Alibaba is the world’s most renowned B2B modeled e-commerce platform. Its core focus is to connect global wholesale buyers to manufacturers mainly from China. You can find nearly everything from a needle to cars on Alibaba at wholesale prices. Alibaba’s minimal prices, a diverse range of collections, and customized products availability make it an exceptional e-commerce platform. The question is, Does Alibaba help suppliers make fraud? We may need to understand the Alibaba working model to get the right answer. This blog will discuss the working model of Alibaba to know ‘Does Alibaba help suppliers make fraud?‘ and how can we avoid scams on Alibaba.
Does Alibaba help suppliers make fraud?
Does Alibaba help suppliers make fraud?
We will discuss the Alibaba structure & working model to find ‘does Alibaba help suppliers make fraud?’ It will ultimately enable you to detect & avoid scammers on Alibaba.
Alibaba is the Chinese largest B2B eCommerce platform. And currently, Alibaba eCommerce group has five subsidiary platforms as enlisted below,
- AliExpress – It’s a B2C eCommerce platform that allows shoppers globally to buy from the Chinese manufacturer without meeting any minimum order bar.
- Taobao – It’s a C2C platform supporting small businesses & eCommerce stores.
- Tmall – It’s a digital mall for Chinese consumers. Its B2C model enables Chinese companies to sell their products to Chinese consumers.
- 1688 – It’s a B2B platform that initiated its work in 2010 to support Chinese eCommerce stores. But now, it’s facilitating global eCommerce stores like eBay & Amazon to source their inventory from Chinese suppliers.
Alibaba’s Suppliers
A number of global & Chinese manufacturers registered their profiles as suppliers on Alibaba. You can find numerous suppliers in a single category at Alibaba. This business competitive atmosphere enables you to find a product at the lowest possible bid. It’s not an easy job to verify the legitimacy of a large number of suppliers with countless products. Scammers know this and find loopholes to get into Alibaba’s supplier list. Many scams’ reports have been seen throughout the years regarding packaging, quality, customer services, and especially shipping time.
It’s ideal to go with suppliers for getting committed quality & lowest bid. But there are many middle man & agencies claiming themselves manufacture on Alibaba. There are also wholesalers on Alibaba with MOQ (minimum order quantity) bar; you may go with wholesalers for sourcing a low quantity of products.
In contrast, you may search for a manufacturer to shop for a customized or a large number of products. To avoid scams, you may search for suppliers on Alibaba instead of products. While screening suppliers, you may search gold and assess suppliers and don’t neglect or forget to use the trade assurance facility.
Trade Assurance
Trade assurance is an incredible free service on Alibaba to protect shoppers. It empowers shoppers to ask for a refund in case of late deliveries than committed time or quality issues. As a shopper on Alibaba, you must use this service for a secure shopping experience.
Does Alibaba help suppliers make fraud?
Gold suppliers
Gold suppliers is a premium membership program for suppliers on Alibaba. Suppliers paid a hefty fee and passed an on-site visit test to get the Gold Suppliers badge and the suppliers outside
China must pass the A&V Check for Gold Suppliers membership badge. There are minimal chances for a scammer to get a gold supplier’s membership badge because of the hefty fee & third-party verification bar. But a Gold suppliers’ badge does not mean trusting blindly or neglecting Alibaba trading rules can help you avoid scams. It would be best to do research by yourself to avoid scams on Alibaba. You may check how many years ago a supplier attained the gold supplier badge by scrolling to the suppliers’ product page.
Does Alibaba help suppliers make fraud?
Verified suppliers
Assessed suppliers or Verified suppliers can be your best choice on Alibaba as these are third-party-inspected gold suppliers mainly from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. A third party inspects their production capabilities, product quality control mechanism, and process control mechanisms. You can recognize such suppliers on Alibaba with a verified badge on their profile.
Does Alibaba help suppliers make fraud?
While screening for suppliers, you may enable the trade assurance, gold suppliers, and verified suppliers’ buttons in the left sidebar checklist. Then you may review each supplier profile individually to look at the other global buyers’ thoughts about their services. This screening process may help you find a legitimate supplier for the specific category’s product.
