Is Alibaba Safe? 7 Scams to AVOID on Alibaba!

hey guys and welcome back to the official sources of kian youtube channel so you're looking to place an order on alibaba.com and you're wondering am i going to get scammed is alibaba safe well this video is going to teach you all about how not to get scammed on a platform so if that's for you check it out and let's go [Music] for those of you who don't know me my name is kian gozari and i've been living and working in china for the past 10 years in that time i've manufactured over two and a half thousand products visited more than 500 factories and attended more than 20 canton fairs that's led me to working with brands such as the olympics and the nba and with the nba i was lucky enough to work with uh steph curry for three learn some projects as well uh which is a lot of fun as well as supplying amazon sellers directly as well now this channel is all about how to teach you about how to master the art of sourcing products from china so if you're new to the channel make sure you hit that subscribe button and tap the bell to turn on post notifications so you can stay up to date of the latest of what's going on in china and if you're feeling extra generous feel free to smash that like button for me real quick and if you hit that like button that will guarantee you luck for the next 10 years so go ahead and do it so is alibaba a safe place to purchase products for your brand well the answer is yes and no i've had plenty of people who have tell me they've had amazing experiences on the platform they've found amazing suppliers who've made a lot of money connecting with the right manufacturers and i've also heard the opposite as well where people have had a very negative experience they've actually lost quite a lot of money because they've been scammed on the platform so it's very very important that you use a platform in the right way and adopting the right principles now i have made another video which is my top seven alibaba sourcing hacks in order for you to find the best manufacturer which i'll link above so definitely check that out and also play at the end of this video as well but the purpose of this video is to show you the top seven scams to avoid but make sure you watch all the way to the end because i want to add a bonus in there as well uh to show you how to find the best manufacturer applying these principles i'm going to do that in under 60 seconds so let's dive into the top seven scams to avoid and i'll see you there let's go so scam number one uh the supplier will send you a great quality sample which you'll then approve for the order but in order to send you very poor quality production but you've approved that nice sampling and you get a very bad quality battery production that's very very short-term thinking by the supplier because now they've lost you as a customer but some people still do it because they just want to make as much money as possible on that order and do that as many times as possible not only will they give you a great sample but also give you a great price just to confirm your order and then just send you some random stuff now there's three things you can do about that first of all use trade assurance that will protect you against your payment and then you'd raise a claim with alibaba and then you can hope to get the money back but that isn't guaranteed and the other thing is that you've still received this poor quality bulk order which you can't sell the second thing you can do is just do a third-party pre-shipment inspection and these pre-shipment inspections are very very important because they'll go into the factory they'll check your quality of goods and then you can spot any inferior products or production prior to letting it ship as well and if you need any connections to an inspection company let me know in the comments below and i will link you with the inspection companies that i use and the third thing you can do is start by placing a trial order first now if you place a trial order of like 200 pieces rather than 5 000 pieces and something like this happens well it's a lot it's a lot better you found out when you just place a small order rather than placing a very large order i did make a previous video about um how to get the best how to get a low moq and how to get low mlq on your trial order so i'll link that above as well definitely check that out if you want more information about that as well but the trial order is also not only to find out about the quality but they can deliver on time that they don't increase the price during production and you get a quality that you have with so that's always very important to place a trial order first okay and that leads us nicely into scam number two which is sometimes the suppliers will increase the price of your order or increase the price of your unit after you confirm the order and you know they can make a lot of excuses once you've paid that initial deposit and they'll say the cost of raw materials has gone up or the cost of labor has gone up now to protect yourself against that you can you use trade assurance again on alibaba and make sure that deposit is actually protected but the other thing you can do is actually like you know you shouldn't just be dealing with one supplier you shouldn't just be talking with one supplier so before placing your order and you've talked to various different suppliers reach back out to those suppliers and chances are they're from the same province or the same area and you can say you know how is the labor cost in your in your area has it gone up much in the last year or can you explain to me a little bit about the raw material cost and get information from other suppliers just so you can go back to them and say hey look i have talked to other suppliers and i have worked with other suppliers but no one else is commenting about this because you don't want to get caught in the trap of they give you a very very low price in order you to um you get attracted to do the business with them but then once you're in and you place a deposit then they start to put the prices up and you find out the real price now the other thing you can do about this is to really shop around and sort of educate yourself on what is the market price because if you have a detailed specification sheet or a detailed rfq form and you send it out to various suppliers and everyone's quoting you seven dollars but one is quoting you five dollars well it's kind of too good to be true because you found out that the market price is seven