I would offer to pay in full for the small order. They should be more willing to accept that if genuine.
Also be aware of hundreds of other "suppliers" who decide to contact you after you send an inquiry to one supplier. These are just scammers literally falling over themselves to get your email address and take your money without sending goods. They come seemingly out of nowhere and instead of replying to your inquiry directly (which the real deal would have done), they start with a new message with no references to the previous one at all. The titles are also often entirely unrelated to your inquiry's title (for example, your inquiry might be "USB stick prices" and they might make a new message stating "cut out the middleman!" or "GOOD USB SUPPLIER". Yeah, right...). Oftentimes they even message you about completely unrelated items like laptops or CPUs, when you can never get such branded items from China anyway.
And if you ask them how the hell they got your email address when they have nothing to do with the real supplier that you contacted, they just send you some idiotic response like "we got it from our mailing company/Google/internet/ass". They really must think that people are dumb enough to believe that. I then tell them to FOCK OFF and that they will never get a penny out of me. They then take the hint and move on to the next unsuspecting victim, but I enjoy playing with them now I must say. I often get them all excited and play along until they think that they will soon get their cash, and they give me their payment details. Then they message me 2/3 times a day asking for an update, and I know that the suspense is killing them lol.
They also seemingly "forget" confirm every last detail with you (which a real supplier would do), and also forget to send you a pro forma invoice before requesting payment, which again every genuine supplier would do. It just goes to show you that they take advantage of people who have never dealt with a real supplier before, and who therefore do not know what to expect a supplier to do.
And in at least 90% of cases, they reuse the same email address over and over again to scam people. They will of course report their bad experience to others on the internet, so a quick Google search of their email address will reveal their history. Idiots.
Last edited by Elijah; 05-05-2012 at 11:51 AM.
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