Hi Kaydee, Sorry for the bad experience. In your case, you are not only entitled to get the advance back, but also ask for compensation to your loss. Please especially note the following provisions of China contract law:

Article 111 Where the quality fails to satisfy the agreement, the breach of contract damages shall be borne in the manner as agreed upon by the parties. Where there is no agreement in the contract on the liability for breach of contract or such agreement is unclear, nor can it be determined in accordance with the provisions of Article 61of this Law, the damaged party may, in light of the nature of the subject matter and the degree of loss, reasonably choose to request the other party to bear the liabilities for the breach of contract such as repairing, substituting, reworking, returning the goods, or reducing the price or remuneration.

Article 113Where a party fails to perform its obligations under the contract or its performance fails to conform to the agreement and cause losses to the other party, the amount of compensation for losses shall be equal to the losses caused by the breach of contract, including the interests receivable after the performance of the contract, provided not exceeding the probable losses caused by the breach of contract which has been foreseen or ought to be foreseen when the party in breach concludes the contract.

Article 114 The parties may agree that if one party breaches the contract, it shall pay a certain sum of liquidated damages to the other party in light of the circumstances of the breach, and may also agree on a method for the calculation of the amount of compensation for the damages incurred as a result of the breach.
Where the amount of liquidated damages agreed upon is lower than the damages incurred, a party may petition the People's Court or an arbitration institution to make an increase; where the amount of liquidated damages agreed upon are significantly higher than the damages incurred, a party may petition the People's Court or an arbitration institution to make an appropriate reduction.
Where the parties agree upon breach of contract damages in respect to the delay in performance, the party in breach shall perform the obligations after paying the breach of contract damages.

We have helped an American company get back 10000USD from a Suzhou-based company due to quality discrepancy. However the lawsuit took almost one year.As long as you can provide solid evidence to prove that and you are willing to spend time and money to teach them a lesson, then it is an solution out.

The lawyer fee and litigation cost is about 4000-5000USD.

I don't think that you come here yourself will help much, show them you are serious to take action, hire a lawyer to send them an official lawyer's letter or pay them a visit. If they are real company, then I think they too don't want to spend a whole year fighting for an case that they largely will lose.

To make a complaint to local government body and China embassy can be used as supplementary means.

Please send the contract and a brief case introduction to support@chinawhy.net, so that our associate lawyers can have a look and suggest a solution out.

Hi Adnan, Thanks for posting. I am really sorry for your bad experience. All the scammers has the following tricks to play with time:

1) they will go traveling for a long time after get your money, too busy to reply you or send you the product;
2) give you wrong tracking number, if there is any problem, then it is the problem with the express company;
3) some will send small quantity of the order or wrong cheap items;
4) finally they ignore your messeges when they find they can't play with time anymore;
5) they will say rude words to you and then they will block you;
6) if too many negetive comment of their companies online affect their business, they dump the website and email account, then go on to cheat the world in another name. Same old tricks.

In your case, you really can't do much for amount of USD250, it is more likely going to end like you learn a lesson at the cost of 250USD, the lessons you learned are: 1) you need to verify the potential business partners you come across online; 2) gold suppliers and trustpass memeber of alibaba don't necessairily mean they are real and trustworthy company;

Please read the following two articles before you do business with China company online again: http://www.chinawhy.net/blog/Article.asp?id=24, http://www.chinawhy.net/blog/Article.asp?id=23, Also we have written a series articles on company verification, please check it out. However you can report the case to local police and government, also you can make a complaint to alibaba to get them deleted from alibaba(if many of you complain), We can give you the contact information of the police and local government if you can send me more specific information of this scammer. Don't try to buy fake brand products from China, as I see it, that is the root of the scammers. Other than fake brand products business, I haven't heard any scam so far. I have worked in Dubai for one year, and I have a friend who now are working in Oman, so I know the situation there. I feel ashamed of what many Chinese are doing there too. But let us hope it is us not them that will make the planet a better place. Regards,