How to Spot a Scamming Drop Shipper
What are drop shippers, and why should you always be careful when dealing with them? In essence, drop shippers are distributors or companies that provide you with a product inventory that you sell. Drop shipping has become a popular home business venture because it allows people to launch their own business without much start-up investment or work. For instance, let’s say you are interested in selling jewelry. But you don’t have enough money to buy a huge inventory of jewelry to offer your future customers, and you are not exactly set up to handle the distribution process of shipping your products to your customers. This is where the drop shipper distributor comes into play.
A drop shipper provides you with an inventory that you can sell. Let’s use the jewelry example again. Let us say that you located a drop shipper company that has a good jewelry inventory. You work with the drop shipper to offer your clients that jewelry inventory. Your customers order from you, and then you send the order off to the drop ship distributor. As drop shipper, they are responsible for handling the product, packaging it, and then shipping it to your customer. When your customer receives his or her package, it will have your business name on it. So ideally, the drop ship company will work with you to provide your customers with a seamless buying and shipping process.
However, this is not always the case. As is the case these days, you have to be careful with whom you deal with online. There are many scammers out there who are just looking to make a quick buck. Here are a few tips that can help you tell the difference between reputable drop ship companies and those that are out there to scam you out of a few bucks.
1. Look at their web site.
Most online drop ship companies maintain their own web site. If this is the case, take a good look at their web site. Does it look professionally designed, or does it appear primitive, as if it was slapped together in one quick design session? Does it look like its regularly updated, or does it look dated and forgotten? Most importantly, is there a physical address listed on the site, or a working email and phone number? Before you decide to do business with any drop ship company, make sure that there is an easy and reliable mode of communicating with them. Give them a call and see if anyone answers. If it is a local company, pay a visit to their physical location to make sure it actually exits. If the drop ship company you are interested in does not get back to you, you should opt not to do business with them.
2. Ask for references.
Don’t be afraid of being impolite in business matters, especially when you are trying to establish the legitimacy of a company you want to do business with. Go ahead and ask for references from past clients.
3. Don’t forget to inspect the merchandise yourself.
This is a big tip-off: if the drop ship company will not let you physically inspect their product inventory, chances are they are not worth working with. Even if the drop ship company is located overseas, they should still be willing to share with you a sample product so you have a very good idea of what you will be offering your clients. After all, even though the drop ship company is supplying the product inventory, it is still your business, and your reputation, that is on the line.
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