It’s been raining rants and raving at alibaba.com, a top trade lead sources for B2B. As usual its about Paypal and buyers trying to enforce the payment method for China Suppliers. Most of these buyers who usually uses Paypal as a gateway for payments are usually small time buyers and doesn’t usually order a huge amount of quantity since they are most of the time Ebay Sellers who inevitably doesn’t have an established company or business.

Unfortunately for these buyers, the main exporting country, China do not entertain the use of PayPal and payment via credit cards. This is because the access of Paypal in China is not well established and the service rates for international sellers are not very pleasing to look at.

For China Paypal Users, there are 3 different type of fees and charges they have to bear every time they withdraw the cash from PayPal unlike in the US which is free. Furthermore, not all banks in China has the facilities to accommodate Paypal. You can view how much they are being charged when each withdrawal is being made by them. View it Here

China Withdrawal Fee

I’ve also attached a copy of the different charges for Sellers in the US and in other parts of the world which they had to bear should they use Paypal. See the differences? That’s a lot to choke for sellers.

Fees For US PayPal Seller

However should the Sellers use the other easier and much lesser hassle of payment method like T/T, LC (there’s a lot of types of LC), Bank Draft, Bank Guarantee. Usually they would use a T/T or LC for huge quantity to be exported to the desired country.

T/T and L/C is considerably cheap and safer. For companies that have done multiple import/export businesses, they would know that Irrevocable LC is the best choice where both parties would be on a safer end should any party tries to play Hide-N-Don’t-Seek game. So I’ve heard and read many complaints and horror stories about buyers using T/T to pay to their Sellers but then found out that the Seller has scam them out.

Look, if you are going to T/T the money over for your payment for a huge amount of items you have purchased, ALWAYS and let me stress this again ALWAYS T/T to the account name that bears the Company’s Name. Never pay to a personal account because by then they could easily run off with your money and leave you with a huge heart attack.

When you are in doubt in any form of payment methods especially if you are doing a T/T and the bank name and account bearer’s sounds suspicious to you, do not hesitate to contact your Bank Manager and get all your necessary checks on the account itself. Don’t be stupid and just jump into the basket when you know you are going into the crocodile’s den.

Also never use Western Union or Money Gram to pay for any of your said transactions. If the suppliers / companies are as valid as they tell you, they have no problem whatsoever to accept a valid T/T from you. What company, big or small, doesn’t have a company bank account? How in the world are they going to submit their yearly income tax and accept cheque payments from their customers? Sounds fishy doesn’t it?

Using Western Union and Money Gram is the most fastest way and 100% NOT SAFE for buyers to pay for their transaction. Only scammers and illegitimate sellers use Western Union and Money Gram as their form of payment. They can’t be traced down at all when they have finally scammed you out of your money even after you lodge a police report to whichever parties and organisations.

However just because we have heard so much horror stories about Sellers being scammers, there are also plenty of stories of Sellers being cheated by their Buyers. Believe it or not there are Buyers who made off with the finished products/ items without paying the Sellers. Sellers also faces irresponsible Buyers who never conform to their contract agreement by not paying on time or running out on the last second when products have been manufactured and awaiting for payment.

Ask Suppliers and Sellers anywhere, they will tell you their own horror stories. I’m a Supplier myself and I really hate having to come out thousands of dollars to manufacture the requested items for my customer only to have my payment be delayed by months. Who is going to pay for my bills, workers’ salary, daily company expenses and so on? Do the Buyers care? No they don’t.

So people, please do not ever blame us, the suppliers, for your own carelessness for not doing a thorough on your Suppliers. In the business line, everything is a risk. Nothing in life is risk free. Everyone have to play their part to make sure that unwanted incidents and losses to happen.

Thus, stop pointing fingers and just accept our mistake.

I don’t understand why there are still a large group of people who insists in scamming innocent people off their hard earned money. What I am referring to is the job postings in the local newspaper about Work From Home scams. I’m not sure if their initial agenda was to drive traffic to their website, but from what it looks, they are trying to cheat desperate jobless people or those searching for extra income.

The process is really easy. The Scammers would place an ad in the papers and website about looking for employees who is looking for extra income to work from home. Desperate job finders would snatch the opportunity, look the website up only to find they have to pay USD 45.00++ for their so called “available job opportunities”.

Some of the websites even have the gall to put up discount rates in flow with the yearly sales. The thought of being able to receive a bogous and humble sum by every end of the month lingers around the victim for days until his curiousity and desperation rules his better half.

The moment the job seekers pays the bill, that’s the moment he realised the money is not worth the kill. All he would ever find is just a whole list of links supposed to be employers, step by step ways of how to make your own website and tricking others to become like you; desperado cum scammer.

As pointedly written based on my own experience that I had done, it is fake. There is no such thing as fast money, pay to do paid surveys, home typist and do work from home. Face it, no employers in his right mind would ever want to employ any employees which they have never met, seen or even talked to.

You want money? Then work for it. There is no easy way to get money even robbers had to strategically plan their escape to rob a bank. Don’t be a fool and submit to your whimsical greedy side. If you want proof, then read this linked (Do Not Fall for Paid Surveys Website) post. I have a snapshot of the PAID SURVEY SCAMS that I had fallen victim to.

Curiousity got the better of me. We have seen everywhere on the internet the advertisements, “Earn $3000 per month” or “I got $200 in just 1 hr” plastered all over the internet. Unfortunately those who did click on it and went into the website will be left frustrated as the website will only allow paid members to enter. So if you don’t fork out that USD 60.00 then you’re out.

I decided to test these advertisements out, to see for myself if I really could do what they had claimed to have earn. Who doesn’t want to earn a few hundreds by the hour right? So after filing through, I finally got the desired website I wanted, the Singapore version of Get Rich By Filling Up Surveys which had flamed the job classified ads.

