Fraud Prevention: Avoiding Using False Shipping Websites

Shamelessly primping a cross post on my other blog, but again, an ounce of fraud prevention is worth a pound of cure in your wallet.

How to prevent fraud on Alibaba.com

There are a bazillion ways to do e-commerce on the Internet, and two of the largest companies, Alibaba.com and eBay, have millions of users.  Even if 99.9% of the suppliers are honest, that still leaves room for deceit and fraud.  So rather than jumping into something with blinders on, I strongly recommend that you read up as much as you can and make yourself smart - know what to do and not do when setting up a site on Alibaba.

Alibaba.com has a Safety and Security Center - and it's worth repeating that if you do get scammed by a Gold Supplier, you can get some money back.  But do your homework so you don't have to go through the process.  Here's what they recommend:

Avoiding Using False Shipping Websites

Case description:

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 of this case:

1. 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.

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

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

The email address of the Alibaba service team is  fairplayfund@service.alibaba.com.