Team-up prices: a lower price that only exists once a group has paid
A team-up price needs other buyers to pay before a time limit. For an agent order that means waiting on strangers, so naming the price you paid for matters.
Team-up prices that need other buyers
A team-up price, 拼团, is lower than the solo price and only becomes real once enough buyers have paid. Taobao's rules for the team-up tool (18 July 2017, still listed in the rules centre on 19 October 2026) spell out the mechanics. A group opens when the first buyer taps the “N-person group” button and pays. It forms when the number of paying buyers reaches the target within the time limit. If time runs out first, the group ends and the system refunds everyone in it.
Until the group forms the seller cannot ship; the seller's order screen shows the order as waiting for the group. The same rules require the team-up price to be the lowest the item has carried in the previous 30 days, and show team-up items in the mobile app only.
The solo price beside the group price
During a team-up the listing shows two ways to buy. One is the ordinary purchase at the solo price, which works like any other checkout. The other is the group button, which shows the lower price and the group size. When the team-up period ends, the page returns to a single price.
A buyer can only open one group for the same item at a time, the rules say, but can join several. Team-up items also take fewer discounts: the rules allow coin deductions and two kinds of red packet, but not store coupons, store red packets or cross-store threshold savings.
A group the purchaser would have to fill
For an agent order, the group price raises an awkward question: whose group? The purchaser could open a group on the agent account and wait for strangers to join, or join a group someone else has opened. Either way the result depends on other buyers paying in time, and the agent cannot ship to its warehouse until the group forms.
The archived CNFans pages never mentioned team-up purchases. Pinduoduo, a large Chinese marketplace, is built around this way of buying; if a platform's listings are only cheap as a group, ask the agent before paying whether it buys at group prices at all, and which price your payment covers.
Refunds when a group never forms
Check the specific platform campaign’s rule for a group that fails and ask how any marketplace refund would be reconciled with your agent order. A platform refund to its purchaser and money returned to your bank are separate stages; this site does not verify a current CNFans refund route.
A failed group also costs time. The order sat waiting for the group, then came back as a refund, and the solo price may have changed meanwhile. If you would rather have the item than the saving, tell the purchaser to buy at the solo price straight away.
Discounts that will not stack on a group price
The team-up rules shut out most of the discounts a shopper might expect to add. Store red packets, store coupons and cross-store threshold savings do not apply to team-up items; only coin deductions, red packets and Alipay red packets do, and those belong to whichever account pays. The group price is therefore close to the final price for an agent order, which makes it easy to compare with the solo price.
The rules also keep a team-up item out of other campaigns while the group runs, so a listing in a team-up will not be in a flash slot at the same time. One timed mechanism at a time is the platform's design, and it makes reading the listing simpler.
Naming the price your payment covers
Write which price you paid for. If you paid the agent at the group price, say whether to wait for a group and for how long, and what to do if it fails. If you paid at the solo price, say so, so that the purchaser does not join a group and leave your order waiting.
- Group price: wait for the group, or buy solo if it has not formed when the order is reached.
- Solo price: buy at once and ignore the group button.
- Either way: confirm which price was paid to the seller.