Being ’so’ righteous, I decided on not cheating them by doing the usual Black Hat PayPal trick on them and paid up the amount, a blathering USD 36.00 that is after 50% discount. (blast them!) So while I await for my “money manual”, the confirmation email and the receipt was emailed to me within seconds. (Good service when it comes to slashing our cash away)

Instead of showing me the lists of all the works I had to do, considering the ads sounded I was up for a job, what I got was totally different. It showed me a whole list of paid survey companies, Paid email companies and Mystery Shopping Companies which is not even related to Singapore. It was also not surprising to find a note from them that WE have to sign up with everyone of them and hope they will reply to us.

All THAT FOR $36.00!!! I got cheated…..

Not only that they even have a page, Bonus Extra, as a note on how to underhand Google Adsense and fiddle their system. They also give tips and notes on how to earn from affiliation by driving traffic to your website. I find this totally stupid.

You can see for yourself on the page image I took from it.

How in the world do you expect to earn anything from $0.0006 for all the clicks, surveys and emails read. A waste of time if you ask me. I can’t be always sitting in front of my computer and scouring through everyone of the paid sites to get my meager $1.00!

So let it be a lesson to everyone out there. DO NOT pay for those “Get Rich Fast” websites. Its purely stupid and a waste of money. Now I need to work extra hard just to get my USD36.00 back.

So much for their stupid testimonials. I bet all of them are from the same household.

I’m really grumbling about it. The temptation to pull my Black Hat trick on them is very tempting… Grr… But that would make me as bad as them.

This time Scammers have gotten way too far. Not only have they wasted my time, targeted my company, they gave false  hopes to my family members. They chose the wrong person to play this time. I’ve tolerated their nonsense far too long.

This time its personal. I’m taking these scammers where they belong, behind the lovely comforts of the prison, after I shave off all of their funds. The ball has been rolled and its only a few weeks before I forward their contact details to the Interpoll.

I’m gonna make sure that they don’t even know what hit them when the men in blue comes knocking on their door. I will however post up all the email transactions for everyone to see so they won’t fall for the sweet treats of these Blackie-Chan.

But first, I need to get my empty money gram and western union slip. Then going to do some weird transaction on it. I can just imagine the look of frustration on the idiots faces. Anyone care to share me their homemade computer virus? I need to send a New Years Gift to these group of Greedy Mongrels and crash their entire database.

Revenge is sooo sweet!

The issues of victims being scammed has graced the history books ages back. In the previous years where internet and computer is still getting some introduction to the poorly rated scammers world, it’s easy to spot a scammer’s email.

But with the higher technology knowledge given to these Big Time Cheaters, Scammers are getting more creative and daring. Instead of targetting the junk email box, they are now targeting traders, CEOs and Companies in trade lead web portals. This is a major problem to serious sellers and manufacturers.

Ask any businessmen and they will tell you that every business enquiry, even though the quantity is small is still very valuable. And with this knowledge in hand, Scammers have targeted their greedy hands on businesses and companies.

Under the false blanket of another merchant or CEO, they send out a few buying leads to draw in their victims who thought that they are really a serious buyer. After a few days of waiting, they send a reply to the sellers and a series of business related emails is followed. Instead of broken and badly spelled tossed with bad grammatical English, they used a good flow of the language that blinded the seller.

So after the enquiry emails on the product details, the scammer requested a quotation to be drafted C&F their port of call or FOB with a percentage of their commission locked into the price stating that they are just the sourcing agent for a reputable organisation like West African Development Agency. After wasting so much of my seller’s time, they hand over the contact of the so called person in charge of the Organisation.

After agreeing to the terms and conditions of the seller, the buyer scammer then sends out an Purchase Order completed with their letter head and their company stamp. After the seller has issued their invoice along with their banking details, the scammers begin their Gold Digging Operation.

As the seller eagerly awaits for the payment which can be a few days, the scammers then sent a letter to the seller stating that they are not able to transfer the cash out because the seller hasn’t registered itself as a non-ingenious contractor and requested that seller register themselves in order for the payment to be t/t successfully.

They also attached the contact of their so called friend who happens to be an officer in the government agency like NAFDAQ. The impostor will then give full instructions along with a copy of the government form  to be filled up and the banking details for the payment of the registration fee.

Some of the unfortunate sellers will fall for their trap and from what I heard from them, after paying around USD2000, the scammers decided to play the David Copperfield Disappearing Act. After finally realising that they have been conned and scammed, it’s already too late. The scammers have moved to another lot, changed their contact details and moved onto another easy target.

So here is a few tips when dealing with a Scammer:

1) Business deals from poor countries like Nigeria, Benin, Togo and other African Related nations are too good to be true. Most of these scammers are from there. So do your through research on the companies, phone numbers, contact details or whatever you have on them online. By just typing their address and Google them up can give you a list of some related articles on them.

2) Don’t waste money in calling them. If they are real buyers, they would have the courtesy to call you when in doubt and not rely solely on email as a form of conversation only. I do however have met serious buyers online and had a series of emails from them without telephone conversation, so trying not to be biased here.

3) When in doubt in dealing with government agency or organisation of any countries, call up the embassy or consulate of the said country and check out with them on the matter.

4) False report of funds unable to be transferred out. Check out with your bank managers on this issue. Usually there should not be any problem when transferring out the cash in payment for an invoice unless you are doing money laundering which is illegal.

5) Purchase Orders, Forms with official letter heads and such. There are such thing as using Adobe Photoshop to Cut and Paste and Edit a certain picture. Do not be fooled by such fancy attempt.

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To conclude this matter, I have attached a website that victims or soon-to-be-victims of scammers can view and learn from the articles of the old Scammers Game.