When buyers start to worry they’ve been scammed by a Chinese supplier, the first reaction is usually emotional: angry messages, endless chasing, long accusations in chat. By the time the dust settles, a lot of your best chances to fix or limit the damage are already gone. The right order is different: first protect your information and evidence, then work out what is really happening on the other side, and only after that decide whether to keep negotiating, how to negotiate, and whether to bring in a third party.
1. Secure Your Evidence
The very first move is not to argue, but to secure your evidence. That means backing up chat logs, emails, contracts, POs, PIs, invoices, bank details for every payment you sent, payment receipts, tracking numbers, and any certificates or photos they’ve provided. A practical way is to build a simple timeline: when you started discussing the order, when price and terms were agreed, when you paid, what shipment date they promised, and what key conversations happened after that. Once you have this on one page, anyone who helps you later—platform support, your bank, a lawyer, an insurer—can understand the story without wading through hundreds of screenshots.
2. Diagnose the Problem
The second step is to calmly decide what kind of problem you’re facing. Is it normal commercial delay and excuse-making, or clear signs of fraud? Genuine delays usually come with reasons that can be checked: raw material problems that match documents or supplier notices; factory shutdowns that match public announcements or local news. Fraudulent behavior looks different: the reasons keep changing, the story contradicts itself over time, and at some point they start hinting that “if you just pay a bit more, we can finally ship”. When you see that pattern, you should immediately stop thinking in terms of “how to help them solve their problem” and start thinking in terms of “how to stop sinking more money into this”.
3. One Formal Chance
Once you’ve done that basic diagnosis, it is worth giving the supplier one formal chance to respond. Instead of spamming them with angry messages, write a short, structured email or message that does three things: restate what was originally agreed on price, quality, lead time and payment; describe what has actually happened so far; and set out what you now require, such as clear production or shipment proof by a specific date, or a partial refund. At the end, you can calmly say that if things are not resolved by that date, you will have to consider using platform mechanisms, your bank or legal options to protect yourself.
4. Background Check
In parallel, you should do the “homework” you may not have done before you sent the money: a basic background check. (See our guide on how to verify a Chinese factory). Even after payment, this still matters. At a minimum, you want to know who actually received your funds: which legal entity, with what full Chinese name, controls that bank account. Then you want to see whether that entity is still “active” in Chinese company records, or has been revoked, deregistered or flagged as “abnormal operations”. Finally, you want to know whether it has a long list of sales-contract disputes or entries on the “dishonest person” blacklist. In simple terms, you are trying to tell whether you are dealing with a temporarily struggling factory, or with a company that has been drowning in lawsuits for years. Our Background Check Service can help you quickly uncover this crucial information.
5. Use Platform Tools
If your order was placed through a platform such as Alibaba or 1688, you should use the platform’s dispute tools in time, rather than just shouting at customer service. (Read more about Alibaba verification vs independent audits). Most platforms have a formal dispute/claim process with a deadline: you must submit evidence before a certain date, or the order is treated as completed. This is exactly where your earlier timeline and organized evidence help: you can upload the contract, payment proofs, screenshots of promises about delivery and quality, and your formal message asking them to fix the problem.
6. Track the Money
If you paid by bank transfer, the key question is where the money is now. Is it still in transit or under the control of an intermediary bank? Rules vary a lot by country and bank, but one principle is universal: the earlier you inform your bank in writing that you suspect fraud and provide basic evidence, the more room they have to see if any protective steps are possible within their rules. On the other hand, if you already suspect serious problems and still keep paying extra deposits, “urgent fees” or “storage charges” to the same account, you are effectively throwing away your last safety cushion.
7. Stop the Bleeding
At some point, you need to decide where to draw a line and stop sending money. A common pattern is that initial terms look reasonable, but once you are locked in, they keep pushing for more: another 20% to “speed up production”, another fee to “avoid warehouse fines”. If your background check has already shown serious issues and your evidence is strong, then the most important sentence you can say is “this is as far as I go; not one dollar more”.
8. Third Party Intervention
Beyond that, you need to decide whether bringing in a third party is worthwhile. For small samples or losses in the low thousands of dollars, a full-blown cross-border lawsuit rarely makes economic sense, but even then, a well-drafted lawyer’s letter backed by real background findings can sometimes push a shaky supplier to settle. Once the potential loss runs into the tens of thousands or more, it becomes rational to get a structured view on what Chinese litigation or arbitration would look like.
9. Mindset
The last point is about mindset. When you suspect you’ve been scammed, the two most common mistakes are to let emotions destroy your position, or to let wishful thinking drag you deeper into the hole. A more rational approach is to put “finding out the facts” and “controlling risk” ahead of “winning the argument”. You may not speak Chinese, but you do not have to give up your right to understand what kind of company you are dealing with and how much risk you are really taking. The goal, once you realize something is wrong, is to recover what you can, learn as much as possible from this case, and then make sure that with your next supplier, you use background checks, stronger contracts and safer payment terms to avoid stepping into the same trap again.