What to do when a Chinese supplier stops replying
Practical guide for when a 1688 seller stops replying: where to claim, what deadlines apply, what you recover and what you cannot, and how to prevent it.
A 1688 seller who stops replying has not necessarily disappeared: 24 hours of silence is normal, 72 hours inside the Chinese working week no longer is, and what decides how much money you recover is not what you write in the chat but where your money was when the seller went quiet. A balance still held in the Alipay escrow of a 1688 order can be claimed; a transfer to a personal account, outside the platform, is almost never recovered.
The timeline: what each hour of silence means
China runs on a single time zone, UTC+8, with no daylight saving, so the distance is greater than it looks. Central Mexico is 14 hours behind and its northern border strip, 16; Buenos Aires and São Paulo, 11. When you write in the morning in Latin America, it is already the small hours in Shenzhen.
| Time without a reply | What it usually means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Under 24 hours | Time zone, weekly rest or message volume | Nothing: wait for a Chinese working day |
| 24 – 48 hours on a working day | The seller is checking stock or price with the factory | A reminder with the order number |
| 72 hours on a working day | There is something they do not want to tell you: no stock, a misquoted price or an impossible lead time | Ask in writing for stock and shipping date |
| More than five working days | Shop sanctioned or closed, or a seller walking away | Open the platform claim that same day |
| Order paid, no shipment and no reply | This is the real loss scenario | Escalate on the platform and assess whether the amount justifies legal action |
The working week for much of Chinese wholesale trade is six days, and the platform chat is not checked like a messenger: many sellers only look at it during office hours, so a message sent on Friday afternoon in Latin America may not be read until Monday.
Why it happens, in order of probability
The most frequent and the most predictable cause is a holiday in China. Chinese New Year 2027 falls on Saturday 6 February. The four official public holidays are extended to about eight by moving weekends, but the effect on production lasts far longer: workers return to their home provinces — the Spring Festival travel operation lasts about 40 days and starts two weeks earlier — and lines reopen in stages. In practice, a factory can be idle for two to four weeks. The other stoppages worth noting are the Golden Week of 1 to 7 October and 1 May.
The second is that the listing ran out of stock and the seller would rather not say so. On 1688 the published stock figure is poorly updated and many sellers are traders, not manufacturers: without goods there is no lead time to give, and silence is more comfortable than a refusal.
The third is a specification discrepancy. A change of colour, plug, logo or material forces the seller to requote, and sometimes they discover they cannot hold the price they gave you.
The fourth is that the platform has sanctioned or closed the shop. A shop with fake sales or accumulated claims can be blocked, and with it disappears the channel through which you claimed.
The fifth is fraud, and it is the least frequent. The pattern has three signals: a price well below the market, a new shop with no history, and pressure to pay outside the platform.
What you can do, in order
First, escalate inside the platform. 1688 has a claim and refund procedure tied to the order, and Alibaba.com covers two things with its guarantee and only two: that the product does not match what was agreed and that it is not shipped by the agreed date, with payment made inside the platform. Both mechanisms share the same requirement: a Chinese account with real identity verification, a Chinese payment method and a claim written in Chinese. That is why a buyer outside China cannot use them on their own.
Second, the platform’s customer service. It serves to unblock a stuck claim or to report a shop, but it does not create facts: if payment was made outside, there is nothing to review. Our frequently asked questions cover the equivalent situation when the goods arrive but do not match what was ordered.
Third, formal routes, which almost never pay for themselves given the amount. Arbitration requires a written agreement signed by the parties, and a catalogue order on 1688 does not have one. Litigation requires suing an identified Chinese company, with documents notarised, apostilled and translated into Chinese — China has been in the Apostille Convention since 7 November 2023, which made the procedure cheaper — and appearing before a court there. For an order of a few thousand dollars, the process costs more than the loss.
The person with the real capacity to claim is someone inside China. A complaint to the market authority that registered the seller’s licence exists as a channel, but it is filed in Chinese, in China and with an address for service. An agent established there can do it; a buyer from Mexico, Argentina or Brazil cannot.
