How to Find a Reliable Third-party Inspection Company?

China has become the manufacturing center of the world, and more and more importers choose to import from China because of its low price and good quality. In order to better ensure the quality of products, most importers will choose third-party inspection companies, but how to find a reliable third party inspection company is also one of the most distressing problems for importers. However, it can still provide importers with some ideas, such as how to choose a third-party inspection company with appropriate scale, price, which is also professional and high efficiency.

Why is it not easy to find a reliable third-party inspection company ?

To tell the truth, on how to find a reliable third party inspection company，besides the recommendation of friends, importers can only find a suitable and reliable third-party inspection company through the Internet . Alibaba and Google are the two most important ways. However, due to too much network information,it is difficult to screen. With limitation of different line, Importers certainly don’t know as much about the third-party inspection industry as third-party inspection companies do, so they are passive and at a disadvantage when communicating with third-party inspection companies. Therefore, some importers may be on small and medium scale, in order to save time, they directly choose relatively large and well-known third-party inspection companies, although they know that it is very uneconomical to do so.

Why should importers and third-party inspection companies match each other ?

Before answering the question of how to find a reliable third-party inspection company, it is necessary to clarify the market positioning and company size of the import company. Generally, there are the following types: super-large, large, small and medium-sized (third-party inspection companies can also be classified in the same way).

For super-large import companies, they don’t worry about how to find a reliable third-party inspection company at all. Such as Wal-Mart, which has an import department, the company will allocate quality budget and directly designate inspection companies, while super-large third-party inspection companies have a long history and are well-known, which is the best choice for super-large import companies.

For large-scale import companies, it may be because the super-large import companies directly designate the third-party inspection company, and require all the cooperating companies to use this inspection company. The cooperation time is long, and both parties have generated trust, so they have been using this inspection compan

For small and medium-sized importers, it is more appropriate to choose small and medium-sized third-party inspection companies instead of large ones. Why not choose a super-large or large third-party inspection company? First, the fees are expensive. Their services are mainly aimed at super-large or large import companies. Small and medium-sized importers are only small customers in their eyes, but the prices offered to small and medium-sized companies are much higher than those offered to super-large or large import companies. For example, SGS gives Carrefour a price of $120 (Manday: one day’s work for an inspector), but the price for ordinary guests is $400, which is quite different. However, the quantity and value of their purchasing orders are relatively small, so such a high inspection price is obviously inappropriate. However, in the eyes of small and medium-sized third-party inspection companies, their target clients are small and medium sized, so they will pay more attention to each clients, strive to keep customers, and provide more targeted services, which is cost-effective for importers.

The following figures shows some of the most common product defects in small and medium-sized factories during CQI service, which shows the importance of pre-shipment inspection.

Among global importers, small and medium-sized importers account for the vast majority. Such importers may have their own sales channels, be wholesalers themselves, or open their own stores (offline physical stores, online stores, Amazon stores). For wholesalers, products with defects and quality problems may be returned by customers in batches. Small supermarkets can attract repeat customers only if their products are of good quality, while Amazon hates bad reviews, and poor product quality or defects are the main reasons for bad reviews, which highlights the importance of finding a suitable and reliable third-party inspection company. Please refer to how to avoid Amazon’s negative reviews .

Alibaba is one of the main ways for importers to find third-party inspection companies, but it is not recommended.

Why not recommend looking for a third-party inspection company on Alibaba ?

Alibaba is indeed a big platform for finding suppliers and factories, and many third-party inspection companies can be found in it, which is convenient for contact and inquiry, which is its advantage. However, the merchants in a big platform, especially those selling services, may write a lot of details on the page, but the service quality is invisible. Merchants want to highlight their own advantages only by price, so most of them are micro third-party inspection companies with ultra-low prices. The importer, as a buyer, of course hopes that the lower the price, the better. The third-party inspection company on Alibaba just caught the importer’s thinking inertia and relied on low price and impulse order quantities to maintain profit. But this is harmful to importers and inspection companies. The reason why I say this needs to be connected to the next question to answer.

What kind of company can be regarded as a reliable third-party inspection company？

The price is appropriate and reasonable. First of all, the price needs a suitable standard. Generally speaking, more than $300 per man-day is a high rate, and less than $120 per man-day is a low price.

It is easy to understand that the high man-day rate means high inspection cost, but it is obviously not suitable for small and medium-sized importers to choose large inspection companies. If the price is too low, the service will be bad.

