The Wholesale Forums

[Nkate]

I am a newbie with wholesale buying from China but when I got bombarded with emails and "Western Union Only" I can tell alot of 'wholesalers' are fraud.

My question is, if they accept paypal, is that a sure fire way to tell that they are genuine and safe? I would never send money to a stranger with a wire transfer, but I did send money with paypal a week ago. I have not yet received the package but I'm wondering if it will be an empty box or not -- and if it is, I will be able to file a dispute with paypal, correct?

Note: It was under 100 USD and just a sample. But I am wondering if scammers can still steal money with paypal.

Remember, I am new to this! Any tips are appreciated.

[Misery]

I'm not an expert in these kinds of stuff but I think yes, they can still scam you, especially if they send a box(empty or not).
It would be really difficult to prove that the box you have received is empty.

[santaevil]

I personaly not recommend to judge scammer or not from the payment method. We are manufacturer, wholesaler and experience in my field. But we still take WU as sample order payment method. Not that we have not get paypal account, that fact is that our workmat in fiance deparment do know English and also know little about arrange paypal! How do they manage that?

To check if they are scammer there is many more other ways, such as method of contact. Is her/his email address from company? And range of his/her product.....etc

[paul.]

what is the site you purchased the item from?
what was it?

[sabrads]

Paypal is open to abuse, you can issue a dispute and try and chargeback against paypal but that can only happen if there are funds in the accout to charge back against.

A common practice of the scammers is to give you a paypal account to pay to and then claim the good will take X days to arrive, when they dont turn up and you ask them about it they will say there is a delay but they have been shipped - this is just a ploy to lengthen the time from when the payment was made, Why ? so they can take out all the cash from the account associated with the paypal account and when you issue a dispute and paypal go to the account to charge back there is either no money or the account has been closed.

I guess they try to do this is batches to maximise the number of people they can scam in a given window and then harvest more cash.

[alistar d]

hello

i think that scammers will try and get money out of you anyway they can if it is paypal,wu,tt and so on.

but there is plenty of good suppliers that accept wire tranfers

it really depends in what your are going to purchase like branded stuff from china which most are scammers,but you did say that you know a fraud supplier when you see one.I know it can be nerve racking purchasing when you are new to business and especially purchasing from overseas. As long as you do a real good check on the supplier before buying from them.

[sabrads]

You have to research the supplier and if you are happy that you are dealing with someone you would trust to send them money and expect to have goods sent back to you. Just because someone lists paypal is not a reason to trust them - do some research in to them as well.

[Tango34uk]

One of the issues with PayPal, that scammers will use, is to make sure you do one of the following:-

Wait over 90 days after you have paid before you complain - Its very hard to get Paypal to investigate after 90 days.

or as has just been done to me (UK Compnay....)

After I complained via PayPal that the goods haddn't turned up, the company emailed me saying that if I removed my complaint they would then give me a FREE upgrade and ship my item stright away. While this sounds great, as soon as you remove your complaint you CAN'T re-open it. I forwarded their email to paypal, and kept the complaint open, I was then refunded within 24 hours!

Regards

[drn]

PayPal is reasonably safe. If the goods don't arrive, you can usually recover the money through PayPal, as the responsibility for proving delivery lies with the seller. We've found that the best way to handle new suppliers in the far east is to start with a small purchase, see how they handle it, and work up from there.

Don't expect Chinese suppliers to behave in the same way as UK suppliers - different culture, different ways of doing business. Things that might raise a red flag for UK suppliers do not necessarily do so for Chinese suppliers. For example: dirt cheap prices but vastly inflated delivery costs. While this may turn you off local suppliers, there's no reason it should do the same with Chinese sellers.

[D M]

Paypal is useless against scammers.