What you recover and what you do not, depending on where the money is
| Situation | What can be done | Realistic recovery |
|---|---|---|
| Paid inside 1688 and receipt not confirmed | Claim the refund before the automatic confirmation expires: the seller has not been paid yet | High |
| Paid, goods shipped but not received | Tracking and a claim for shortages on receipt in China | Medium if detected in China |
| Paid into an identifiable company account, no shipment | Platform claim and, on large amounts, a legal demand in China | Low |
| Paid in cash, in cryptocurrency or to a personal account | No identifiable counterparty and no platform mechanism | Very low |
| Paid, no reply and the shop already closed | The seller may have no assets to answer with | Very low |
The standard payment on 1688 is an Alipay-escrowed transaction: the seller does not get the money until the buyer confirms receipt. If nobody confirms, the system does it when the deadline expires: in the published rules of the 1688 VIP wholesale centre it is 15 days from shipment, and it varies by delivery type.
Since late March 2025, 1688 removed the policy of refunding without returning the goods. In quality disputes it decides according to the account’s credit history and, if the criteria are met, compensates the buyer from its own funds; the remaining refunds stay in the seller’s hands, so documenting the claim well matters more than before.
The two controls that turn an unrecoverable loss into a claimable one
Paying the balance only after an inspection. A contract is something you claim on; an outstanding balance is something you negotiate. If you have already paid everything, you argue on the seller’s ground; if you have not, they have something to lose. A pre-shipment AQL inspection has a published price of USD 299 per inspector-day, with sampling to ISO 2859-1 (general level II, AQL 2.5 major and 4.0 minor) and an explicit verdict on the batch: on a USD 10,000 order it is around 3% of the value of the goods. And it has to happen in China, before the cargo leaves: with the goods in your warehouse, returning them costs more than they are worth.
Paying into the supplier company’s account, never a personal one. A Chinese company that exports collects into its corporate account, tied to its licence and its tax registration: licence holder, account holder and the person who signs the order are the same legal person. That detail turns a commercial problem into a possible claim, because someone exists to claim against. A personal account removes that entity and is the usual route of bank-detail-change fraud. MeliPrep buys in yuan, pays into the supplier company’s account and withholds the balance against the inspection report.
What to do differently on the next order
- Buy a sample first. Sample handling has a published price of USD 15 per sample, plus the cost of the sample and the courier. A sample answers in two weeks what the chat does not answer in two months.
- Keep the first order small, small enough that losing it does not change your year. It is not there to make money: it is there to test how the other side works.
- Pay in stages, with the balance released against an approved inspection report and the acceptance criteria defined before production. Fixing them after you see the defects turns the inspection into a negotiation.
- Do not take the conversation off the platform. The claim is decided on the record of the order and the chat; if the deal was closed on a private messenger and the payment went outside, there is no file to open.
- Verify who you are paying. MeliPrep publishes documentary supplier verification at USD 349 and the audit with an on-site visit at USD 549, and both can be contracted separately.
Mexico, Argentina and Brazil: what changes and what does not
The claim mechanism is inside China and is identical for a Mexican, Argentine or Brazilian buyer; what changes is the trail your payment leaves.
| Country | How the money leaves | What it leaves as evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Mexico | No exchange controls: payment abroad is made freely from your bank | The transfer receipt. For the expense to be deductible, the Código Fiscal de la Federación requires it to be paid through the financial system when it exceeds 2,000 pesos |
| Brazil | It is processed with an exchange contract at a bank, which asks for a proforma or commercial invoice and, on advance payments, the order documents | The exchange contract. IOF is paid on the exchange according to the category, at rates that have changed by decree and by court decisions: confirm them with your bank |
| Argentina | It is processed through the bank, under exchange rules that have been amended several times | The bank receipt. Confirm with your bank the requirement in force on the day of payment |
In all three cases the conclusion is the same: there is no consumer authority in your country with jurisdiction over a seller that has no establishment in your territory. Your protection does not come from local law; it comes from the structure of the payment: which account it went to, against which document and with what part of the amount still unspent.
The time to prevent this is before the first payment
When the seller stops replying there is almost nothing left to decide: all that is left is to see what can be recovered. That is why the decisions that matter are taken in the two weeks before the first payment, not in the two weeks after the silence. A payment into a company account with an invoice, a balance that is not released without an approved inspection and a first order small enough to absorb entirely do not remove the risk, but they leave it at a size that does not force you to litigate in China.
And not every silence is fraud: a real factory can also stop because of a cash shortage or a problem with a supplier. That is not a deception, it is business risk, and it is managed the same way: without having paid the balance.