Who runs the Orientdig Spreadsheet guide, and what pays for it
This site is an independent editorial guide to one narrow thing: finding an item on a Chinese marketplace and handing it to OrientDig. It covers the Orientdig Spreadsheet, which is the catalogue you pick from, and the search work you do when the catalogue does not have what you want. It is written by a small editorial desk that has been publishing guides to agent-based shopping for several years.
We are a partner of OrientDig. That means we have an agreement with the agent and are paid when readers sign up through our links. It does not mean OrientDig writes, reviews or approves anything here, and it does not mean we are the agent. We hold no stock, sell nothing, and have no access to any OrientDig system.
How we make money
Links to orientdig.com on this site are partner links. If you register through one and later order, we may be paid a commission by the agent. You are not charged more for using them, and every one of them is marked with a badge showing where it goes.
The catalogue links go to a catalogue we run ourselves, which is why they carry a different badge. Nothing is sold there either.
What this arrangement does not buy: a good review. The page about the agent includes a section on when to use a different one, and we would rather lose a commission than tell you an agent suits a job it does not.
Our rules
What we will not do
Four commitments. If you catch us breaking one, write and we will fix it and log the fix.
No invented numbers
We publish no prices, freight rates, delivery times, storage periods or ratings of our own. Where a figure appears it is quoted from a named source with the date we checked it, and mostly that source is the agent itself.
No untested links
Every outbound link is requested and checked before publication. We do not guess at address patterns, which is why we link to the help centre index rather than to sections inside it.
No pretending to be the agent
The site name carries the OrientDig brand because that is the agent this guide covers. Every page says we are not it, and every outbound card shows where it goes before you click.
No selling and no stock
We do not sell goods, hold inventory, take payments or handle parcels. If anything on this site ever appears to offer you a product directly, it is a mistake and we want to hear about it.
What this guide covers, and what it leaves alone
This site is about the search: turning what you can see into words a Chinese marketplace will match, then confirming the result is the same item. Ordering, the warehouse and freight are covered as far as you need them to finish the job, using what the agent publishes.
Things we deliberately leave to others: whether a particular find is worth the money, reading warehouse photographs in detail, and the batch and grading vocabulary used in some categories. Each of those is a subject in its own right, and covering them thinly here would be worse than not covering them.
We also do not write about anything we cannot check. Where we had to stop, we say so on the page rather than filling the gap with something plausible.
Who to contact
One address, and a real person reads it. Corrections, questions about a page, and takedown requests all go to the same place. We aim to answer inside a few working days.
For anything involving an order, a payment or a parcel, write to OrientDig instead through your account or its help centre. We genuinely cannot help, and writing here first only costs you time.