If you are reading this prior to making purchases then congrats to you and your doing your due diligence. Most read this too late and want to deter it from happening in the future. Here are some tips to follow so that you can potentially eliminate the possibilities of getting scammed when purchasing items from China.
Verify Emails and correct providers. Real legitimate wholesale suppliers will not use free email addresses like Gmail or Yahoo for contacting/receiving emails. A wholesaler’s contact email should be based on the domain name of the wholesaler’s website. If the contact is chinesedirect.com then the email should be person@chinesedirect.com and not chinesedirect@gmail.com. That’s an obvious sign to stay away.
Verify the Who Is information. If you want a legite wholesaler and not some fly by night scammer then you need to lookup the website domain on WhoIs.net. This will give you information on where the website is registered too, how old the website is, the owners name and other great and critical information.
Fair prices or fake pricing? Simply put before you even consider purchasing products from a wholesaler then its time to take a good cold hard look at the pricing. Is the pricing WAY too good to be true? Then it usually means something is up. Check out competitors pricing to get a good idea as to where market price should be. Of course you will be able to find some good deals, but good steals mean that you need to be hesitant of the seller.
Search Google and see what you could find. If you can’t find much information on the website, business or anything then its a good chance that this is a fly by night operation.
Finally be smart and use your common sense. That’s really what will make or break deals with international businesses. Use your judgement, if it is too good to be true then I bet you it is. Start out with a small order if possible and move your way up to larger orders. That way you don’t lose everything if you go for the big order and get scammed.