Legal risks that cannot be ignored in cross-border e-commerce
1. Overseas purchasing
Overseas purchasing (commonly known as “Haidai”) refers to domestic consumers entrusting others (can be acquaintances, or individuals, organizations or websites that specialize in this business) to purchase specific consumer goods abroad and then carry or mail them to domestic consumers. Personal purchasing agents later developed into professional purchasing agent websites, providing consumers with a complete overseas purchasing agent process and services. Since the process of purchasing goods overseas by purchasing agent websites is not transparent and they basically do not provide overseas shopping invoices, consumers have blind spots in the information flow, capital flow and logistics links of goods. Despite this, due to the huge price difference between purchasing agents and domestic counter prices, online purchasing agents are still very popular among domestic consumers.
2. Direct purchase import (BC)
Overseas direct purchase is also called overseas direct mail. It refers to domestic consumers confirming transactions on e-commerce platforms, and consumers or logistics companies completing online shopping and electronic payment of travel tax through the platform, and then overseas sellers transport the goods into the country by parcel or express delivery. Merchants set up warehouses overseas to distribute and collect goods according to customer orders, and deliver them to domestic customers through international express delivery directly to China or through their own cooperative logistics forwarding companies, international airlines, etc.
3. Bonded Import (BBC)
The bonded model refers to cross-border e-commerce or logistics companies using customs special supervision areas and bonded warehousing policies to transport goods into special supervision areas in advance. Once an order is generated, the items can be quickly packaged and shipped to consumers from special supervision areas. In this process, the green customs clearance channel provided by the special supervision area will facilitate the customs clearance of related items from within the area to outside the area. The entry and exit of goods in the special supervision area are strictly supervised by the customs, which is a more transparent customs clearance channel. Under the bonded stocking model, imported goods are supervised by both customs and commodity inspection, and the declared tax-paid price is the pricing of the e-commerce platform.