I know this looks long winded, but I have had some experiences with chinese wholesale sites i would like to share.

First of all, what you get from these sites is fake. End of story.

So I have used dhgate twice, both times I have paid for a mobile phone. I know these will be fake but im not planning on selling them, they are for personal use so i dont really care. First one was a few months ago, it was 8gb nokia n96 (i think), cost just over £100 GBP. After paying using the escrow service and paypal to be safe, i patiently waited, checking my tracking number each day for around a week until my package arrived. All this time i was also talking to the sales rep for the company on msn...

So my package arrived, and as soon as i seen it, i thought it looked a bit thin, but after dealing with china for years on made-in-china .com i know that if the chinese have one talent, its how to pack things incredibly tight, so i assumed the box was flat packed. Upon opening the package, i had been sent 8 pc cd's, 4 x office 2007, and 4 x windows xp oem...
Even though some of you will be thinking these are worth more than what i paid, thats not the point. First of all they're fake so i dont want to risk selling them on ebay, mainly because i am already running a legit business on there, and secondly, they are oem, so if they dont come with some sort of hard drive, ebay will remove them as a violation.

After this, i went straight to my pc, to talk to the rep, who was surprisingly still online, i told her the situation, to which she replied "thats not possible", she said this because the cd's dont weigh enough to have made up the 800 grams that was on the packaging, where the phone weighs 800 grams exactly, therefore, i was lying. Reluctantly, I found a set of kitchen scales, which i used to weight the cd's, along with the packaging, and took some pictures to prove their weight.

All the time this was happening, the rep was telling me to wait before opening a dispute in dhgate, to try to come to some solution between us. Little did i know, they had already told dhgate that i had received my package, which means, my 4 day inspection window was closing. Finally I had had enough, they were refusing to send me my money back, so i tried to open a dispute... FAIL, window had closed, dhgate had closed the transaction as successful.

Ok this is bad, BUT, i used paypal! joy! lets open a dispute in there, so i did, to which to i presented my case, along with photo proof. The sellers boss replied to me several times within the resolution centre and offered me a partial refund of 40 USD, i said no. He said to send the cd's back, and he would give a a refund, I thought, ok, thats cool coz its written in paypal so he cant go back on his word. he did. I got no money back, and no more correspondence off him. I decided to escalate the case to paypal to get my money back, which if you have read this much of my post, your probably thinking why didn't i do this in the first place,,, but read on...

To my utter shock and disgust, I got a reply from paypal that they had voted on the SELLERS side! this is because what i bought, was not via ebay, which means they cannot help me! i mean seriously, what is the point in using paypal to be 'safe' if they are only safe when you buy via their own company, ebay. Its a monopoly im sure, which is illegal in some way... So i had no money, no phone, no cd's to resell coz i sent them back, and no leg to stand on...

I am awaiting my second item now which is a sony ericsson X1. I have the tracking number and it should be here in a few days.

Ok if you are patient enough to have read this far, I will tell you about my made-in-china.com experiences now.

Overall, pretty good, talk to the company sales rep as much as you can before you place an order, via msn or yahoo or something. Ask to see tracking numbers from shipments they have sent out to other customers, if they are legit, they will have no problem with this. I know this doesn't guarantee you will get the right item you paid for, but you know they will actually send something out. I have NEVER been scammed from made-in-china, i have bought things as small as clips for hair extensions, upto a 40 foot long container full of golf trolleys. Just make sure you order a sample first before a large order to check for quality, and if you send a large sum of money, use bank transfer, not western union...

Lastly, alibaba.com. I have used this site once, and i lost £2000 GBP. I ordered what was supposed to be 15 mobile phones. Used western union as requested, to which i was slightly suspicious, but they put my mind at rest by saying, dont send the money to them, send it to myself, or to my friend, which i can them show them my receipt and prove i have the money to send. After i receive the goods, i can change the name on the form and they can pick up the money. Even doing it this safe way, as soon as they found out the name i had sent it to, they stopped contacting me, I checked western union online to find the money had been collected already. They basically knew someone in western union or they have a way of making very fast fake ID's, but again, i had no leg to stand on.


I hope this ESSAY has shed some light on these sites and the way some people try to scam you.. if you want to ask me any questions, I would gladly help you.