The Dropshipping – a Very Common eCommerce Practice

You know what is dropshipping? A practice of drop shipping is referred to sell products through websites, without having anything in stock. This is a very common practice in global eCommerce and legally allowed in Brazil and worldwide. 

The customer enters the web page, which is a standard eCommerce. Choose your product, type of freight, pay with credit cards and awaits the arrival of the order. At the other end, there is a retailer that has a distribution center for order delivery. There are, in most cases, a single individual who, upon receiving the payment for the purchase, does the product order to a merchant anywhere in the world, paying a much lower price than that charged the customer. In this trade model, the supplier ships the product directly to the end customer, without the site acts as a mediator. eBay and Amazon Webstore are most suitable and provide easy to manage module for Drop-shipping.

The line that separates the practice of illegality is fragile. Drop-shipping in Brazil is allowable if the site is in fact a business and makes it clear to the customer that the product is not physically available in stock and they will still be ordered from supplier, which, in turn, will be responsible for delivery. I.e., will be subject to long delays not only depend on the availability of the product, such as transport from the home country (usually China or United States) - and still subject to charges levied by the IRS.

The difficulty is that the above circumstances hardly reflect reality. Website owners in drop-shipping are almost the folks who make money by taking advantage of a loophole in the law. They have no way to tax this activity because, with few exceptions, the sites are not registered as companies, nor have CNPJ. Their owners receive payments via credit card operators through CNPJ third party websites or payments such as PayPal The irregularity is mainly in the concealment of the identity of the supplier and in the attempt to tax elusion - in particular the Tax on Services (ISS) and the Tax on Circulation of Goods and Services (ICMS). Vendors profit calculated by the difference between the price paid by the consumer and the amount disbursed to pay supplier - and have no control over the products that are sent to customers.

From the consumers’ point of view, the question is How to protect themselves and avoid such situations.

Let’s check out these simple tips that can help customers become more responsive.

1. Search the site name: This tip is especially good for those who make purchases online and do not know whether to trust the store. Talk to people who have already bought that site and see if the company delivers what it promises, either with time or product quality. Look for the name of the site in search engines like Google, and then do a search for the domain name. The results of both surveys can give you a clue as to what other people have said about the site.
2. Look for an author or his popularity: If the author of the site cannot be contacted or there is no record on it, the site may be considered doubtful. Also look for the session "on" (or about) within the site to find and read more information about it.
3. Make sure the site is part of a portal: Whether a site is linked to other websites that have good reputations, it increases the chances of the address to be steadfast.
4. Analyze professional websites: Although not a rule, the visual part is important to make you feel confidence in the company. So try to evaluate the design and structure of the site and see if it was done in a professional manner.
5. Protecting my payment: Though few people know it, folks can also generate slip. With this, some sites use false idea of safety behind the document to confuse other users. Services like PayPal etc. are some guarantees that purchase is secure. How they mediate the payment, the money will only be released to the seller if the product is delivered. Thus, the chances of being harmed are minimized, since you can cancel your purchase at any time.

If you are online entrepreneur stay tuned to these tips, which can help you to improve the credibility of your site.

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