Have you ever met a nigeria customer? What is your experience?

Before I started my job as a foreign sales, some of my friends have told me, customers who come from west aferican may not have good reputation, one should pay more attention to them. But I don't think it is true.

In Canton Fair in 2007, I met two nigeria customers, after the Fair, they visited our factory, and booked an order, 12000 meters chenille jacquard fabric. When they came back, one week later I received 7000USD deposit of them, then I began to do the production. One month later, we finished the order. Then I asked them to arrange the payment of the balance and after that I could do the shipment for them. But they said there was some finance problem of their company. So I had to wait.

2007 was over, but we couldn't ship out the cargos of them. Last year(2008), I called them many many times about the cargos, but they told me their warehouse has got a big fire, they don't have any space to keep the cargos. They wanted me to keep the cargos of them, also they promised me to ship the cargos as soon as they can. Time passed so fast, but I still didn't get the payment of them. Before Chinese New Year holiday, everyone of our company has a good mood to do the plan of the holiday except me. They has promised me to T/T us the money before the holiday. Also my boss told me if I couldn't get the payment of them, our company will not give me any salary then. The worst thing was coming, other people has gone home to enjoy their holiday, I still had to wait in the company. They cheated me, I still didn't receive any payment of them by now. Now I also can't get salary from our company, I am so sad, everyday I have a very bad mood because of this.

I don't think I will do more business with them in the future, now I just want to solve the problem as soon as I can.  What should I do, I think so much about them, but they never thought of me.   who can help me?

West Africans are like that, all they do is scam everyone else.

You've been scammed.  Just tell them that if they don't collect the goods within 14 days, you will foreit their deposit and sell the goods to somebody else.

You've been holding the goods for more than a year, storage fee is more than the deposit.

 past is just past,do not be sad.U should learn from this experince,and do not trust any one easily in the future

Oh, It is so bad. Can you find another customer to buy this amount of fabric, or change to sell domestic regular business partner. They have paid you some, this part you won't return back. You tell them, your company has a rule, if customer did not get their goods within 3 months, then you can choose to sell another without returning the deposit, or collect the warehousing charge, $500/month.

You'd better find other way, don't wait for them. Fighting!

It is quite good you have received the advanced payment. Do not wait and sell the goods as the stock.  Perhaps you can earn more than originaly. Then ask your boss to refund your salary as well as the bonus.  Lastly but importantly, quit this job and find new one.  This is not your fault and the company should bear the risk.  

Take the deposit as your bonus and salary.

Good luck to your future business.

I can not,I also do business with these net clients but I don't accept any payment means other than LC and a few of them CAD only.You better do that!

i am sorry to hear that .good luck 2009

Quoting from[James-Bu]:

You are lucky at least you can sell the stuff toootherr customers . The contract being time bound you can tell them good bye if you have given your  account details change the account. and they might use your personal and business data to scam others

I don't see the scam here if the customer has already paid you USD7,000 in cash. There are certainly much easier ways to scam people without sending them large sums of cash.

Also the fact that they were at a trade fair and took the time to visit your factory suggests that they are businessmen not scammers. A scammer would not generally go to that much trouble.

The only potential for scam here that I can see is if they try to put pressure on you to send the production before you receive the final payment but of course you would not do that.

I think that they may be a legitimate customer that has run into legitimate problems. Perhaps they lost their customer for this production and are now trying to find another buyer.

What you need to do is to give them an ultimatum. Give them 30 days notice that if you have not received final payment by a certain date that your company reserves the right to sell off the production and in that case the buyer forfeits their deposit. If the buyer does not respond within 30 days then sell off the production to another customer if you can and be done with it.

Hi James:

        I‘m sorry to hear thatbut dont worryi trust that things will take a turn for the better in the near future.


       You could collect more and more information about this company 's,if what they said was unture,you can choice another purchasing agent.

        Hope every thing goes well~~