Verify Suppliers
It seems impossible to find a scammer in gold or verified suppliers on Alibaba when we look at Alibaba’s requirement to get into gold or verified suppliers list. But there are dozens of suppliers for most of Alibaba niches; it makes room for scammers to find a loophole and get a fake gold or verified supplier badge. It would be best to verify the supplier’s legitimacy & production capability before sealing the deal to avoid scams. But the question is, ‘how can we verify suppliers on Alibaba?’
You need to get some information to verify the legitimacy of a supplier. After shortlisting the suppliers, you can follow the enlisted steps to get essential information & verify a supplier,
- Business License – Scroll the suppliers’ profiles to find the business license. You can also contact their support team to ask for the business license. Chinese companies’ names include their location, main product, and partnership type. Their name, location, and license numbers can help you verify their legitimacy in China.
- Business Type – It’s critical to determine the suppliers’ business nature. Whether it’s a manufacturing company, trading company, or a wholesaler, it has an export license or not. Manufacturers with an export license on Alibaba can be the first choice for global shoppers.
- Years of selling on Alibaba – To determine the reliability & capability, you may scroll the suppliers’ profile to know their years of selling experience on Alibaba.
- Certification – It’s essential to know whether a supplier has essential certifications to manufacture a specific product. You can scroll the suppliers’ profiles on Alibaba to find the essential certifications or contact their support team to ask for specific certifications.
- Testimonials – Alibaba has a clients’ reviews-based model. Buyers can leave star & comment reviews with images & video proofs regarding their shopping experiences on suppliers’ product pages. These testimonials can help the new buyers to look at the issues nature of other shoppers to avoid any inconvenience.
- Response rate – It’s another factor to determine the company’s professionalism. Companies with lower response rates can leave you in an inconvenient situation after placing the order.
- Google Suppliers’ name – Lastly, you may google their names to find their websites and other businesses’ collaboration experience with them. You may find blogs or reviews enlightening other shoppers’ experiences with a specific supplier.
Does Alibaba help suppliers make fraud?
How to evade scammers on Alibaba?
There are some scammers on Alibaba, like another eCommerce platform. To evade these scammers, you may follow the above-discussed tactics to verify the sellers on Alibaba or contact a third-party inspection agency like Verifyfull to verify Chinese suppliers & manufacturers’ production capabilities & legitimacy. We have also enlisted the frequently happening scams tactics on Alibaba to help you out in recognizing & avoiding the scams,
- Famous Brand products sellers – You may find sellers on Alibaba who claim to feature branded products at lower prices. These sellers mostly sell fake products in the name of original branded products. You may avoid shopping for original branded or licensed products from Alibaba to avoid any scam.
- Increase negotiated prices – Some of Alibaba’s suppliers offer the lowest bid to grab buyers’ attention. Buyers invest their time & money to verify & negotiate with the company to place the order. And, when buyers submit the deposit to initiate the order, such sellers ultimately increase the prices with lame excuses like raw material cost fluctuation. You may keep more than one seller in the loop & always use a trade assurance facility while sealing the deal to avoid any inconvenient situation.
- Ship high-quality samples & low-quality order items – You may receive varying quality samples & actual order items. To avoid such scams, you may use trade assurance & a third-party inspection of products before shipping.
- Fake Certifications – Some suppliers provide fake certifications that can be a devastating situation for a buyer. You may get products that you cannot sell in your country because of certification issues. To avoid this embarrassing situation, you may take the help of a third-party verification company to verify the suppliers’ essential certificates.
- Receive different products – Your supplier may send you slightly different products than you ordered. You may write a detailed agreement enlightening all the product features like size, color, material, packaging, and shipping details.
Final Words | Does Alibaba help suppliers make fraud?
Alibaba doesn’t help suppliers commit fraud or scams with buyers but generally speaking; It’s not easy to filter tens of dozens of suppliers for a single product. That’s why Alibaba is struggling to filter out scammers from its sellers’ list to date.
Alibaba is an incredible platform in the sense of diverse product variety & price range. But you need to do suppliers’ verification or take help from third-party suppliers verifying agencies to shop from Alibaba without getting scammed.