"When you receive a contact mail regarding your business proposal registered in TTPP, while hopeful about the deal, you probably often are uncertain whether the contacting party can really be trusted. TTPP calls its users' attention to scam mails.
When doing business with some unknown party overseas, it is important to be cautious ? doubly cautious. Here, I will mention some points by which you can gauge the trustworthiness of another party by e-mail at the initial stage of negotiations so as to avoid risk and trouble. I recommend that you check these points yourself and judge whether the other side can be trusted.
1. Check the characteristics of the first contact mail First, let's check the following in the received contact mail.
- Is the e-mail address that of a company (company-like) organization?
- Does the e-mail clearly indicate details?
- Is appropriate business writing style used in mail sent by a company or a
businessperson?
- Was the text drafted using some free software or other simple automatic
translation program?
- Are there any features of scam mail in it?
*Free e-mail addresses - beware.
First, look to see if the e-mail address of the sender is a free mail account or a fee-based address such as generally used by companies. Most scam mails and spam mails use free mail accounts. From the viewpoint of trust, free mail accounts are suspicious in business. Even in e-mail addresses of private individuals, the degree of trustworthiness is low. This is even truer for big deals.
*Lack of clear specific details: Serious offers will include various questions If an inquiry or offer is serious, it will not be a simple message of one or two lines expressing interest. It should include a clear indication of the degree of interest, questions, and other details. Also, check to see that the details of the contact mail match your proposed offer.
*Nonbusiness-like language.
The English used does not have to be perfect, but check to see if language used by the other party lacks due courtesy. Be careful of e-mails written in a too casual manner, high pressure e-mails asking you for example to "respond urgently" or "send an estimate immediately", or anything unintelligible.
*Simple automatic translated text.
In international deals, considerable communication is involved - not only in the actual import or export, but after sales as well. I sometimes see cases where someone utilizes simple automatic translation programs available on the web to convert their language to Japanese or English for the contact mail.
Most of these are unintelligible. Trust is not even an issue in these cases.
*Scam mails.
Even if all of the above checks fail to turn up any problem, there is still the possibility of the e-mail being a scam. Most scam mails are written in polite English with details carefully included. On the other hand, scam mails follow certain patterns.
2. Check matters other than e-mail.
There are ways to check the trustworthiness of another party other than by examining the e-mail.
- Check the website of the other company
- Search for the name, president, and manager-in-charge of the company over
the Internet
- Try calling by phone
- Check of the company responds in queries in a timely fashion
*Website.
The lack of a website has a direct impact on trustworthiness. If there is an English language website, it would be possible to check it against information which the company registers at TTPP and the company's inquiries or offers. If something does not match, ask about it or consider suspending the deal.
*Search of media.
If English is frequently used in the other country's media, for safety's sake, try using a search engine to look up the name of the other company, its president, and other facts. I myself discovered once in the past that the name of the president of another company was mentioned in a suit over fraud.
*Telephone: Get idea of work environment of other party Once communicating fairly well by e-mail, how about calling up the other company directly once? From the telephone response and background noise, you can get an idea of the shape of the company's organization.
*Timely accurate response.
You can also guess the trustworthiness of the other party by how accurately and timely your inquiries are responded to. Beware of other parties' strangely trying to hurry the deal, changing to high-pressure tactics midstream, or sporadically breaking off contact.
Above, I explained some ways for checking up on the trustworthiness of other parties, but of course you are similarly being checked. In dealing with an unfamiliar party, I recommend you not only investigate the trustworthiness of the other party, but also make sure you yourself appear reliable so as to build a solid foundation for future business."
