Alibaba is a B2B platform that helps connect suppliers, primarily from China, with buyers. Through Alibaba, companies around the world can choose a manufacturer and have products made and shipped to them, both ready-to-ship or customized goods. They can also sell to global wholesale buyers.
Alibaba.com allows international businesses access to a global B2B e-commerce platform. For example, Amazon vendors looking to buy inventory can find manufacturers on Alibaba.
Alibaba makes it easy enough to find a wholesale supplier at low costs. It offers an ever-expanding choice of suppliers and an excellent search engine. But having numerous suppliers offering countless products and services does not guarantee you find a trustworthy supplier. There are many reports of scams on Alibaba, as well as other issues such as customer service, packaging, shipping times, and more.
Most suppliers on Alibaba are manufacturers, but most require large minimum orders. As middlemen, wholesalers usually allow for smaller orders.
When you are on Alibaba, you are shopping for suppliers. You want to screen for suppliers rather than products. To screen suppliers, use Trade Assurance, Gold, and Assessed suppliers.
There are three simple ways you can use to verify a supplier on Alibaba. I have never once being scammed by a single supplier on Alibaba that doesn’t mean there are not out there, there are; but if you are smart enough and look for the right thing and be careful when you are negotiating, there is a way you can find a supplier that you can trust and work with.
So the number one most important thing you need to do is check their verification status. There are actually three different kinds of verification status for any suppliers on Alibaba.
1. The first one is A & V: It looks like a little Arabic here; the A mean Authentication and V mean Verification. What this actually mean is that, the company name, the business license and the business contacts information was verified and for me, that’s not enough evident in order to trust to work with someone. So I do not recommend trust A&V as a legit evident to work with the suppliers.
2. Onsite Check: The Onsite Check which is basically where Alibaba staffs go to their factory and they look at exactly what they are doing, they can see the factory, they tested it, they basically been onsite and they verified that, yes this is actually the real company.
Now this is not a guarantee that you will never get scam but if a company is willing to the length of building a factory where one can actually buy one and get one free or even streaming live. I don’t think anyone can go to that length just to scam people. But this will give reasons to, when you see a ghost suppliers on Alibaba you will know them.
In Onsite Check, it has a symbol like a house underneath it. That’s the sign that this person is actually a valid supplier and it just stronger than the A&V verification.
3. Assessed Supplier: Assessed Supplier is extremely I mean extremely valid, I mean it almost impossible to get scam by Assessed Supplier. That will tell, it hard to find them because this is a lot they have to pay a ton of money for validation of paper work, they have to go through in order to validated and verified.
For the assessed supplier; it has everything that onsite check has plus about twice as much, they have a lot more. They even have a verification of documents. They have to be able to pull up and show to someone to validate their company.
Those are the three things you need to look out for when looking for a supplier or purchase something from Alibaba. I recommend Onsite Check, go for supplier rate. Assessed Supplier if you are really afraid of take risk. Go for Assessed Supplier but good if you find them, they are really hard to find because it hard to get that level and again I have never used assessed supplier, I always used ghost supply rate and I never had a single issue.
Communication: Communication boast trust.
Communication is very important if you are pretty good in reading people I know this is not the objective. It is an insight and using suggestive and inside feeling to figure out if you can trust someone but it has served me well and I am a pretty good reader of people. So when I communicate with them, I key into: how often they respond, the way they respond and that’s how to build trust in a relationship with someone, I usually can tell if I am kind enough. So I will recommend you start communicate right away. There are two ways you can do this.
1. WhatsApp: I don’t recommend WhatsApp for irrational conversation because, your conversation can be deleted anytime and no retrieval, so I do not recommend you communicate on WhatsApp for a conversation that need a future records or references.
2. Skype: Skype is nice because you can actually go back and have a conversation
How to Pay Your Suppliers on Alibaba To Avoid Scams And Fraud
Payment Terms: There are many ways you can buy something or make payment on Alibaba as there are on other e-commerce platform. I have narrow down three ways that is hard to get scam on Alibaba.
1. PayPal
2. Trade Assurance
3. Bank Transfer or Telegram transfer
1. PayPal: If you purchase something using PayPal account, there is 4.4% fees you will have to pay. Technically, they have to pay it because they are the one selling the items but they will add that to what is called your profile invoice. The invoice they send you and you will pay that amount. The good thing about PayPal is, if they scam you, you can go contest to PayPal. If the company does not have a valid tracking number to ship to your location or warehouse then you will win the battle and will get your money back.
2. Trade Assurance: If the company allow you to do Trade Assurance here is what it mean. You paid them some certain amount of money for them to start production, that money does not go to the supplier account, it go to a holding account. Then once they have finished building the products and they sent you pictures to show you that they have finished. Here is what will happen. After you pay the rest of the money and they ship you the products. Remember that money stayed in a holding account, so they don’t actually get the money until you click a button that say ‘’The product was delivered’’ and until you click that, it stayed there and no one can touch it. So it’s very safe way to purchase something from Alibaba even if they try to scam you there is no way they can take your money unless you allow them to. PayPal and Trade Assurance are the two very solid ways to purchase something from Alibaba. Remember when I said PayPal is 4.4% fees. Trade Assurance is 5% fees. So going to pay a large sum of fees and in the same scenarios, they have to pay Alibaba that fees so they are going to add it to your profile invoice and make you pay that.
3. Bank Transfer: Telegram transfer is third way and lest secure but the lowest fees. So what this mean is, if you are transferring money from your bank account to theirs, here if they scam you, it is almost impossible and a lest very difficult to get your money back because they already have your money and get it back is not like someone you can go to and take your money back so be careful with this one.
What I will like you to do is start up with PayPal or Trade Assurance for small amount. Once you borrow relationship with supplier. You can also check their respond rate. If their respond rates, rate up to 94 is high and it gives you more reason to trust them.
Here you can also set up term like: you said look, because this is less secure than PayPal and trade assurance. I like to do 30% advance payment to you then you bring the products then I will carry out inspection and approval then I will pay the remaining 70%. So you can work with the supplier using the working me procedure especially as a company. If they are against that, don’t go with them and if they really want your business then obviously they going to work with you.
Some people don’t do this because they are afraid of risk and you are completely turn off by risk, they don’t do it. Because there is always going to be risk but for me it been worth it. I've passed income now, I can sleep and make money. I wake up in the morning and look at my phone and there is lot of money there. Here is what I am going to share with you. It is not all about taking risk but where you put the risk, just be smart with your risk, be calculated about it. Off course, everything is risk at some level. So if it is the supplier you can trust, it better to put the risk with your money and pay little high fee, once you can trust them, transfer the rest over to the supplier save your money and pay less fee and risk less of what they are trying to scam you. Very likely they can work with you for a while.
I hope this help. Leave a comment below and let me know what you think about this post. Thank you for visit my blog and for reading my post. Hope to see you here again. Please subscribe here
Please feel free to leave a comment below and share your own experience with us.
Thank you visit my blog and your time reading my posts............Please if you don't mind........subscribe to our newsletter here. it's free.