Alibaba is a place where companies that distribute goods wholesale can post ads, and people looking for such goods can find distributors. So far I am not all that impressed. The site is full of scam artist trying to steal peoples money and the folks running the site seem to do little to discourage this. This is not to say that there aren't legitimate companies selling there, but so far the majority I have come across have been scammers.
The site makes it easy to send out inquiry emails to companies in mass. I sent out several such emails and so far I have received probably 100 replies. Out of the 100 replies I believe maybe 10% are legitimate sellers, and the rest are running scams.
One good thing is that the site seems to have a decent community in place, and if you search the forums for advice or the name of a company you can cut down exponentially the chance that you will be scammed.
In short, if a seller is offering non-branded chinese goods such as generic cell phone accessories, MP4 players/generic game players, watches, jewelry, novelties, then they are probably a legitimate seller. In this case, however, a buyer will need to be sure that they understand the shipping terms and check their market prices thoroughly before buying. For example I found a buyer that offered to sell a lot of 100 generic iPhone cases for $150 shipped to my door. The only problem is that on doing further research it seems the seller is selling the cases themselves for $.90 on Ebay with free shipping to the general public. There is no way anyone could make money while trying to compete in the market with the supplier. You also have to be careful about the MP4 players and USB drives, as many are hacked to show a larger capacity than they actually have, or have decieving specs such as interchanging GB as gigabit instead of gigabyte.
On the flipside of that coin are the blatant scammers. Here are some signs that the seller is a scammer:
- They offer ridiculous prices on name brand items such as PS3, Dell, HP, Xbox, Apple iPods and laptops, etc... If the price looks too good to be true then it probably is. These big name companies DO NOT sell in bulk to miscellanous chinese distributors, they have a established distribution chain so it is unlikely that these sellers can supply these products at such low prices.
- You recieve the same photos from different sellers. This has happened to me a few times, and the really funny thing is how blatant it was. I recieved sample photos of laptops that ranged from stock photos to kitchen tables, to retail store displays.
- The seller will only accept direct transfer, Western Union, or other untrackable method of payment. This is so they can just take your money and disappear.
- They pretend to be cute Chinese girls with American names and they seem flirty, now I'm not saying anything sexist here, but seriously, ALL of the 'companies' that met the other requirments on this list did this.
- They do not have a company email address, you are contacted through MSN or Yahoo or another free email provider.
- They contact you directly instead of through Alibaba's tools, All of the sellers that I believe were legitimate contacted me through the site tools and not directly through email, where all of the scammers contacted me through email and skipped Alibaba's tools. This is of course so there would be no 'official' transcripts of your conversations which would leave less evidence for tracking them down after they take your money.
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