but then if you place the order to one who said five and then they gradually raise it up to seven that's where the problem is so educate yourself on what is the market price so you don't get fooled by those low prices in to get you initially so scam number three is that some suppliers will use fake certificates to show that they are compliant with the testing for your market now testing is very very important it's a really important subject to understand so let me know in the comments below if you want me to make a separate video just about product testing but testing for your products is very very important both to legal standards and industry standards especially if you're in categories like beauty toys electronics stuff where you there are legal requirements for you to pass on your product now if a supplier shows you a certificate that they're capable of passing just remember that that's them capable of passing on the items they've done before but you still need to have your own product certificate with your own branding on it so just don't take the certificate that they have that that's you you're good to go you then have to know okay that supplier is capable of passing but again if it's a fake certificate you want to find out as well and you can verify that by taking the certificate number let's say the certificate is done by sgs or intertek you can take that number you can or you can send that certificate to sgs and say hey can you just verify that this certificate is legitimate and the other thing you can do as well is uh check the address on the certificate that they gave you as well and the company name on the certificate and just make sure that matches the company details in the company address on their alibaba listing because sometimes they could just pull a certificate from another supplier or from another website and just pass that off as your own so double check the address and then also double check it with a testing house to say that they're using and then also make sure you then test it yourself with your own branding now you normally have to pay for that testing but if it fails for any reason then you can get a supplier to pay for the second round and like i said if you want a full or more information on that on another video on product testing let me know in the comments below and i'll happily make that for you guys okay and scam number four is the sales rep will tell you about a change in their bank details and they want you to pay your balance into their new company account and their new company account is also known as a sales reps personal account now if you're purchasing through trade assurance then you're protected but if you are purchasing outside of trade assurance maybe you've made a few orders with this supplier already and you just paid a direct bank transfer and they ask you to pay into their new company account then you always have to verify this with the boss of the company now to do that you have to have a pre-existing relationship with the boss this is now not the right time to find out who is a boss because that sales rep could put you in touch with with someone else so it's very very important to build those supplier relations and have a direct line of communication with the boss the other thing is whenever there's a change of bank details we always want to ask for the company chop or the company stamp because the sales employee cannot get access to that and the other thing is that if there ever is a change in bank details you want to verify that over the phone and not just by email because their email systems could be hacked and that's also happened to me before as well and luckily i picked it up and picked it up in enough time but essentially these organizations can go in and hack company emails and then they can just follow along the email conversation until they find out it's the time to make the actual payment and very quickly they say hey we have new company bank details they send the attachment and then you've just paid into a different account so it's very very important to verify these details over the phone in case it is hacked from the outside or if it is from within the organization as well and the other thing is that if they do talk about changing bank details you want to see as many people in that company as you know maybe you've talked to the sales manager maybe you've talked to the boss or their colleague or their artwork person just cc everyone just so that they get scared uh if they because they'll try and just do like a one-on-one email and cut everyone else out but if you have contact with other people in the company make sure you see everyone just in case that guy or girl is trying to pull a fast one guys do me a favor real quick if you are getting value from this video please smash that like button for me real quick and if you do hit that like button that will guarantee you success on your next alibaba order okay guys and scam number five is that the supplier agrees to accept payment through trade assurance but after confirming the order they want you to place the deposit or the balance into their bank account now sometimes this isn't a scam sometimes they just want the payment into their own account so they don't have to pay the alibaba fees but remember if you pay them outside of alibaba then you've lost that alibaba protection so it's okay to pay directly into the supplier's bank account once you've done a few orders with them and once you've built up enough trust with them but if it's just your second order your first order your third order you should be using trade assurance just to get that alibaba protection but if you've like met the supplier if you've gone to china if you've seen them at a trade show if everything in your quality has been fine if your business is growing then by all means just send it directly into their bank account once you've built up that trust and scam number six is when the supplier closes their alibaba account after receiving your payment now this is very very important this is very easy to avoid because if you watch my previous video on alibaba sourcing hacks you only want to be working with the suppliers which have been on the platform for let's say five plus years because they're very experienced and they have many customers they fulfill many orders but some people set up an alibaba page and they'll just have like one year on their listing in order to get that big order that big deposit or that big payment and as soon as they receive that payment then they close their account