Safety Tips For B2B Marketplaces

These tips and advice could save your company thousands of dollars.

1. Check the Contact details

Always confirm if the address, phone number and email address given to you by your trading partner belongs to the same company. If a trader provides inconsistent contact details, for example an address in the USA and phone number from another country, we recommend you look up the address in the local phone directory and call this number to confirm that the person you are in touch with actually works for the company.

2. Do a company background check

Ordering a simple credit report can save your company a lot of headaches. These reports cost between $70.00 USD to $300.00USD and gives you the legal and financial history of any given company. With this information, you can decide if you want to proceed with business transactions.

3.

Test the seriousness of the buyer or seller

Ask various technical questions such as certificate of origin, quality standards, warranty and detailed questions about your products. This will quickly differentiate a good partner from a bad one.

4. Research the market value

Search what the market price of your product and be suspicious of any deal that is too good to be true.

5. Meet Your Partner in Person

After thoroughly investigating, it is time to meet face to face. Even though internet offers you a wealth of information, it will never replace meeting an individual and making your own assessment about the person and company.

6. Protect yourself when ordering or giving samples

Before purchasing products, you need to request a sample to make sure that it is up to your standards. If you are a seller, make sure to request payment for samples. This especially applies to products with a high resale value.

7. Use Pre-shipment services

If you are a buyer, you can protect yourself against poor quality by ordering a pre-shipment inspection of the products. You can demand the inspection as a condition to payment.

8. Choose safe payment options

When you are a buyer and you enter into a contract, it is normal for the seller to request partial payment before shipping the order. Avoid all payments with services like Western Union as it is extremely hard to identify the owner of the account receiving the payment. A safer option would be a letter of credit.

9. Pay close attention to high risk countries

Be especially careful when you are dealing with regions with high fraud incident such as Eastern Europe and Africa.
 

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