$1.80–$4.80	$5.00	$2.40
$200	$6.00–$16.00	$5.00	$8.00
$600	$18.00–$48.00	$5.00	$21.00

Modelled from each agent’s published model. The flat model wins below about $170 and loses above it.

Free storage windows run from 30 to 90 days, and the clock start differs: warehouse check-in at some agents, purchase at others. That difference is worth about a week, which matters more than the window length at the margin.

Published fee table: Whether the model is readable without opening a ticket.
Storage clock start: Check-in or purchase — a week of difference.
Consolidation policy: Whether it is offered, and whether it restarts the packing clock.
Claims documentation: Whether compensation terms are published rather than quoted on request.

Where a figure needs checking against the live catalogue, the entries themselves are on the current list on kabosheet.

The step that changes the estimate

Volumetric weight is volume divided by a divisor, usually 5000. In the heavy (> 2 kg) band the packed dimensions typically decide the bill rather than the scale, which is why an estimate built from item weight alone is a lower bound rather than a quote.

Packing effect on billed weight, worked cases
Packed dimensions	Volume	Volumetric weight	Billed at
30 × 20 × 10 cm	6,000 cm³	1.20 kg	Scale weight if higher
38 × 28 × 22 cm	23,408 cm³	4.68 kg	Volumetric
44 × 32 × 26 cm	36,608 cm³	7.32 kg	Volumetric
52 × 38 × 34 cm	67,184 cm³	13.44 kg	Volumetric, two tiers up

Calculated at the 5000 divisor. Some carriers use 6000 or 4000, which changes the result by up to 20%.

Rehearsal exists precisely for this. It packs the parcel before the international payment so the freight can be quoted on the packed dimensions — and it is the stage where estimates most often change.

Ask for packed dimensions, not item dimensions.
Request compression where the category tolerates it.
Check the volumetric weight before paying, not after.
Remove one bulky item rather than changing lane when a parcel sits on a boundary.

The months that change the answer

Seasonality hits transit harder than it hits freight. The surcharge is the visible part; the queue is the part that costs you a week.

Twelve months, freight and transit medians
Month	Median freight	Median transit	Window state
Jan	$9.80	18 days	Open
Feb	$10.40	21 days	Tight — origin holiday
Mar–Jun	$9.10–$9.60	16–18 days	Open
Jul	$9.50	18 days	Tight — EU network
Aug	$11.20	22 days	Surcharge begins
Sep	$10.80	21 days	Surcharge
Oct	$12.60	26 days	Surcharge plus delay
Nov	$12.90	25 days	Surcharge
Dec	$11.80	28 days	Tight — cut-off

Medians across the sample. Monthly splits are small in some cells and are shown for shape rather than precision.

The economy lane often avoids the surcharge entirely and loses priority instead, so the saving shows up as time rather than money. That trade is worth taking in September and questionable in November.

Eight handoffs, eight owners

Eight handoffs separate payment from delivery. Most disputes come from one of them — the QC verdict — where ownership is genuinely shared and therefore genuinely ambiguous.

Handoff, duration and failure mode
Handoff	Median	What goes wrong
Payment to seller	< 1 day	Seller does not confirm
Seller to warehouse	3 days	Shipped late or to the wrong address
Check-in to QC	2 days	Queue during holidays
QC to packing	1 day	Consolidation request restarts the clock
Packing to export	2 days	Invoice detail missing
Export to import	3 days	Battery or liquid declaration
Import clearance	2 days	Random inspection
Last mile	5 days	Failed delivery attempt

Medians from the 96-order sample.

Designing around the sequence is mostly about the two ends. Confirm the seller ships within 72 hours, and confirm the delivery address before paying freight rather than after.

Set a 72-hour rule at the seller handoff and act on it.
Write the QC verdict down before looking at the next photo set.
Submit consolidation before packing, not after.
Confirm the destination address before paying freight.

The words that get used interchangeably

Four terms carry most of the misunderstanding: billed weight is not scale weight, rehearsal is not QC, and consolidation is not packing.

Landed cost: Item plus domestic delivery plus service fee plus freight plus duty plus insurance. Six segments, not one.
Billed weight: The greater of scale weight and volumetric weight. What the tariff applies to.
Volumetric weight: Volume in cubic centimetres divided by a divisor, usually 5000.
Rehearsal: Packing the parcel before the international payment so freight can be quoted on packed dimensions.
Consolidation: Combining parcels from several sellers into one shipment. Not the same as packing.
QC: Photographs taken at the warehouse before shipping; a separate step from rehearsal.

The common misuses are predictable: “billed weight” used to mean scale weight, “consolidation” used for combining items from a single seller, and “landed cost” used for the item price plus freight alone.

Billed weight ≠ scale weight.
Consolidation ≠ packing.
Rehearsal ≠ QC.
Landed cost ≠ item price + freight.

Where the money actually goes

Most estimates fail because they treat the item price as the cost. Across the 96 entries we hold, the non-item segments on a pants/shorts order run from $7.50 to $74.40 — a range wide enough to change the decision about whether to order at all.

The six segments, with their sample ranges
Segment	Range	What moves it
Item value	$12.52–$168.48	Catalogue mix
Domestic delivery	$0.40–$3.10	Weight band
Service fee	$1.20–$9.80	Fee model, order value
International freight	$14.80–$24.30 at heavy (> 2 kg)	Billed weight, lane
Duty	$0.00–$17.40	Declared value, destination
Insurance	$0.00–$2.60	Declared value; optional

Item value is a published figure read from the source listings. The other five are modelled ranges and are labelled as such wherever they appear.

The practical consequence is that optimising the item price is a different activity from optimising the order. A 10% cheaper item saves 10% of one segment; a packing change can move two bands of another.

Lane by lane, on the same parcel

Lane choice looks like a speed decision and is really a step-function decision. For a heavy (> 2 kg) parcel, EU standard sits at $7.10–$11.90 at 1.5 kg, against $5.90–$9.40 on US economy.

Lane cost and transit at 1.5 kg
Lane	Freight at 1.5 kg	Median days	p90 days
US economy	$5.90–$9.40	19	31
US express	$11.40–$17.20	11	21
UK standard	$6.40–$10.80	16	28
EU standard	$7.10–$11.90	21	36

Freight modelled from published tariffs; transit measured from stage timestamps in the sample.

The cost gap widens with weight while the time gap does not. At 1.5 kg the express premium is $5.50; at 8 kg it is $13.60, while the days saved fall from eight to seven. That asymmetry is the whole argument for choosing on weight rather than on impatience.

EU standard: $7.10–$62.30 across the full weight range, median 21 days.
Under 3 kg, express is usually worth it; above 5 kg it rarely is.
Above 9–10 kg the question becomes parcel count rather than lane.