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grynge

Alibaba and the Forty Scammers

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grynge
, February 22nd, 2012 at 09:46 AM (631 Views)
Ok we posted the technical specifications under 3 separate accounts on Alibaba and within a few days we had a lot of responses. The majority of them wanted money up front before looking at anything hence the forty scammers in the title. When we pushed them for more details, processes, equipment being used, CAD drawings etc etc it quickly dawned that most were just after something for nothing. After sorting through all the trash we were left with 7 companies that we could quickly verify even existed.

Placing the job on alibaba was by far the simplest and easiest and cheapest way to even get in touch with companies that could be in a position to help. Would I suggest anyone else to use Alibaba for this kind of sourcing, I would have to say "Yes" but with very open eyes and be aware of every lead it produces.Then again thinking about it maybe it is common practice for companies to want an up front fee before going ahead with any costings?

On another front with some helpful tips and hints from members of this forum I was also able to get another 3 companies quietly interested. We also have some leads to a couple of companies in Thailand and Vietnam.

All the leads from our Austrade, China embassy, aussie/china chamber of commerces all ended up either panning out, the companies didn't want to know about it or wanting way to much money with no actual guarantees of results.

We haven't laid out any money yet as we are now in talks with these companies and are trying to get more information out of them. I am quietly optimistic at least one of these companies may turn out to be a winner and hopefully produce a production model with some form of costings to go along with it.

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Comments

  1. crabfoot's Avatar
    UK shipbuilding was killed by having to produce detailed quotes and drawings for contracts. It cost about 300k to do the work, then the far-eastern customers took the "free" designs and had the ships built in Poland. The last shipyard in Belfast died in the 90s, they killed all the other yards before that by the same method.

    You can understand why they ask for money up front ... if they have to do a bit of work.
    If you do have to get drawings made etc, treat it as a separate job - one job for the design, another for the manufacture. Specify the jobs separately.
  2. mikeb's Avatar
    That is not just far east at work. It is the same rampant dishonesty with some of britains leading companies. Over twenty years ago I owned with partners a consultancy /system integrator whose clients were a "who is who of british blue chips"

    Some of the biggest names in Britain did exactly the same - get several quotes that we and others had slaved over for weeks. Separately evaluate the technical and commercial. Then give the best technical solution to the one who offered the best commercial terms saying "if you want the job, do it like that at the same price". Shame on them. They thought it was good commercial practise. It was simply fraud, no other name for it.