You have found something. A logo a few millimetres off centre, a seam that puckers, a colour that is not the colour in the album. The checklist worked. Now comes the part no checklist covers: you have three buttons and each one costs you something different.
How to read QC photos is about finding the flaw. This page is about the twenty minutes after you find it.
Classify it before you decide anything
The three remedies map onto three kinds of problem, and people pick the wrong one mostly because they skipped this step.
Wrong item. Not the model, colourway or size you ordered. Not a quality judgement at all, nothing to argue about, and handled differently from everything else — see when the wrong item reaches the warehouse.
A defect in this unit. Glue residue, a crooked stitch run, a scuff, a crushed box, a print misaligned on this one garment. Another unit from the same seller would probably not have it.
A characteristic of the batch. Proportions slightly off, font weight not quite right, leather grain wrong. Every unit has it, because it is what the mould or the pattern produces.
The third category is the one that ruins replacements. A buyer who exchanged a pair of shoes over a printing position:
I ordered a pair from sixgods using allchinabuy and had it exchange because the print on the heel is too low. The exchange pair has arrived but the issue is still the same. I still have it in my storage now and I don't know if I can refund it in my wallet.
u/kenspotifs, r/FashionReps, 31 October 2024
The thread is on the sixgoods evidence page. One buyer, one order, not proof of anything general — but a clean illustration of the trap. If the flaw is in the batch, a replacement is a second copy of it plus several more weeks. What a batch is helps if you are unsure which category you are in.
Accept
Costs you the item, and the item is the thing you wanted. Accepting is right more often than forum culture admits: warehouse lighting is fluorescent, phone cameras correct aggressively, and many "defects" spotted at 400% zoom are photographic artefacts invisible on a body from two metres.
Accept when the flaw is small, cosmetic, in a place nobody looks, or when you cannot tell from the photo whether it is real. Buyers do this knowingly, and say so in the same breath as naming the defects:
I have the LV Trainers from Budgetshoess here, they are really good for the price but the shoe certainly has one or two flaws that I have noticed.
u/FeeCommercial5397, r/CoutureReps, 29 December 2024
That comment is on the Budgetshoess evidence page. One buyer, one pair, and what it shows is a posture rather than a fact: at a given price, some flaws are the deal rather than a failure of it.
The one thing not to accept is a measurement. A garment five centimetres off the seller's own size chart at the warehouse will be five centimetres off in your hallway. That case has its own page.
Replace
Costs you time, and possibly a domestic return trip in China. Right when the flaw is specific to your unit and the item is one you still want.
It works when the seller is responsive. One buyer described a swap inside an ordinary ordering conversation:
HappyWhale is great, I’m currently in the process of getting some items with her from Afen factory (best for Goyard) and the QC pics came within 2 days, she changed an item for me that I wasn’t sold on, and we’re now ready to ship.
u/spiritatbay, r/FashionReps, 2 July 2025
The same evidence page holds a much less happy account from a year later. That is the honest picture: two buyers, two outcomes, no rate of anything.
Before requesting one, ask three questions. Is the flaw in this unit or in the batch? Is the item still in stock in your size, or does the swap become a wait with no end date and possibly a stockout? And how long is your agent's free storage window, given everything else in the parcel is now waiting too?
Refund
Costs you the item and, usually, more time than anyone quotes. The refund typically lands as agent balance rather than on your card, so what you are buying is the freedom to spend the money on something else through the same agent.
Refund when the flaw is in the batch, when the seller has stopped replying, or when you have lost confidence in the order. It is also the slowest of the three, and buyers say so:
I can guarantee that you will wait for that refund or exchange long enough that you will not buy another size from him. I am never buying from chaosmade ever again. You should return the shorts asap, you going to wait maybe weeks before getting refunded and then you should buy shorts from another seller.
u/13ralexh, r/FashionReps, 20 June 2025
That is one angry buyer's account of one seller, in context on the CHAOS evidence page. We have not verified it and we are not grading anyone on it. Take it as a reminder that "refund" is a process with a duration, not a button that undoes the order.
Returns do get accepted, including where the complaint was precisely that the QC photos did not match what was advertised:
Asked for lvbag which was supposed to be from a dutyfree factory (+-220euros). QC photos were completely off from lookbook.
u/loloxdasdas, r/stockholmreps, 2 July 2026
The clock behind all three
Every option above is priced in weeks, and the meter runs on the whole parcel, not just the disputed item. Free storage ends. Other sellers restock and sell out again.
So the expensive decision is not choosing wrong. It is not choosing — leaving the item unapproved and the ticket unwritten while you re-open the same four photos. Pick a category, pick a remedy, put the order number in the first line, and say what you want.
And decide before you approve the parcel for shipping. That click is the hinge: everything on this page is available on one side of it and effectively gone on the other, as disputes and refunds with a shopping agent sets out. If the item is fine and you are moving on, the link decoder recovers any product link that has since stopped opening.