DHGate legal and ethical?

I know of tons of Chinese sites and some of them sell "factory overruns" while others state outright that they sell replicas. I'd rather not go the shady, illegal route if I can avoid it. Do DHGate suppliers sell real stuff? I know a lot of them sell clones, which look like the real thing but don't have the brand name. I'm talking about "9700 phone" vs a "Blackberry 9700." That's a situation where the phone looks the same but doesn't say Blackberry. Or a Sciphone instead of an Iphone. Obviously Sciphones are legal to sell, and they won't sell for nearly as much money as Iphones. What I'm wondering about are products that have the brand name on them. Are they legal and ethical to sell? I would have assumed they were all fakes but if you do a search for the traditional replicas people sell such as Nike Air Jordans or Louis Vuitton Handbags, nothing comes up. This leads me to believe they've purged all the illegal replica sellers, and everything on there is legit. Yes? No? Maybe?

Personally I don't know and I have no experience with dhgate. I do deal with alibaba and like to look for suppliers that have had good feedback. There are also companies that will check out the products for you to make sure they are the real deal like asiainspection dot com

Whew this is going to be a long answer...

First thing that needs to be understood about DHGate, World Wide Brands, AliBaba, etc...

Nobody spends money to manufacture things, then sits them on a shelf and hope they sell. For this reason, if you ask any manufacturer that says they have the inventory of whatever kind to take a picture of themselves holding up a sign that says "Bobo" next to the inventory, they will have a million excuses as to why they can't. What we call "dropshipping," they call "normal selling" - often, people sell stuff in huge quantities and then hit the streets with customers money buying stuff from street vendors or on sites less accessed by non-Chinese such as TaoBao. Essentially, 95% of the people on all of those "B2B sites" are middlemen looking for an extra cut. Living in China, I can feel free to say this... but theres a good chance you are being fucked over and not even realizing it. In China, its better to make a quick dollar and not worry about long term business.

This is also how people overseas(Asia) protect themselves. If you buy, say 200 fake bags from someone on DHGate and they ever get into trouble which is really starting to happen now a days, they will tell everyone "This customer said they were the company that were allowed to have these manufactured, we didn't know, they lied to us!" and will totally write up complex fake e-mails. This is how major exporters of fake goods get into a little more trouble. But seriously, its rumored that big busts of fake goods is well reward to authorities in China. Only a rumor, I can't confirm it, but the fact that people are really going after suppliers of fake stuff is not false.

Shipping agencies HATE replica stuff way more than they did 2 years ago. At the same time, they also try really hard to save face. A shipping agencies will agree to ship 40 KG of Nikes, well knowing they won't really send them out, it will sit in their back room and they will sell it all within China and then claim it got picked up and destroyed by customs. If they do ship it out, they will have to forfeit their entire business and profit if caught. Do people in China get in trouble for sending replica stuff out? Yep. Do people that live in another country get in trouble for buying replica stuff? Yep. Can you claim you didn't know the items were fake? Nope.

The reason why you probably can't find anything on those sites is because American contractors can send notices threatening that everything with the word "Nike" be removed from the site or they can be sued by Nike, and the rest of the "big brands" - some people will say its because America technically owns the internet, but I won't comment on that. This is unethical in my opinion, to assume everything is replica but more-so to stop people from buying items second hand to force them to shop in the high end stores and pay full retail prices. I feel this shits on consumer protection laws.

It's illegal here in US not in China. If you sell in bulk without a manifest from the corporation it's illegal. meaning if you order a bunch of Ralph Lauren over runs from the same overseas company that makes them for RL, without the permission from RL to sell them you can get into big trouble. If you are selling onesies here and there and they dropship from their factory, it makes it more difficult to be caught. Don't be the buyer and seller and distributer.

If you sell in bulk without a manifest from the corporation it's illegal. meaning if you order a bunch of Ralph Lauren over runs from the same overseas company that makes them for RL, without the permission from RL to sell them you can get into big trouble.

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Wouldn't that mean almost every powerseller who sells authentic goods is breaking the law? I'm pretty sure most of them don't have special licenses.

i've already got scammed by chieneses, NEVER uses WESTERN UNION !
they call replicas as original stuff, its too hard to find out who're telling the truth

DHGate its a good service, i had buy some little things and it came without problems

Dhgate is an awesome and I use it all the time. Just make sure you arent hoping for the real stuff because pretty much everything there are clones, fakes, etc. unless you want to get some chinese brand.

Make sure to always use paypal because there are alot of scammers who use Western Union as payment since they cannot charge back.

dhgate is a great site, bought some stuff there... its trustable

I despise dhgate. I have lost over $300. I knew that the items I were purchasing were replicas, but it was stated that the items were "brand new, unused, factory sealed" etc.

The items I received were damaged and unusable. So, I talked to the seller and he said he would give me a full refund IF I removed my dispute I filed with paypal.

Of course I'm not going to do that because once you remove a dispute, you can't re-open it. So now dhgate said that I need to work this out with the seller because they can't do anything about it.

I have now filed a claim against dhgate, but I'm sure I still won't receive the money I deserve.