Is Alibaba Legit? How to Know if Alibaba Supplier is Safe?

For first-time buyers, buying from Alibaba can seem a bit intimidating. Most of them are discussing whether is Alibaba safe.

You’ve probably heard stories of online sellers being scammed on the marketplace and left out of pocket. You may even be worrying that it’ll happen to you.

In general, the Alibaba platform is absolutely legit and safe.

Alibaba is a company under the Alibaba Group. You should know that Alibaba Group is one of the three largest Internet companies in China, and the other two are Tencent and Baidu. Alibaba has been around for 20 years, so it must be a legitimate platform.

But like other e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Shopee, there are some dishonest suppliers on Alibaba.

It rarely happens that the supplier disappears after the buyer pays, but it often happens that the buyer receives a product that does not match the description or the sample, the order is delayed in delivery.

so you need to master some techniques to avoid being deceived.

Tick the Alibaba Trade Assurance and Verified Supplier box

When searching for products to buy on Alibaba, a good practice to get into is make sure that you’ve refined your search with two particular search functions:

• Trade Assurance
• Verified Supplier

Trade Assurance is a free service provided by Alibaba to create more trust between buyers and suppliers. It acts as extra protection in the event of shipping or quality-related disputes.

An Verified Supplier is a company that has paid an external third-party service to verify their business for them.

The verifid suppliers have been verified onsite by inspection comany. Some verifird company even have a factory VR video, this is more proof that this company is real.

Choose Suppliers who have been selling for years

Next to the Verified Supplier icon, you can also see the age of the company. We prefer suppliers that have been established for more than 3 years because they are a clear sign of a mature company.

Their chance of becoming a liar is very slim. Fraudulent accounts simply won’t last that long, they will be caught sooner.

Check the suppliers’ business license，this is one of the most important steps to see if is Alibaba safe

How to find the business license of Alibaba suppliers?

After clicking the product picture, there is a company name on the right to enter the supplier’s homepage

Click the blue triangle symbol in the upper left corner of the homepage, and you will find the company’s basic information, including the text version of the business license and business license pictures.

You can borrow tools to translate the information in the picture.

What information does the business license include?

1. Registration No.
2. Company name
3. Business scope
4. Address
5. Legal representative
6. Registered capital
7. Expiry date
8. Business scope

How to know whether the supplier is legal through the business license?

You can find more information about Chinese companies through the following website.

Qichaha：http://www.qichacha.com/

1. Open the website https://www.qcc.com/ and use Google Chrome to switch it to English.

You can enter the company name or registration No. to find your supplier. You can enter the English name of the supplier. If you cannot find your supplier by the English name, you can use the Chinese name or the Registration No..

If the company can’t be found, it may be illegal.

2. Let’s try searching for this Alibaba supplier on Qichacha. We found this supplier right away. Click to view more information about the supplier.

3. First, we can see some basic information of this supplier, including address, email, website, etc.

Then under the company name, we can see the prompts “4 own risks” and “3 judicial cases”. You need to pay attention when you see these tips, which shows that this supplier has some risks and is involved in some legal cases.

Then go down to check more information.

4. The following 8 sections can learn about suppliers from different aspects.

We usually check the contents of the three parts of “Basic information”, “Business risk” and “Intellectual”to determine whether the supplier is legal and reliable.

① Basic information

Registration status: Existence shows that the company is operating normally

Date of establishment: View the company’s establishment time

Number of participates: This is the number of people who paid social security from the company. You can understand it as the number of full-time employees in the company. The larger the number, the larger the scale of the company.

Business Scope: We mentioned The business scope of a real factory should include the words “manufacturer” “manufacture” “produce” “production” in How to find a product manufacturer in china. We can see the business scope of this supplier includes “production”.

② Business risk

We can clearly see that this supplier has three business risks. It has also been punished for product quality problems. There are certain risks in cooperating with this supplier.

③ Intellectual

Here we can see the supplier’s trademark information, patent infromation and certification information, etc.

We can see that this supplier has registered its own brand and holds some product patents. From this we can see that this supplier has certain research and development capabilities.

If a supplier does not have patent infromation and certification information, it is likely to be a trader.

By looking at the above three points, we judge that this supplier is a real legal company with a scale of about 29 people, and it is a real factory with R&D capabilities.

But he has some legal risks caused by product quality problems. Therefore, we suggest that you must be cautious when working with such companies.

In addition to Qichacha.com, the following software can also be used to query supplier information:

• ① National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System: China’s official corporate credit information publicity system.
• ② Qixingtong: Similar to Qichacha, it is also a supplier information query platform.
• ③ Qixin: Qixinbao is a fast and accurate enterprise information query tool. 

Look up the company name, email address and website of the supplier.

It’s worth considering whether or not the email address of your potential supplier uses the supplier’s company name or if it’s a free email account service like Gmail.

If your potential supplier has bought Alibaba Gold Supplier status for the last few years and is a reputable business, then it’s likely they’ll have invested in their own website and have a company email address.

Use a tool like “whois lookup” to complete your own external checks on potential suppliers to see if they are who they say they are. The tool will help you to find out who is the registered domain holder of a supplier’s own website.

You can also use Google to your advantage.

Type in: scam:[company name]

After doing so, you should receive a page of search results that may be able to tell you if the supplier you’re considering has scammed anyone on the internet before.

Another check you can do is to search the Alibaba forums to see if any members have dealt with the suppliers you’re considering.

Online transactions with suppliers through Alibaba

Alibaba has a Trade Assurance service. Trade Assurance is Alibaba’s order protection service-providing a safe online environment for global trade between suppliers and buyers.

Choosing Alibaba Trade Assurance Service is the safest way to pay Alibaba suppliers. If there is a problem with the product, you can apply the Alibaba Trade Assurance dispute, and Alibaba will mediate and resolve it. In addition, Trade Assurance supports multiple payment methods.

Please remember Alibaba don’t protect the offline orders. Therefore, for the first time customers, it is best to trade through Alibaba.

When it comes to buying on Alibaba, it is perfectly possible to do so safely and securely. If you have more problems, please feel free to ask us.

FURTHER READING

• Is Alibaba Safe/Legit? How To Buy From Alibaba Safely?
• Alibaba Trade Assurance Guide (Avoid Being Scammed)
• A Complete Guide To Shipping From China (2021 Update)
• 7 Best China Wholesale Websites (Clothing, Bags, Shoes…)

Final thoughts

Buying from Alibaba is easy, but the difficulty is choosing reliable suppliers. Therefore, before placing an order, you need to comprehensively evaluate the supplier from many aspects.

If you want to find a China sourcing agent, you can contact us, With SourcingArts, You Don’t Have to Be an Sourcing Pro to Price Better And Genuine Manufacturer From China

Give me a shout in the comments below or on Facebook Group if you have any questions!