Another Case Study on How to Avoid Alibaba.com Scams

Alibaba.com is a massive site, and to be honest, somewhat poorly organized when it comes to searching for information on how to prepare yourself:  to buy items while avoiding scams and fraud.

So from time to time, I'll sift through the site and pull out what I hope are some helpful nuggets of information that help you become a smarter buyer - or supplier - on the site and not have to use mediation, or at the end of the line, the Alibaba Fair Play Fund.

So here's another case study from Alibaba.com:

Description: 

Case study on how to avoid scams on Alibaba.com

This company cheated me out of $2000 USD. Our terms were $200 USD for shipping, $1000 USD once the tracking info was verified and the balance of $1460 USD paid once the package was received. This guy said that he was going to use a local courier. He gave the website and tracking number for checking. When it showed "package now on hold in London", I sent $1000 USD as per the agreement. After that the company demanded the balance right away. He said his superiors wanted payment in full due to something about an audit and not being allowed to give credit to people from the USA.   He said I needed to send at least $800 more and he'd take care of the rest.  So I scraped up $800 more and sent it.  Then he came with a new excuse.  Something about a death in the family and if I wanted my package I needed to go ahead and pay the last $660!  So basically, he's made up some fake business and website and is using it to con people into believing that there package is on the way.  Then he puts the package "on hold" and says "if you want your package, I'm going to need more money". 

Analysis:

• Avoiding use unknown shipping websites. It is a risky to allow unknown shipping websites to deliver your products. Before you accept this delivery method, do your own due diligence, including searching the shipping website on search engines to see what others have to say. Or you can go to http://www.whois.com/ to search for registered information of this website. Be wary if the domain of this website was created less than three months ago. 

• When your supplier is making excuses about the delivery (or lack thereof) of products and asking for additional payment, it is generally a trick. 

• Search the company name on the forum or search engine to find something useful to you. Or you can contact Alibaba's service team.