Double-Duct-Tape Your Wallet to Your Chest, Tindie Makers (Manufacturing)

I chose the subject to be a bit tantalizing on purpose… I want all you Tindie makers who are considering getting a factory ‘elsewhere’ to make your designs to read this for your own safety

TL;DR version: beware of salespeople at manufacturing companies who leave their company, take their contacts with them, and are either going ‘freelance’ or just out-and-out scamming previous customers via redirected payments for quotes (RED FLAGS: email address changes during your negotiations; claims that some other salesperson snooped on their work terminal, and ‘might contact you’ to steal the sale; and, as deal closing nears, Western Union transfer requests – NEVER EVER, EVER, to ANYONE. Not even your grandma you saw yesterday.).

I didn’t fall for this, but it was a bit close… it took me a day or so for the little voice in my head to say "wait a second… "

Here’s the long story. I made some products, which I’ve sold quite nicely on Tindie (thanks!). I’m almost out, and wanted to do another, larger run, improve the design etc.so off I go to my ‘trusty’ contact at the manufacturer… (in China. Yeah, I’d make them locally if anyone here actually would step up, but no one would. I can’t fix the world, tough.)

So, I mail my salesperson from last time. We start exchanging design ideas for the second run, I send new diagrams etc. Everything is going smoothly. It’s almost a month before I notice… hey wait, at some point he sent me some mails from a very similar-sounding address, but the domain isn’t the same. In fact, none of the subsequent emails are from the company domain. More recently, the mail changed again, right at the point he sent an email saying someone named “Lucy” would be contacting me, but that she had hacked his account at work, trying to steal his contacts, so I should ignore her and keep dealing with him.

Hey, he seemed nice, last production run went swell, so sure, I’ll gave him the benefit of the doubt and finalized the details – diagrams, materials, etc. and he gives me a quote.

Sounds legit, sure, let’s get this going. He tells me due to the size of the order, Paypal or credit card can’t happen, they need Western Union. Made out to HIS OWN NAME, not to the company I thought I was dealing with.

So I went back to ‘first principles’, and contacted the company directly again; gave the details for the quote, including the Western Union transfer details. Got a reply within the hour that the salesperson, my trusted contact, had “left the company” a month ago. Very sorry.

Beware everyone. It’s the Wild West in the Wild East!

The lengths that scammers go to never cease to amaze me. When I used to work in office management, we would often get a scam that involved toner cartridges. Basically a rep calls up and says “oh hey, time for your toner order, can you confirm the serial number on the machine?” If you give them that information they will repeat it and if you say “yes” they have recorded that. Then you get a toner in the mail and a really, really large bill for it. If you call to complain, they play back a recording of the person asking, instead of the serial number, asking if your order is correct and then you hear your “yes”. It is a dirty, dirty trick. I have caught people in offices I have worked in at least 4 or 5 times on the phone with these people and had to explain to them to never do that.

I had similar incident while sourcing parts from China. Got a very good price from a company. Then as I prepared to order some samples. I was also asked to pay by western union. I said I can pay by wire transfer or PayPal only. Then he sent me a personal bank account. I then ask why this is not a company account. Then I get the a reply “ok don’t do business with you”. That was the end of it.