How can I Recover Deposit Money ?

I placed an order with a Chinese company back in March after visiting the company. I was given some preliminary samples at that time. I then sent them about $9000 USD as a deposit. The manufacturing process went very slowly and they finally sent a second set of samples about 3 weeks ago. The products were terrible quality.

I am not willing to accept these products and have demanded my deposit back. They told me that they can return the money in 1 year. I told them that was unacceptable and have not heard back from them in 5 days. What steps should I take to get my money back?

Replying to [sammy_sung]: This is a difficult position to be in !! By looking at how the initial offer and acceptance was agreed upon perhaps your cancellation of orders caught them by surprise and not given enought time to develope the product for you ? Was the deposit a direct manufacturing cost in any way [raw mtr/mould cost] ? Thus the delay in refunding you the deposit ? Should it be a direct cost I doubt you will be refunded in full. Only an assumption...

Perhaps try discussing your quality problems with the supplier. Since you hv visited them only you will be able to judge their manufacturing abilities.

Hope things turn out for the better. Good luck.

Replying to [Ranger]:

I only approved the original sample that they produced while I was visiting the company. Those samples were good material and they had a separate material that they had done an embroidery on.

When they sent a second sample (which I requested because everything was going so slowly and I wanted to make sure things were actually being made), the materials were completely different and the embroidery was bad.

I will try contacting that poster and will look at that ministry site at all.

Thanks.

Replying to [sammy_sung]:

Im sorry for you, especially because this is usual with chineses manufacturers and nobody cares about it.

From what i understand, they shown you quality A and finished giving you quality B. This is usual, i bet when you visited them they invited you to take a look at their factory, know their great production line, even invited you to a restaurant and promised you the best.

Besides what everybody else understood here, you paid the total amout for the goods based on what they shown you, but later they just sent you crap quality samples of the final product and it wasnt possible to do anything since you already paid them.

As usual, they said they cant refund you the money, wich is something common among most chineses companies, they have a lot of reasons such as: 1) This is what you wanted 2) We cant refund you because the goverment dont allow us 3) We can refund you in your NEXT order (lol some chineses are damn funny) and so on.

What can you do then? Nothing.
Why am i being so negative? Because some similar situation happened to me, but fortunately, i didnt lose such amount of money (just us$500), but i did what people is recommending you here. I contacted the chinese embassy, spoke to some persons about it and they were like... "we will contact the company" ... this was like a year ago and until these days, not even the embassy people answered me so...bye bye us$500 (and the worst is that when i told the company i would contact the embassy, the chinese manager said the goverment do not CARE ABOUT THESE SMALL THINGS).

So my friend, as some say, hope is the last thing you can lose, but maybe what will be better is to just accept the goods and make the lose as soon as possible, find someone willing to pay the cost of them, or anything like that, better that than not recovering a single dollar.

Im sorry, next time find a better supplier or a well known trader, because most chineses wont refund your money.

cheers

Replying to [blacke]:


You're absolutely right.USD 9,000 may seem big to many of us but in terms of international trade dispute like this, that is just a tiny dot, believe me.
I myself have discussed with Lawyer He, as recommended by Ranger above (from his answers, I assume LAwyer He is quite an expert in Chinese Trade Law) about the possibility of pursuing a lawsuit against a company in China for defected/garbage consignment at the amount approximately close to USD 15,000 and I think (based on his expert advice) that it is really not worth pursuing.
Government of China will not care for this tiny small amount unless it involves giant multi-national corporation with millions of dollars at stake.
So, Sammy Sung, if you know Chinese mind-set, I think there are basically 2 choices for you;

1.Accept the loss and move on or
2.Continue the business with them, and squeeze the price further down while threathening them to bring this case to court if you cannot continue the business and prior to shipment, engage SGS to inspect all items, sign new contract if you have to, detailing all of these new requirements.

If you still insist on "bringing the guilty person in front of the court of law" crap, hey be my guess, let's see whether you can get back USD 9,000 or lose another 20,000 for the preceedings
Good Luck !!

Replying to [trado]:

Its really sad to see such problems, especially when theres nothing to do but move on and accept you have lost us$9000.

I wouldnt recommend sammy to continue business with them, id rather recommend sammy to post all fhe information about the company here and get them unlisted/blacklisted from alibaba (even though that have a chance of happening of a 1%).

As i said before, try finding someone in your country who is willing to buy the goods as they are, for the cost or even less...
Even if you get only the half of the money, it will be better than loosing all of it

Replying to [sammy_sung]:
Sorry to hear that, but thats another COMMON practice among chinese manufacturers.
When you complain too much, they simply ignore you, so what you should do is try to be friendly so they will finally send you the products, but i doubt they will do it.

About the 2 owners, i dont know how the law work in this case in usa, maybe you can do something but i really dont know, i guess he's responsible even though he's not part of the company, because when he was part of it, you made the deal.

Try asking a lawyer in usa about it, and if its possible to put the guy in a trial, make him pay you your US$9000 and the cost of the lawyer and the money you lost for not doing the business.

cheers

The US citizen is actually the one who is still at the company. He is the owner of a Chinese company, but is a US citizen in China on a visa. Does anyone have any info about this sort of thing that might help me out?

Replying to [sammy_sung]: Under the circumstances I think trado and blacke is right, perhaps if he is a US citizen you could iron things out without going to court which may incur higher cost. Minimize the losses at least for now.

May wanna visit him again and renegotiate PO ask for price reductions, compensations ? Perhaps some members in the forum could help you out in visiting him on your behalf ? Good luck.

PS. It's legal to run a biz if he has visa and work permit along with other licenses required by China law.