Dear pageboy,
It is generally not easy to check Chinese companies for whether they
are legit. This is due to the lack of online companies registers and
similar sources. However, close examination of the company's website,
some surrounding circumstances, and the search for typical signs of
fraudulent activities prove often helpful.
In this particular case, I came to the conclusion that Fuzhou XC A&S
Co. Ltd. is not trustworthy. I will explain what raises my suspicion:
The very first thing I did was to check the ownership of their Web
domain, exporter-china.net. I was not surprised to see that it is not
complete - there is no street address. This does, of course, not prove
anything yet, but it is suspicious.
The other thing is that the alleged owner is not Fuzhou XC A&S, but
another company, Fujian Shibu Trade Co. Ltd. This will become
interesting at a later point.
It is also noteworthy that the domain was registered only slightly
more than one year ago, on 13 July 2005. This, too, will become
important later.
After checking this data, I examined the company's website. Here, lots
of details demonstrate how dubious Fuzhou XC A&S is:
- They claim that one of their phone numbers is 001-510-931-6158. But
that is not a Chinese telephone number at all. The 001 is the country
code for the USA and Canada. 510-931 are the area code and prefix of
Hayward, California. This number has nothing to do with China or the
other numbers provided.
- They don't even know their own Chinese landline number. At the top
of the contact information page, they say it's 0086-0594-2615326. At
the bottom of the same page, it suddenly became 0086-2615326. They
forgot the entire area code - hard to believe that this would happen
to someone whose own telephone number this is. This striking
carelessness makes me believe that it is just some phone number they
used on their website to appear more trustworthy, since they are
convinced that no one will actually take a long-distance call for
inquiring. I have seen this often on scam sites.
- The brands they claim to sell seem to utterly confuse them. For
example, they always insist on writing "Addidas", although the correct
spelling is "Adidas". In the watches section, "Cartier" became
"Catiter", and "Bulgari" became "Bvigari". This means that they don't
have the slightest idea of the merchandise they claim to be
specialized in. It is more than hard to believe that this would happen
to a reputable company.
- An interesting question: Why does the company logo in the upper left
corner show a "B" on top of the world? The company's name does not
begin with a B at all. There is no good reason why they should use a B
as their logo. I have the impression that they simply used an image
they stole somewhere on the Web.
- The whole website is designed extremely primitively. It looks not
professional at all. The texts are a mess, consisting almost entirely
of mistakes. In several cases it's even hard to decode the meaning of
a sentence. This is too ridiculous and should not happen to a company
whose business is, allegedly, based upon business contacts with other
countries.
- They try to appear trustworthy by referring to their Alibaba
TrustPass certification. Aside from the fact that the TrustPass of
that business-to-business marketplace is widely considered worthless
since it is rather easy to obtain with some cheating, the company's
entry at Alibaba is interesting. In their company profile there, the
"Legal Representative/CEO" is called simply "Davidi", thus completely
omitting the last name, which is a rather odd habit. Then, the contact
information in the company's TrustPass profile looks absolutely
different: A different address, a different contact person. One could
easily get the impression that the fraudsters used some other
company's data to get a TrustPass certificate.
There is one more interesting point in the company profile: Allegedly,
they were founded in 2004. However, in their profile at TradeKey,
another b-2-b marketplace, they say that Fuzhou XC A&S was founded in
1997. We now see that they are liars who have troubles to correctly
remember their own lies.
As for the mysterious "Fujian Shibu Trade Co. Ltd." who allegedly
registered the company's Web domain: They were just another scam
operation, obviously by the same fraudsters. In an entry at China
Exporter Catalog, we meet their CEO "davidi", and their now-defunct
website (short-lived websites are typical for scams) was
www.gbrandshoes.com then. And in another entry, at the b-2-b
marketplace EC21, it's still "davidi", but suddenly the website is ...
www.exporter-china.net.
I see no reason to trust Fuzhou XC A&S Co. Ltd. They are shady and
dubious, their website is, frankly spoken, junk, they are lying about
their identity. I doubt that reputable manufacturers like Nike or
Adidas would let such people sell their products. Should this
"company" really ever deliver anything (which I doubt), I'd say that
it would be cheap Chinese imitations of branded products, which might
even cause huge trouble for the buyer when found by the customs. I
recommend not to do any business with them.
Best regards,
Scriptor
Sources:
Allwhois Domain Database
http://www.allwhois.com/
TradeKey: Fuzhou XC A&S Co. Ltd.
http://www.tradekey.com/profile_view/uid/204131/Fuzhou-XC-A-S-Co-LTD.htm
International Numbering Plans: Telephone Number Analysis
https://www.numberingplans.com//?page=analysis&sub=phonenr
EC21: Fujian Shibu Trade Co.,Ltd.
http://davidi78.en.ec21.com/company_info.html
China Exporter Catalog: fujian shibu trade co.,ltd
http://exporter.globalimporter.net/company/816/57100
Alibaba: Fuzhou XC A&S Co., Ltd. - About Us
http://exporter.en.alibaba.com/aboutus.html
Alibaba: Fuzhou XC A&S Co., Ltd. - TrustPass Profile
http://exporter.en.alibaba.com/trustpass_profile.html |
