Anyone trying to find wholesale discounts on products by searching for vendors on the internet has most likely seen an ad for TradeKey.com. I found out the hard way that all the supposed vendors listed on the site are fraudulent.
A few months ago I contacted about 20 different vendors on TradeKey.com who were supposedly selling products wholesale from factories in China. They are certified on TradeKey.com as "reliable vendors". They all had legit pictures of Apple iPhones, Nintendo DS, poker tables and countless other products. I spent a few weeks having email conversations with all the different companies trying to find the most legit ones. I finally told 8 "verified" companies listed on TradeKey.com that I would purchase samples of different products to examine them first and if they looked ok, purchase more. Each company told me that the only way they could accept payments was through Western Union. That was a mistake on my part. However I thought that by diversifying between 8 of the most legit looking companies, I would be able to find a couple that would come through.
I waited and tracked the packages coming from factories in China using tracking numbers on the internet. Finally the first set of packages arrived. It was supposed to contain 5 Apple Mac Book Airs. When I opened the box, I found 1 really cheap "Hasse" chinese computer in a beat up old box with chinese writting. I emailed the vendor who told me that his worker had made a mistake and that he was upset. He told me to send another few thousand dollars for some iPhones I looking at and he would send the computers and the iPhones together the next day. I told him no way!
As the days passed over the next couple of week, I began to recieve all the packages I had been tracking. Not one of them had anything remotely close to the electronics i had ordered! I got knock off pairs of shoes, a golf club, a thin, light, cheap looking knock off of a chinese iPhone (instead of 20 real ones). As I emailed the companies back that I had been in constant contact with for weeks each day, I recieved no response from a single company. I realized quickly that I was being ripped off and there was nothing I could do about it.
TradeKey.com does not screen any company that it puts on its site like it says it does. I tend to believe that TradeKey.com is almost in on the fraudulent activity. I had 4 or 5 people call me because they were about to send money to the same companies and they had given my name as a reference! Just my name, not my phone number, but just my name. The people did their homework better than me and found my number from my website www.tablegamesdirect.com and called me. I obviously warned them against sending a dime. For those 5 people who acutally found me, Im sure there were many who have gotten ripped off, just like I did.
To anyone thinking of sending money to China to get some sort of a deal from manufactuing companies listed on TradeKey.com, chances are you are going to get ripped off!
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