Last week I wrote about bad relationships with Chinese suppliers and Dan, on the China Law Blog, mentioned it in There Must Be Fifty Ways To Leave A Bad China Supplier.
Specifically, Dan asked this question to his readers:
What percent of the time does a Chinese supplier who has provided bad product and not owned up to it provide good product the next time?
My guess was: in about 80% of cases, once it’s unacceptable, it remains unacceptable whatever the importer does.
The remaining 20% are special situations:
- The supplier is a trading company that placed production in a factory that was not up to the task (or that didn’t care of this indirect customer). Then they make efforts and use a better factory for the second order.
- The manufacturer subcontracted production in a cheap workshop, and then took better care of the customer in following orders. I even saw a lingerie supplier re-produce (in house) a batch of strings (that had certainly been subcontracted) FOR FREE, because the photos from the customer showed the problems were really unacceptable. **Warning: it is representative of maybe 0.3% of the cases**
Most interesting are the comments from readers of the China Law Blog.
Here is one:
In my experience (16 years sourcing all sorts of product from China), once things go wrong, they only get worse from there. My advice is not to enter into a new contract with the same supplier who caused you the problems, but to enter into a new contract with someone else.
Another one:
I’ve had exactly one supplier out of nearly 10 years who went bad, then recovered. The rest just went from bad to worse.
And this one:
Let’s see now. I’ve done deals with 8 Chinese suppliers and all 8 eventually went bad and never went better. So I would say it’s 100%.
Wow. What this suggests is that importers should run away as soon as they see a substandard production batch, and they should always assume that it will no get any better, ever.
So I am an optimist regarding China manufacturing quality? Who would have said that??
0 Responses
Hello Renaud,
Yeah the suppliers often try to keep the client by offering discount for next orders or replacing at least a part of the previous bad one.. However in the end they hassle with the terms again and a client can be happy to receive at least something… although again not in the desired quality nor the desired volume. So I totally agree with you – Run when there’s still time!
(Btw. the 80% vs. 20% – didn’t you want to write it vice versa? Or maybe it’s just me who understands it the other way round..?)
Thanks Veronika!
I meant, in 80% of cases it does not get back to normal.
I have been dealing for the last 32 years in manufacturing industries with many differents countries .
I have to say before China came along most of our suppliers were about honest or if problem happened in general we always come to some acceptable conclusions , especially regarding europeen suppliers .
Since we are starting to trade with China and this is relatively new in world trade history ,major problems started .
they are probably the most deshonest people on this little planet .They have no consideration what so ever about people especially non-chinese .i will not start to enumerate all bad experiences I have had but I really think we should asap stop trading and finance them .
every penny you will give them will eventually be used against you . this is clear as cristal rock .
I have at disposal to anybody interested by , a list of bad chinese suppliers , with whom we have occured terrible problems either financial , copy right, bad quality etc..
benoit Tourres
Thanks Benoit… Not all Chinese suppliers are dishonest, but it is true that many of them are.