The reason is easy to understand by examples. Suppose you are an importer, there are 8 articles of products for orders that need to be inspected, and the third-party inspection company A offers 100 USD per man-day, they quote you 2 Man-days for 8 articles, completed the inspection in two days; Inspection company B, the price is 200 USD per man-day, but the inspection is completed in one day. It looks the same, even A looks like even better, but it is not, and the service quality is much worse.

The inspector of Company A inspects your 8 items in two days, but the inspector may only go for one day, maybe one morning, and take a few photos and leave, because this kind of inspection company requires the inspector to inspect the goods of several factories at the same day, and usually does not inspect the goods in one factory for a whole day. However, when Company B finishes the inspection in one day, inspectors generally do not inspect other homes on that day.

If the above situation still exists, it is unreasonable for Company A to quote for only one day. Let us make it clear by counting an account. The average daily cost of inspectors is 50 US dollars (the normal salary level of third-party inspectors in China), and the travel accommodation is 20 US dollars. In addition, the office review report and the daily salary of the staff who docked with the guests are 20 US dollars, which adds up to 90 yuan. Of course, there are office rent, water and electricity, etc. Company A only charges 100 US dollars, but there is no such profits at all. No company can do this for no profit. If the company want to make a profit, who can only let inspectors inspect two or four factories a day, and this mode of running an inspection company needs to be supported by high quantity of inspection orders, or reduce the cost of inspectors. When the average daily salary of inspectors in Company A is less than that of other inspectors, It will inevitably lead inspectors to inspect goods at will and be busy running between multiple inspection sites every day. Or Company A will use unprofessional inspectors to reduce costs, and the inspection effect will be basically zero. There are no fewer companies doing this, so they can only attract customers at a lower price than others in Alibaba, but this will definitely lead to a lose-lose situation. Therefore, it is not recommended to find a third-party inspection company on Alibaba, which is risky.Therefore, it is very important for importers to avoid looking for low-priced third-party inspection companies.

Service major. Service-specialized companies will consider problems from the perspective of customers, reply to emails in a timely manner, communicate smoothly, and write well reports, which is basic. More professional companies will start to search for information after receiving customer consultation, from sorting out relevant national standards to simulating consumer use scenarios to formulate inspection procedures, control inspectors’ on-site inspection well, and conduct in-depth QA tests, because they know that providing high-quality services can help importers avoid risks and keep customers and do long-term business.

However, third-party inspection companies with unprofessional services would rather put all their money into advertising in Alibaba or Google, instead of using it to improve service quality and service superficiality. Inspection is just a superficial formality, which can’t really design inspection methods suitable for customers’ products.For example, some inevitable batch problems will not be written in the report by general third-party companies, but service-conscious inspection companies will remind clients of this in the remarks of the report, help asking factories to improve the process and improve the product quality. Moreover keep in touch with inspectors at any time during the inspection process. CQI has always insisted on doing so.

Corporate culture.95% of the customers of China’s third-party inspection companies come from abroad, and most of them have their own websites to display their detailed information, including inspection prices and products. Therefore, the corporate culture here mainly refers to website construction. The website of reliable third-party inspection companies can see inspection industry articles, inspection standards and inspection cases, which can be used as reference. The picture below is the homepage of the website of the third-party inspection company screened shot.

Can an importer choose only one inspection company?

Of course not. Putting eggs in a basket is of course a great risk. One way to reduce the risk of importers is to use several third-party inspection companies at the same time, compare them horizontally, eliminate them in time if the service is not good, and stop losses in time. This is the wise move.

Summary

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, this article is not to directly recommend a third-party inspection company, but to share some ideas. In a nutshell, it is not easy to choose a reliable inspection company, and choose one that matches the size of your company; If you want to identify good or bad, be careful to find a third-party inspection company in Alibaba. It is best not to use it if the price is too low; Reliable inspection companies generally have appropriate prices, professional services and good corporate culture.

CQI5 is committed to providing importers worldwide with product quality inspection services that far exceed those of our peers. If you are planning to import or have imported from China or Southeast Asian countries, please contact us cs’@’cqipro.com to learn more about how we can make your imports safer.

This article is an original article for CQI Inspection, who is committed to providing high-quality product inspection technology and know-how sharing for global importers and retailers to make imports safer.

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