so just be very very careful of the number of years the suppliers have been in business on the platform and the other thing you can do to avoid that as well is that you want to phone the supplier on a wechat video call and um ask to see a tour of the factory during their working hours now if they were never if they were never a reputable factory they wouldn't be able to give you that tour during the daytime but also i want to mention as a pre-context that sometimes the office is not in the same building as a factory but you can always ask that employee next time you're in the factory please let me know and we can arrange a video call and it should be in the factory at least once a month but if you don't get that within the first month and then there's probably something fishy going on okay and scam number seven is when the suppliers use branded products uh as images on their listing and they say that they manufacture for other big brands or they try to sell you branded products now if you go on alibaba and you type in nike sneakers or nike trainers we call them trainers in uk trainers sneakers anyway if you type in nike sneakers and you'll see loads of images you'll find loads of factory selling nike sneakers now these guys don't actually make for an ik they've either just taken the image off nike.com or they've just made a fake sample now those are definitely not the suppliers we want to be working with because one the customer it doesn't have to be nike it could be anyone the customer would never allow them to use their brand as part of their listing and or what they've done is they've actually just made a fake sample and they're pretending to manufacture for those people both for a big red flag and you never want to be working for a supplier who would lie about something like that because if they are lying about the brands that they produce for then what else would they lie about to you in order to gain your order and in the order process so guys i hope you enjoyed that and please let me know in the comments below if any of these scams have happened to you and you've managed to get out of it or what happened or if you think i missed any scams which other people should be um aware of let's start a little chat let's start a little debate in the comments below let's talk about uh things we've managed to overcome and uh get out of it now in my opinion to avoid all of this stuff the best thing you can do for yourself and for your business and if you're serious about doing business in china is actually just going to china and visiting your manufacturer i know it's difficult in these times right now but the best thing you can do to really qualify as the supplier to see that they are who they say they are to build that relationship and to understand how your products are really made it's really just to go to china and that is an entire topic on itself like all the benefits so if you would like to see a video on that i'm going to be doing that shortly so make sure you subscribe to the channel below and click the bell to turn on post notifications so you can be notified when that video becomes available now as promised get yourself comfortable grab yourself a quick espresso grab a laptop and i will see you on the inside i'm going to show you how to find the best suppliers on alibaba in under 60 seconds applying these principles so grab a laptop and i'll see you inside alibaba okay guys here we go best suppliers in under 60 seconds we're going to be looking for blue light blocking glasses and here as that comes in we have over 6 000 results that's crazy that's far too many so what we want to do is search by suppliers not by products because when we search by suppliers we're actually finding the best suppliers but if you search by products it's going to get any price that you want now we've narrowed it down to 600 and then we want to select trade assurance and verified so that we get payment protection and also verified if the suppliers are who they city are they will select north america and western europe so they supply the market so we also want to supply and then we're going to scroll down we're going to get iso 9001 bsci and 14001 which are good quality and environmental standards now that brings us to 26 suppliers and first we had over 6000 results now if you scroll down you can see when joe when joe uh when joe that's the area which specializes in this particular type of product and then you want to work with the ones which are over five years that's two years one year those are suppliers we want to avoid so 12 years you want to add them to your favorites and then keep scrolling down and then look for all the ones which are about five years add them to your favorites and then contact all of those guys so guys i hope you enjoyed that and as discussed i do have another video on my top seven alibaba sourcing hacks which will go into a lot more detail the stuff i just showed you there in 60 seconds you're going to see that in a 20 minute video and me explaining everything that i did there so make sure you check out that video it's gonna start playing right after this one and um if you would like to work with me on the one-to-one basis you can do so at this below link and where you can book me on a one-to-one session whether you want me to help you improve your quality your prices your manufacturers anything like that and the link will also be in the description below and if you would like to join our facebook community sourcing with kian that will pop up here that's an amazing community which we're all just helping each other with our sourcing needs and if you're more social feel free to connect with me on instagram where i am kian underscore jhe and that will appear here so i will see you in the next video that's all about your alibaba sourcing hacks i'll see you over there take care and all the best [Music] you

Channel: Sourcing with Kian

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Keywords: alibaba scams, alibaba scammer, alibaba tips, tips for alibaba, tips before buying from alibaba, alibaba tips and tricks, alibaba 2020, alibaba youtube tutorial, alibaba trade assurance, how to use alibaba, how to buy on alibaba, alibaba for beginners, is alibaba safe to buy from, is it safe to buy from alibaba, is alibaba safe, is alibaba trade assurance safe, sourcing with kian, alibaba for amazon fba, how to use alibaba for amazon fba, alibaba scam, best china suppliers

Id: hf9viDfJacw

Length: 15min 39sec (939 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2020