3 good deals, 1 scammer. Money was refunded from Alibaba :)
I was nervous at first dealing through Alibaba because I wasn’t sure how good their trade assurance program was and if I would get my money back if a deal went bad. But after having a bad deal and finding out how they actually handled it, I’m much more confident now with the platform and I am definitely giving it a five star review because they dealt with a tricky situation with the supplier that tried to mislead me and they judged it properly and ended up giving me my full refund back, which was almost $4000 so I can say Alibaba is definitely a good platform to source materials from other countries and will make sure the deals aren’t shady or scams. I was going to buy a $13,000 diesel generator from a manufacturer in China and it needed certification from the EPA in order to clear customs. The supplier showed me an epa certificate for a different product and tricked me into making the deposit on the generator which was $3600. After doing some research I found out they didn’t have the proper certification and it would’ve been seized by customs when trying to ship it to me. They refused to give my money back and tried to keep it. I applied for a refund through the trade assurance program on Alibaba and it took about a month, but they reviewed all the correspondence between me and the manufacturer and the documents they showed me that were for a different product and how they tried to pass it off as being for the generator I was buying. It took a while, but eventually they returned a complete review of the transaction which was a fully detailed judgment with about 12 bullet points and the supplier had time to try to rebut all these bullet points which they failed miserably at so the judgment was totally in my favor and found that the supplier was at fault for all the issues about the transaction. So it was ruled in my favor and the judgment was a complete refund so my deposit was returned to me completely and I am very happy with it so I’m confident doing business here now after three or four transactions. Three went great, one was a shady supplier and tried to scam me. Alibaba returned my money. I’m confident doing business through Alibaba now that I see how they deal with scammers. It might take a minute but they deal fairly with everyone so as long as you read the rules and know how to do proper business it is a safe place to source equipment and materials direct from the manufacturer.