Last week, a supplier was apparently very fed up with our inspectors’ visits. They pretended that our inspections, even though they might be helpful in uncovering issues before shipment, cost them some money. And these costs should be borne by the buyer, of course.
I listed the costs incurred by the supplier and/or the factory during a standard inspection, and I sent this message to the supplier:
- Scheduling the inspections only takes your merchandiser 5 minutes.
- Inspectors should never request a driver, and we advise you to let them come by taxi. All they might need is (1) clear indications of the factory location, and (2) your help for calling a taxi–that they will pay–when they are ready to leave the factory.
- Similarly, no need to offer lunch. If your factory is far away from restaurants, and you don’t want to give any food to the inspector, you should tell her the day before so that she gets organized.
- Nobody requires a merchandiser to accompany the inspector during her whole day. She can work alone.
- It is common practice to assign 1 unskilled worker to show where the packed and unpacked products are, and to help unpack some samples. But it takes no more than 2 hours.
- The inspector needs to show a representative of the supplier/factory the discrepancies and the defects she found. It usually takes less than 15 minutes.
Total for 1 inspection: 5 min. of a merchandiser’s time, 1 or 2 hours of an unskilled factory worker’s time + about 10 min. of a manager’s time.
It was enough to bring the discussion to an end. For the time being, that is.
As often in China, there is some truth in what the supplier says, but one has to try to understand their position.
To be fair, I can see two significant costs for a supplier:
- In case there are serious quality issues and the inspector notices them, the supplier has to sort out and rework/reproduce some goods. And the importer might ask for compensation (e.g. air cargo charges) for the delay it represents. But this is only a short-term cost. If these quality issues are discovered later, after shipment, the real consequences might be worse for the supplier… The buyer might ask for a big discount, or stop the business relationship.
- In the rare case where there are NO serious quality issues BUT it seems there are (in the inspector’s report), the extra costs and penalties can be quite significant. I can understand why a Chinese supplier would be afraid of it. But there is always a solution: they can hire another third-party inspection firm to get another opinion. It can get a bit complex, but it is usually fine if the supplier has earned the buyer’s trust in the past.