All started from a business offer from Chinese company

I want to share a story which happened to my Swiss customer quite some time ago.  Let’s name him G here. G reached out to me for interpretation  between him and a local Chinese company. He was planning a business trip for sealing a deal with his client in China.

As soon as the contract was confirmed. I was asked to make phone call to inform this Chinese company about our trip.

I always thought they had known each other for a long time Or they had business transactions before. Thus everything seemed quite normal to me. The company showed their hospitality by picking us up in the airport.  I was living in Shenzhen, so I also needed to fly there.  The arrangement had been made and we were ready to go for the trip.

They did send someone to pick us up in the airport. During the time we were sitting in the car. G and I had a long talk. I realized it was actually his first time to cooperate with this company.

And there was a few other things I wasn”t aware of. As G agreed. I was trying to make conversation with the driver, but apparently the driver was unable to answer most of those questions.

That was indeed a bit suspicious.

But since it was G”s first night in China, we wanted to see things on the bright side. That night, we looked over the printed contract again and added few new terms preparing for the upcoming day’s meeting. The next morning they sent their assistant and another driver to pick us up in the hotel.

When we arrived in front of a commercial building, a man in his late 30s showed up outside of our car and introduced himself as the Manager.

To be honest, the first moment I saw him, I got a bad feeling about the way he was talking and “acting”. Yes, he was wearing suit and giving all that “way too much” greetings, but still none of them successfully disguised him as a genuine businessman. They took us to a conference room, but a rented one. Gradually two more people were coming, one of them introduced himself as the General Manager and another one was the Sales Manager.

Business cards got exchanged, nonsense speech was done. G was ready to give a presentation and I was ready to give interpretation. While giving interpretation of what G was saying, I was also observing their facial expressions and reactions, they kept nodding their head to pretend they understood, until the Manager said something like: ” Thanks for your interpretation, actually our job today is to focus on the business part, regarding the technology, we will have our Engineering team to follow up”.

I knew for sure this “Chinese company ” was not sincere in the business.

They are playing whatever kind of game or trick, since we were there already. Let’s see how far they could get. They seemed in a hurry to sign the contract , but I suggested G to hold on, also asked the other party if we could go to their company to do the procedure.

Instead of that, they used a lame excuse saying it was right before Chinese public holiday. So the office was messed up and they would prefer to sign the contract right there and right then blabla. I was thinking they were even too stupid to be scammer. I would’nt allow G to sign anything like that. You never know what kind of trouble that you might get involved with.

I was shocked that G didn’t realize until I shared all those details with him later:

1. If they were a group company, why they didn”t take us to their company but a rented conference room instead? Because their so-called group company doesn”t even exist. (G even thought that public business floor belonged to their company)

2. I read the info on their name cards; look for specific address and it was too vague.

3. They were all pretending to understand the project G was presenting in the meeting, but their body language was obvious.

4. No genuine buyer wouldn’t care to check the sell’s background or inspect their workshop especially when it comes to such a big order.

5. No matter what kind of term G wanted to correct in the contract, they were too easy and had no disagreement at all.

6. They used an excuse to fool 3-year-old when I mentioned about going to their company instead.

Even if there was no such a big order as G thought, but still that trip made him realize a lot of things in the business and how to be more cautious next time.

Did you ever encounter any spammer from China before while you were dealing with Chinese company?