I encounted a problem recently.

A buyer from HK called me and said he is interested in our products.

Without further negociate,he urgently need me to send his several samples.I said we should charge the samples,but he insist on to offer free and pay the freight on his side.

And i  agreed to do so after negociate with our GM.

Who knows,after the last letter he appreciate our samples and say "thanks",we never get feetback from him now.I mailed him many times later,but in vain.

How could i do with such bad free sample hunter,and how i can identify them at the beginning? 

This is not a difficult problem to avoid.

I believe that best practice is to charge for samples and let customer pay delivery costs. You can then return some or all of these costs to customer when they place an order on the products.

No customer wants to pay sample fees but most legitimate customers will understand this requirement.

There are some exceptions to the above of course:

a. product samples that have no re-sale value or use by themselves e.g. material swatch etc.

b. large well known companies such as Walmart etc who routinely do not pay for samples but you need to make sure that the person who contacts you is actually from that company so be sure to call them via contact information that you find for that company not what the customer gives you.

What kind of samples did you send him ? If they were low value items with little or no

resale value, I think you can rest easy. I doubt if the "buyer" was fishing for samples for

free.

You say he's paid the freight charges. Did you stop to think that maybe the freight charge

itself could have worked out higher than the cost of samples themselves ? Would it then

not make sense to you that the buyer is perhaps genuine ? 


Business is hard in today's world. Everyone is trying their luck. Some just have to be

more patient. I myself have sent out several samples to prospective clients over the

years. Not everyone will book orders ! But that does not mean they are cheats, right ?