Something went wrong with goods worth RMB 200,000. The seller said: I have run the store in vain!

Recently, seller Li Xian revealed that he used a freight forwarder to ship goods to an overseas warehouse in Southeast Asia, paid a deposit in advance, and handed over the payment and goods to the freight forwarder. However, the freight forwarder delayed the delivery by claiming that the warehouse was full, which put him in a passive position . He did not know how to deal with nearly 200,000 goods, and the entire store might be in vain. During the communication with the freight forwarder, the other party's boss directly said: "You are not the customer I want!"

As a new potential market, Southeast Asia's development momentum is favored by many sellers, but the quality of service providers in this market varies greatly, and cross-border sellers need to be vigilant.

If something goes wrong with the goods worth 200,000, the seller's store may be in vain

Li Xian has been in the cross-border e-commerce industry for 8 years. As an Amazon seller, he has been doing well in the mature European and American markets. About three years ago, he saw the potential of the Southeast Asian market and entered the market through Shopee.

In the second half of last year, Shopee launched a new project called Cangfadian, which requires sellers to ship goods from local warehouses. After the delivery time and efficiency are improved, sellers will receive more traffic. Li Xian and a group of sellers opened Cangfadian together and found a freight forwarder that does overseas warehouses in Southeast Asia.

According to Li Xian, the freight forwarding company is called Xiamen Jingqi, and because it has been doing business in Southeast Asia for some time, he did not doubt it when he chose the partner even though the other party's purchase price was half of the market price. But after the cooperation, he found that things that he could not control happened one after another.

At the beginning of the cooperation, Jingqi required the seller to pay a fee of 1,000 yuan, which was similar to a deposit. After that, Li Xian successively sent goods worth nearly 200,000 yuan through this company, and many problems occurred one after another: the goods could not be put into the warehouse, put on the shelves, and shipped.

"The first problem occurred when the goods were shipped out, and the warehouse receiving them said that the warehouse was full, and the goods were slow to enter the warehouse. The 15-day shelf time was delayed to 20 days and 25 days. We urged them several times before they put the goods on the shelves. The second problem became delivery delays. Many times after the goods were shipped, the other party refused to handle it due to lack of manpower. The third problem was that the goods could not be found. They said that they might have been pressed down, and there was no way to ship them out if they could not find them. The fourth problem was that they sent the wrong goods many times. Then what was the point of using overseas warehouses?" Li Xian was very angry.

However, what made Li Xian most angry was yet to come. After communicating with the freight forwarding staff and finding that the problem could not be solved, he went to the freight forwarding company's boss. The boss's attitude made him exclaim: "I am so angry. I have never seen a service provider who ignores customers so much!"

"He kept telling me that the Singapore warehouse is very expensive. You are cooperating with me. If you change to other overseas warehouses, they will not pay attention to you. I helped you deal with the problem, but you are still aggressive. You are not the customer I want at all. I don't want you now. You must move the goods away quickly and pay all the warehouse transfer fees. Only then can I help you remove the goods from the shelves and pack them, otherwise I can't move them away."

Li Xian couldn't help but question: It was clearly a problem with the freight forwarder, so why was he threatened when he was communicating normally?

I asked Jingqi for confirmation on this matter, and the person in charge said that the overseas warehouse is currently overwhelmed, but there is no problem of delay in delivery, listing, and warehousing, and said that it has always insisted on reputation first. When I learned more about the situation of the overseas warehouse, the other party ended the call.

Now Li Xian's goods are still at the freight forwarder, and he dare not take any other actions, fearing that the goods will be damaged. If there is a loss, he can only suffer in silence, because the goods are overseas. In many cases, domestic sellers can only swallow their anger when problems occur in overseas warehouses, hoping that overseas warehouses will be kind. If this situation continues, he will face losses of more than 200,000 yuan.

"It's more about the labor cost and the loss of the store. I was busy for three or four months, trying to build up this store, but just when it started to improve, if I can't ship normally, all the previous work will be in vain! If the store is closed or fined, it can't be measured by specific numbers. Now I'm really losing money, but I can't provide any evidence!" Li Xian sighed.

There were early signs that many sellers would be affected by problems with freight forwarding

Nowadays, if we want to change the passive situation, we can only shift positions, but shifting positions is not easy. There are many problems in this process:

First, if the warehouse is moved, the seller will have to stop selling, which will result in a certain loss of sales;

Second, the warehouse transfer here is not like the parcels sent out in China. The goods must be counted when the warehouse is transferred, and some of them will be lost during the counting process;

Third, there are costs for moving warehouses and re-shelving goods, which is another loss.

Li Xian said frankly that if there was no other way, sellers would basically not choose to move warehouses. When trying to find other freight forwarders to move warehouses, he found that there were early signs of problems with Jingqi.

Li Xian was told that many sellers who shipped goods through Jingqi’s overseas warehouses have been affected recently. Because the goods cannot be shipped normally, they are considering moving to other overseas warehouses. This means that many of his peers are facing unpredictable losses like himself.

"I'm not saying this is a scam company, but it is definitely an irresponsible company. They knew they were going to be liquidated and didn't have the ability to handle it, but they still accepted so many customers' orders," Li Xian said. He speculated that there may be the following reasons for the problems with Whale Rider:

1. After the warehouse delivery store went online, the demand for overseas warehouses increased sharply. Previously, the overseas warehouse business in Southeast Asia was tepid. Now the boss must seize the opportunity to make money, and then uncontrollably solicit goods, resulting in continuous warehouse explosions;

2. Labor costs in Singapore are high, and workers are unwilling to work overtime when warehouses are overwhelmed;

3. Freight forwarders classify customers into different levels and, when processing capacity is limited, will give priority to large customers’ goods.

There are drawbacks in the Southeast Asian market service, sellers need to be vigilant

In Li Xian’s opinion, the problems with Whale Rider are caused by the shortcomings of the Southeast Asian service provider system.

The overall level of service providers in Southeast Asia is uneven, and some of them do not meet the business standards. Because the market size is limited, large service providers that mainly serve the European and American markets do not have the energy to enter the market. Some of the service providers that have entered the market do not have a strong background, and their service processes and rules are not perfect. They do not use systems, but directly use tables for data statistics and place orders in small batches.

In the past two years, the Southeast Asian market has attracted much attention from cross-border sellers, and many sellers are considering entering the market for two reasons: first, compared with the European and American markets, although the gross profit margin in the Southeast Asian market is low, the operating difficulty is lower than that of Amazon; second, the overall market potential of Southeast Asia is very good.

As more sellers enter the market, especially when there are new policy changes on the platform, the service provider's business volume suddenly increases, and it is difficult for the service provider to keep up with the pace. For example, overseas warehouses in Southeast Asia have various potential risks.

For sellers, the number of local service providers is very limited, and the choices are not as numerous as in Europe and the United States, nor are they as mature. When choosing to cooperate, they have to pay a deposit in advance. Once they encounter problems such as loss of goods or slow delivery to the warehouse, they will be completely passive and in a very weak position.

In fact, the current service situation in the Southeast Asian market is the same as that in the European and American markets in previous years. It was just that the European and American market dividends were released at that time, sellers were busy shipping, and the overall profit was good, so they did not care too much about the problems that arose. Now the Southeast Asian market is not profitable, and the existing service providers have not experienced the process of internal elimination, and the overall service level needs to be improved.

As a potential market, Southeast Asia's service market should not fall. The Whale Rider incident is just a warning, and such issues deserve the attention of the cross-border e-commerce industry.

(Li Xian is a pseudonym in this article)

Freight Forwarding

Shopee

Xiamen Whale Ride