The Ultimate Guide to Spot Fake Chinese Wholesalers
As a wholesaler from China, I have many chances to see all sorts of scams from handbags to electronics. They are exposed by angry victims in business forums, blogs and even websites dedicated to Chinese scams. Reading them surely doesn’t feel good, not to say a lot of content sways from the wholesale topics to a pure hatred to the Chinese.
Scammers are obnoxious, but they are just a fraction compared to the legitimate ones. Their existence won’t dent the overall confidence of wholesaling from China. And more importantly, they are easier to spot and get rid of than you think, with this guide.
Check Reviews & Exclude Proven Scammers
What does your wholesaler look in the eyes of other buyers? Sometimes one thing that has happened to your wholesaler is enough to rule it out forever. You just need to take several minutes to find if your supplier has any priors.
The tip is to make a search on Google with the wholesaler’s business name, domain name, email address (prefix especially), telephone or cell phone number and other uniquely identifiable information. The aim is to see if your wholesaler has appeared or involved in any complaints, scam lists, and other negative conditions.
It should be mentioned that a legitimate company isn’t equal to that it should be of zero complaints. You need to make an analysis about each of your supplier’s cases, to make sure whether it’s of scam nature or just due to an unsatisfactory product or service, though wholesalers of the latter case are often not comfortable to work with too.
You are lucky if your wholesaler has been proven in a scamming activity. But most times no such confirmation is available. On the one hand, new wholesalers emerge like mushrooms these days, too rapidly to get reviewed; on the other hand, bogus websites are created faster than they die out. A latest listed scammer you have discovered is often out of date. So it rarely happens a wholesaler you are talking with has already been listed. In fact, you may be shocked to know a fake company could set up hundreds of websites in order to maximize their victims.
Checking reviews won’t help you decide right away which wholesalers you should buy from, as it calls for further evaluation to choose your business partner, but it gives you clues which wholesalers you should dismiss.
Examine Wholesale Websites
Check the following indicators of your wholesaler’s website. When isolated, they may not mean anything. When coming together, however, they should ring some alarm bells.
1) Is it an independent site or hosted on another website?
If the wholesaler is hosted on another site, like free space, and B2B portals such as alibaba.com, try to track down its own website. If you can’t find the wholesaler’s own web presence, leave it.
Many would trust wholesalers or suppliers on B2B portals and take it for granted all suppliers on these portals are trustworthy simply because these portals are real. Not like that. B2B portals are the most abused web resources by bad guys, especially the second-tier B2B portals, which have almost become the hunting grounds for scammers. Don’t trust recommended companies or products on those sites too. The status of these listings is bought with money, not earned with their quality.
Whenever you get a wholesaler on a third party, never stay there or try to send an inquiry. Instead, you should try to find the wholesaler’s own website. If you can’t track it down, drop it. Don’t waste your time. You have to make your purchase 100% secure.
2) Look at the Website Name
Cheaters look like cheaters. Though the name of a website doesn’t decide the nature of the company, there’s something in the domain name.
Several types of domain names should call your special attention:
1) domain names that contain numbers;
2) domain names that are meaningless;
3) domain names that sound too big or sound like hype; and
4) domain names that pretend to be official.
The following domain names are from a scammers list:
1st-phones.com
16988.cn
adidas-nike.net
3seal.biz
5y8l.com
bag-trading.com
super-electronics.com.cn
shopping-kingdom.com.cn
Tags: Lot, Wholesale, Wholesalers
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