I found a good article this morning "Alibaba.com Adds Ratings for Inspectors." This is valuable information because, as I have said in this space before, if you do your homework on the front end, so can find reliable, quality suppliers. You can avoid scams and fraud. And you can then avoid the path of last resort, the Alibaba Fair Play Fund. And the Fair Play Fund is not a bad thing - it helps compensate users who have lost money - but avoiding it is critical.
So have a read:
Ensuring that products shipped from Chinese suppliers are of good quality and as advertised is an important consideration for businesses using Alibaba.com. To allow international buyers to hire on-the-ground shipping inspectors in China easily over the Internet, the B2B website four months ago added 38 Chinese inspection services to the platform. Through the site's Inspection Service, buyers can choose among these independent contractors and, at relatively low cost, hire one to physically visit suppliers all over China to confirm they are getting what they paid for before their orders are shipped overseas.
But who watches the watchers?
How can buyers be confident that the inspectors, who they are hiring sight unseen, are competent and trustworthy? That issue has been addressed with the addition of a customer feedback and rating system, which is live on the website. From now on buyers who have used the services of an inspector can leave behind a review and rank their inspector on a scale of one to five stars. Those ratings and reviews are displayed on the site so others can decide which services are reliable. Buyers who feel their inspection was conducted improperly have up to three months to dispute a transaction, and can receive up to 20 times the cost of the service if they win their case. Payments can also be protected by escrow. The feedback system was just launched so there aren't many reviews on the site yet, but to take a look at a typical feedback page for one of the top inspection services, click here.
