Pre-shipment photos before paying

I make Proof, a small page for one job. You write what you agreed, attach photos of the real thing, and both people press Confirm. Buyers pay a personal shopper in China from a chat photo, then argue about a clasp or a length nobody wrote down.

The question is simple. Pre-shipment photos before paying. If you are about to send money, you want pictures of this piece, not the listing, and you want them while you can still say no.

A listing photo is an ad

Someone else's product photo shows what they hope to sell. It does not show what will be in the mailer. A lot of personal shoppers in China buy from Taobao, 1688, or a small workshop. The picture in the chat is often the factory sample. Your order can be a different unit.

A screenshot is a weak record for three ordinary reasons.

• Crop it or save it again and you have a new file. The old one is gone.
• The words around it sit in a thread that only one of you kept.
• After you pay, "that is not the length I asked for" is a fight. Before you pay, it is a correction.

The photo that helps is the one of the object you are actually buying, with the specs beside it, while the shopper can still fix the order.

The calendar this week

I looked the dates up. On September 22, 2026, a Xinhua report on the Chinese government's English site said the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday runs from September 25 to 27, and the National Day holiday runs from October 1 to 7. Shippers call that October week Golden Week.

Today is September 28. Mid-Autumn is over. October 1 is Thursday. SEKO Logistics, in its 2026 Golden Week guide, calls September 28 to 30 the critical final working window before the holiday. The same guide says many factories in mainland China are expected to close or cut back that week, trucking gets tight as drivers head home, and the backlog can run into mid-October. If the workshop has not shot your piece by September 30, you may not see it until after October 7.

If someone says the photos will come "after the holiday," ask which one. After October 7 is not the same promise as tomorrow.

Holiday dates, from the September 22 report: China's Sept. 22, 2026 holiday note. The working-window note: SEKO on Golden Week 2026.

What to ask for before you pay

Do this before you pay, when the item already exists. Custom work often runs in a different order.

• One written spec. Piece name, length, material, color, clasp, quantity, and any flaw they already know about. Not five voice notes.
• Photos of this unit. Overall, a scale reference such as a ruler, the clasp or the joint, and a close-up if something is off. A catalog image does not count.
• A yes that points at that spec and those files. "Ok" in chat is easy to lose. A confirm on the same page is what you both still have in November.

If they cannot show the piece, you are paying for a description. For a repeat buy of something standard, you might accept that. For a one-off, I would wait.

Custom pieces are often pay first

Some orders do not exist until you pay. Custom length is like that. On YueFetch, the jewelry shop I also run, the public steps are quote, you pay, we buy, then a freight forwarder in Huizhou or Shenzhen exports. It is a Hong Kong shop for custom Cuban and tennis jewelry from Guangdong, not a general Taobao agent. Photos come when the seller or the forwarder has the piece. That is when I use Proof. The specs you already approved and those photos go on one page, and I do not ship until both sides Confirm. Proof is not the YueFetch checkout. It is the record around the pictures. If you want a quote, start here: yuefetch.com/request.

How to start

You can look at a finished packet with no account. The sample is a studio key handover, not a bracelet: the sample Proof. Terms, two photos, both people confirmed, one public link. Same shape I use for jewelry.

To make one, open the shopper template: start a shopper packet. It prefills a short agreement you can edit. The piece, the specs, and a line that it ships only after both sides confirm. You add the photos. Proof stores the original files and a SHA-256 hash of each one. If a file is swapped later, the hash will not match. You invite the other person by email. They open the link in a browser. No app and no account. They Confirm with that email.

After both of you confirm, the page is read-only. You share one /p link. You can also download a PDF and a zip of the files and hashes.

Free covers 3 packets in a calendar month. The person you invite never pays to view or to Confirm. If this becomes every order, Pro is $24 a month or $240 a year.

Under this note there is one button. It starts that free shopper packet. If you want to see the shape first, use the sample link above.

What this is not

Proof is not notarization, and it is not a certified timestamp. The time on a photo is whatever the phone reported. A hash shows whether the stored file changed after upload. It does not show who held the camera, and it does not show that the metal matches the listing. Confirming by email is not an identity check. I built the page as a shared record both sides locked before the parcel moved. I did not build a court stamp.