10 Checks To Stay Safe Buying Wholesale On Facebook Marketplace:
Company number/VAT number
Any established supplier will have a company number or a VAT number. P.S. Self employed traders will only be able to show you a VAT number, if they have it. So should you just not trust suppliers who don’t have either? In short, no. We have dealt with a lot of new companies who don’t have VAT or Company numbers, and we have never gotten burnt, but we did a lot of due diligence on them! Finding others they have traded with before, and past wholesale companies they had worked at.
Reviews/Testimonials
Look for lots of online reviews and testimonials. P.S. Check out the validity of the profiles leaving these reviews. Do they look like genuine reviews? Or has somebody bought reviews online, or started multiple accounts and left themselves reviews.
Research them relentlessly!
Does their facebook account look legit? Can you see a genuine looking digital footprint? Such as: Tagged in photos with friends, an aged social media account etc
You catch them in a lie
If the supplier that you’re considering purchasing from has either blatantly lied to you, or you feel that they are withholding information from you on purpose, then avoid them like the plague! Even if they are a genuine supplier, and they are genuinely going to ship you the products, you will get burnt sooner or later buying from these types of people. These are not the kinds of people that are even worth dealing with, as there are so many honest and trustworthy suppliers out there!
Are their photos all from the same place?
Are their product photos from completely different looking locations? If so, this could be a reason to avoid unless they have a genuine reason. Can you find these photos elsewhere online? Have they got the exact same photo’s everywhere, and can’t provide any more? These are all questions that you should be asking yourself.
How long ago was their FB account created?
If their Facebook account was made yesterday, you should probably avoid it. However, people do make extra accounts to not spam friends and family with product listings, so you could ask a new account to link their genuine account before completely discounting them as a verified supplier. P.S. people can buy aged accounts, so watch out for this!
Collect first, then ship.
When Pink Liquidation started, I was driving thousands of miles collecting from smaller suppliers. After I developed a relationship with them, depending on qty’s, we would primarily use courier shipping from there. This prevents you from buying off people who don’t really own the stock, and getting scammed!
Use Marketplaces and Paypal goods & services
Using marketplaces and paypal goods & services can be a great way to buy stock as they do have buyer protection. However, you still need to be careful as these sites do still have loopholes that you, the buyer can lose
Pay 50/50
If they won’t accept marketplaces/paypal and you can’t collect. Your next best option is to pay 50% upfront, and then 50% on delivery. This means that even after all the validity checks you have done, if you do get scammed, at least you only lost half the money, and not all of it! P.S. more established companies will probably not accept this type of deal.
Trust your gut
The most important point. If something looks too good to be true, then it probably is.
There are a lot of genuine suppliers that do not meet a lot of the above criteria, but does that mean you shouldn’t buy from them?
The main red flags when buying wholesale from Facebook Marketplace are:
- New Facebook accounts
- They don’t allow collections
- The deal looks too good to be true
- They won’t accept 50/50 payment
- You catch them in a lie
But these factors need to be taken with a pinch of salt. For example, at Pink Liquidation, we do not allow collections for small orders, and we do not accept 50/50 payments.
So how do you know that companies like Pink Liquidation are not a scam as they have some of the “Red Flags”. For example, you can see videos of us in our warehouse online, you can see all of our 5 star reviews on google, you can see our company numbers and the fact that we have been around since 2020, you can see all of our company social medias, and you can see all of our deals that constantly sell out!
As the above example shows, you should use this list as a guide rather than a definitive checklist, and just remember, if your gut feeling is telling you that something’s wrong, it probably is!
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