Updates
What we checked, when we checked it, and what we got wrong
Everything on this site has a date attached because everything on it can change without warning: rates, routes, policies, and the wording of the official pages we quote.
This page is one ledger rather than a stream of articles. Nothing here is news about PonyBuy. It is a record of our own reading, including the two places where the official site disagrees with itself.
Corrections are welcome at [email protected] and get added here with the date.
The ledger
Newest first. Where an entry is about the official site rather than about this guide, it says so.
Guide published
First version of PonyBuy Spreadsheet Find. Every screenshot on the site was taken on this date, every outbound link was tested on this date, and every quoted line from the official guide was read on this date.
The search box shows more platforms than the guide names
The written beginner guide names Taobao, Tmall and 1688. The search box on the home page carries four platform marks, two of which are not on that list, one of them JD. We have not found an official page reconciling the two, so the guide describes both and recommends testing by pasting a link.
Image search and Find Similar are undocumented
An image icon sits inside the search field and every listing carries a Find Similar button. Neither appears in the beginner guide. We describe them as routes that exist on the page rather than as documented features.
Size bands on our example listing are body weight only
The listing we used throughout gives four size bands in kilograms and publishes no flat measurements. We treat that as a property of that seller rather than of PonyBuy, and we do not repeat the numbers as sizing advice.
Amount bearing screenshots are labelled
Four screenshots on this site contain money. All of them are the operator own sample values from official screenshots, and each caption says so. Nothing on this site should be read as a quote.
How this guide is maintained
Facts with a shelf life carry a review date in our own maintenance file. Anything numeric is quoted with its source and the date we read it, and nothing numeric appears in a page title or heading, because a heading is the hardest thing to keep current.
When the official site changes in a way that makes a sentence here wrong, the sentence gets changed and the change appears in the ledger above rather than being quietly edited.
We do not publish anything as news. Evergreen explanation marked up as news is one of the oldest tricks in this business, and it is not one we are interested in.
Official notices and coupons, and where they actually apply
Coupons are the part of the service most often misread, because the point at which they apply is not the point at which you spend the most. The official instructions put them at parcel submission: you tick items in the warehouse, submit a parcel, choose a shipping option, complete the declaration, and the coupon button appears near the bill amount at the bottom of that page. Pick one and the fee drops.
The sentence worth reading twice in that article is the limit: only one coupon can be used per parcel. Holding three coupons and one parcel means two of them do nothing. If the coupons differ in value, the order in which you split a large warehouse into parcels decides how much of that value you actually get, and that is a decision you make before you press submit, not after.
Note also where coupons do not reach. They are applied against the parcel bill, which is the international shipping step. The first payment, covering the item and the seller's domestic delivery into the warehouse, happens weeks earlier on a different page.
For announcements rather than discounts, the help centre is the place that gets updated, and changes we notice are logged with dates at updates.
