[donsrno1]

I'm currently in the process of buying some items (HID car headlights) from a supplier in china. I'm just trying to make sure of the suppliers authenticity at the moment and was hoping a few of you could help.

My first question is about a sample product, what method do the majority of you usually use as payment for a sample product? I obviously want to have a bit of backup by the use of a credit card or similar but wasn't really sure what the normal procedure is for a sample product.

I have been reading through a lot the guides on here and whilst I knew about most of what was suggested I still had a couple of things to check. It says to check about the company registration number or similar. My question is that if you do get such a thing for a chinese company is there anywhere online you can check this with to verify it?

Finally in the 5-steps guide it suggests contacting the bank with whom the company is based to verify their details, but as the company is based in china there is an obvious language barrier so I was wondering if most of you bother to check this with chinese suppliers?

So far I am relatively confident they are a genuine company, but obviously can't know for sure. I have tried the normal checks of googling their name but the only things this turns up is more adverts for their company on various trade websites (and there are hundreds of their adverts), similarly if I put their name in in chinese it only turns up adverts on chinese trade websites. I have also checked the details of their website on whois and it all seems to match up with the details they have provided me with.

Any help would be much appreciated as I know there will be a quite a number of you on here who have gone through this process plenty of times.