Before You Send Money to a Chinese Supplier:
23 Questions That Save You Thousands

The most expensive mistakes in UK-China sourcing aren’t made when the goods arrive. They’re made before the wire transfer. After 20 years on the supply side, here’s the question framework that prevents almost every disaster I’ve seen — and a free checklist you can take into your next supplier conversation.

A UK buyer messages a supplier on Alibaba. The price looks competitive, the photos look professional, the response is fast. They ask a few questions about minimum order quantity and lead time. The supplier answers, the buyer wires 30% deposit, and the order is placed.

Six weeks later, the goods arrive. The packaging is wrong for the UK market. The accessory specification doesn’t match what was discussed. The certification documents the importer needs for UK customs aren’t there. None of this was technically misrepresented in the supplier’s quotation. It was simply never specified — and in Chinese supplier relationships, anything not specified becomes a cost decision the supplier makes in the buyer’s absence.

This pattern is the most common form of UK-China sourcing failure. It isn’t fraud. It isn’t even a quality problem. It’s a communication architecture problem — and it’s almost entirely preventable if you know which questions to ask before you commit any money. After 20 years of doing this work, I’ve reduced that question framework to 23 specific items. The full list is free and linked at the end of this article. The framework behind it is what follows.

The Five Risk Categories Every Question Maps Onto

The questions in the checklist aren’t a random list. They cluster around five distinct risk categories — five places where UK-China transactions reliably go wrong. Understanding the categories is the foundation. The specific questions are the implementation.

Risk 1 — Identity. Are you talking to a factory or a trader? Does the supplier physically hold the inventory or are they sourcing it upstream when you confirm the order? What’s their actual business registration, and does it match what they’re claiming? These questions determine whether the price you’re quoted is the manufacturing cost plus the trader’s margin, or the manufacturing cost itself. The answer changes by 15–30% on most consumer electronics categories.

Risk 2 — Specification. What exactly is in the box? What’s the packaging, the accessories, the documentation, the labelling, the certifications? Chinese suppliers rarely ask. They build to whatever specification was agreed in writing — and assume that anything not specified can be the lowest-cost option. UK importers who skip the specification questions end up importing goods that are technically the right product but wrong for UK retail.

Risk 3 — Verification. Before the wire transfer goes out, what evidence have you seen? A sample? A factory audit? Video confirmation of stock? Photos of the actual production batch? The verification questions are the layer that separates buyers who get burned from buyers who don’t — because the cost of verification is small relative to the order value, and the cost of skipping it can be the entire order value.

Risk 4 — Logistics and compliance. What does the buyer pay versus what the supplier pays? Who’s responsible for getting the goods through UK customs? What documentation accompanies the shipment? Incoterms aren’t a formality — they’re the legal foundation of who pays for what at every stage from factory floor to UK warehouse. Buyers who don’t specify them inherit whichever interpretation is cheapest for the supplier.

Risk 5 — Recourse. What happens if something goes wrong? What’s the dispute process? Who holds liability for defects, damages, or non-delivery? Most UK importers discover the answers to these questions after they need them. By then the leverage is gone — the money has been wired, the goods are in transit, and the supplier’s incentives have shifted.

In 20 years of running this process, the failures I’ve watched almost always trace back to a missing question in one of these five categories. Not all 23 — usually two or three. But two or three missed questions can be the difference between a profitable order and a write-off.

“In Chinese supplier relationships, every unspecified item is a cost decision the supplier makes in your absence. The 23 questions are the specification you should never have left to chance.”

— Halil Ibrahim Tutuncu, Maibo

What the Questions Actually Look Like

The full 23-question checklist is in the free PDF. Here’s a representative sample from each category — the questions UK importers most consistently fail to ask:

1. 1
   “Are you the manufacturer or a trading company? Can you provide your business licence?”

   A direct manufacturer’s business licence will list manufacturing categories. A trading company’s licence will list trade or import-export categories. The supplier sometimes evades this question — that evasion is the answer. Most UK importers never ask. Most disputes about unexpected pricing trace back to never asking.

2. 2
   “What exactly is included in the box and what is the retail packaging language?”

   “It comes in a box” is not a specification. UK retail requires English documentation, specific accessory configurations, and packaging that conforms to UK consumer law. A supplier who doesn’t ask which market the goods are for will default to whatever packaging is cheapest — typically Chinese-language retail or generic OEM packaging that needs to be rebranded before UK sale.

3. 3
   “Can you send a video of the actual stock or a real-time photo with today’s date visible?”

   A supplier with physical inventory can produce video evidence within an hour. A supplier sourcing upstream cannot. This single request reliably distinguishes the two — and removes one of the most common sources of post-payment surprises: the supplier who took the order, then discovered they couldn’t actually fulfil it at the price quoted.

4. 4
   “What Incoterms are we operating under and which party is responsible for UK customs clearance?”

   FOB Shenzhen, CIF UK port, DAP final destination, DDP buyer’s warehouse — each Incoterm shifts a specific cost and a specific liability. Buyers who don’t specify default to whichever interpretation favours the supplier’s pricing. The difference between two valid Incoterm interpretations on the same order can be 8–15% of total landed cost.

5. 5
   “What is your defective goods policy and what evidence do you require for a claim?”

   Asking after the goods arrive is asking too late. The policy needs to be in writing before the order is placed — including what defect rate is considered acceptable, how claims must be documented, and within what time window they must be raised. A supplier who won’t put this in writing is telling you what their actual position will be when you need it.

Why This Matters More Than Price Negotiation

Most UK importers spend significantly more time negotiating price than verifying the supplier. The math doesn’t support this allocation.

A 5% improvement on a £10,000 order is £500. A 100% loss on the same order is £10,000. The expected value of price negotiation is bounded by the negotiation room — typically 5–15% on most consumer electronics categories. The expected value of supplier verification is the difference between a successful order and a complete write-off. Yet the time spent on each is usually inverted.

The pattern in failed orders I’ve seen over 20 years: the importer who got the best price often got the worst supplier. Aggressive price negotiation pressures the supplier into a margin that they then recover by cutting corners somewhere — packaging, components, certification, post-sale support. The questions in the verification framework prevent this outcome by structuring the relationship before price becomes the only variable.

The suppliers I’ve worked with reliably for years are not the ones who quoted the lowest prices. They’re the ones who answered the verification questions clearly, in writing, before any money moved. The price was negotiated within that framework, not in place of it.

How to Use the Checklist Practically

The 23 questions take roughly 15–20 minutes for a supplier to answer fully. The right supplier provides clear written answers within 24 hours. The questions are structured to be sent as a single message — not asked one at a time across multiple conversations. There are three reasons for this:

First: answering 23 questions in one document forces the supplier to consider their answers as a coherent set. Inconsistencies between answers reveal information that asking each question separately wouldn’t expose.

Second: the response time and effort the supplier invests in answering tells you about their capacity for the actual order. A supplier who takes 4 days to answer questions cannot be relied on to respond quickly to issues during fulfilment.

Third: the document of their answers becomes your reference for the rest of the relationship. If the goods arrive different to what the supplier confirmed in writing, you have evidence — and Chinese commercial relationships respond to written documentation more decisively than verbal commitments.