by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: July 20, 2010

Re-shipping firms are businesses that do not stock or store the product, but have the product shipped from another source, such as a company or manufacturer. Re-shippers are essentially middlemen who have a few sample products in their shop, or product details on an auction site for customers to examine. The customer pays the re-shipper and the re-shipper orders and pays for the product.

The manufacturer or source then packs, labels and ships the product. In many cases, the re-shipper has their own labels and documents included in the packaging in order to conceal the identity of their source.

There will be details that are worked out, such as how to return the item and get a refund, how to deal with backorders and late shipments and so on. Re-shipping may prove to be less costly than shopping where the items are stocked in the store or there may be some other form of convenience.

The scams come in two forms: The vendor or re-shipper is not legitimate, does not honor the contract, does not follow up to ensure that the customer gets what they paid for, or bails out on the customer. When the vendor does not come through with what was promised, the problems of getting made whole can be endless. There can be fine print in the sales contract that the customer does not read.  If the labeling conceals the identity of the source, then the customer may have to go to court or involve the authorities to get that information.

Vendors or re-shippers are scammed, too. In the most common form of re-shipping scam, people are convinced that they will make big money by engaging in a "program" where they work under another re-shipper. The victim works hard to do all of the marketing, to build a customer base and to service the customers only to find out that they are not making the money that was promised. Why? Because the higher level re-shipper is another middleman who has been skimming off the profits!

Worse, the higher level re-shipper might take the victim's customer list and start selling directly to the people on the list! Why, then, is the victim doing all of the work for nowhere near the money was promised as a result? By the time that this question is asked, it is too late.

In summary, re-shipping is a complicated and often hazardous way to make money. There are savvy and successful re-shippers that have good reputations, but auction sites such as E-Bay have a very touchy relationship with re-shippers and will levy extra requirements on them because of the complaints of the past.

The methods that "sponsors" use to rip off customers and money are buried in the fine print of re-shipping sales setups, and the deceptively simple work is a cover for incredibly complex ways that people are either separated from their money or find that they were working hard to make money for someone else.

Finally, the sources can be the problem by taking money and not shipping as promised, by shipping inferior goods or by causing other problems that can be a mess to fix.

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