We promise to do better next time!

I recently spoke to a client who had to write off a $60,000USD container of goods. This was from a large & well known Chinese manufacturer in the industry.

His product arrived rusted and the materials were the wrong size, rendering them worthless. He had to use the product as scrap material and lost a lot of money.

He visited the factory in China for a compensation claim. Their response was “Sorry, we promise to do better next time. We’ll give you a discount on your next 12 orders, so if you buy another 12 containers, we can eventually pay it all back.”

Obviously this was not an acceptable solution. However, there’s nothing he can do about it.

This raises an important point. If the goods leave China and you have problems, you’re not going to get a serious refund from your supplier. (At least not without a lot of difficulty).

The client needed the product inspected BEFORE leaving China. In fact, he needed quality control early in the production, to find the issues early and prevent them. You simply cannot afford to ship product without checking it before it leaves China. Otherwise you’re exposed to very large problems.

The customer had a false sense of security. He had always worked with Taiwanese suppliers prior to this, with no issues. But he had never worked with a mainland Chinese company.

Work on the assumption that Chinese suppliers will NOT do everything correctly for your order. No matter what they say/promise you. No matter how good the reputation and no matter how much QC they tell you they do.

Do your quality control – check early and check often.

What do you think? Have you had stories that are similar? Let us know.

About the Author: Adam

Adam Gilbourne is the Founder and Managing Director of Easy Imex. Since 2005, he has helped hundreds of companies worldwide to successfully import from China. He has a large expertise on product sourcing, quality assurance, and supply chain management.

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