General warning on buying goods from abroad!

[banpei]

Due to problems with several scammers in the past who were selling in the commercial section we would like to place a general warning for anything you buy:
please beware of buying goods from the other side of the planet (like Russia, Malaysia, India, etc). It could involve a big risk of not receiving your goods due to problems with shipping or being scammed.
This does not mean every seller from those countries is not trustworthy, but at least take into consideration what you are up to.
We add sellers to the commercial section but we are unable to screen them thoroughly, so we can't guarantee if a commercial seller is trustworthy.

Here are a few basic rules to help you on this subject:

Always pay through Paypal
WIth Paypal there are options to get your money back: you can do a chargeback for instance. This gives you at least a bit more safety.

Always pay for fast shipping
Fast shipping may be a bit more expensive, but you don't have to wait for four weeks to have your goods to arrive (by sea-fare) and be too late for a chargeback!

Always request a tracking number
Even though trackingnumbers are useless for the end user (you can't track the package completely) it will give you the added value to verify if the seller actually shipped the item. Simply request through which party it will be sent and send them an inquiry on the tracking number.