One of the wineries I work with was recently approached by Vang Online which looks aligned with Buy2Sell Vietnam about exporting into the Asian market. Just seeing if anyone here has done business with them before and if so, curious to learn about experienced. Thank you in advance for any feedback!
Hey there, they reached out to me. They are asking for money upfront for marketing before they place an order. Sounds strange. Have you continued to work with them?
We rejected the proposal based on that. $25k up front was not happening.
Yeah agree, they had tiers in my proposal the starting option was $6k. Seems pretty shady. Also on their site they have a shopping option, there’s even a cart icon, but you can’t actually add any products to your cart. There’s no button on any product. Lots of red flags.
Sounds scammy, I wouldn’t expect to have to front the cash, good odds they’d just walk and that’s it.
Hey there. We have been contacted by the same company and the proposal seems similar to yours. Can I ask whom from the company has contacted you? Thank you
Is the contract a scam? This I can reply, the company is too large to be a scammer, I saw their buildings and wine shops, foreign employees in the offices, they have large shoulders and I suppose a government eye on them. I saw a contract draft, in case of legal disputes they choose the Singapore Court to rule.
Would the resulting price be artificially inflated? And so the wine will not sell as opposed to the competitors? (if the winery can’t afford the investment, it could easily add 2$ into the unit selling price to cover it up)
Too many boring theories, but actually these are part of our daily challenges, isn’t it? What would you suggest, take the risk, make the investment, or instead take a more traditional and safer way? Don’t forget: this is Asia, and it moves fast, GDP still grows over 6% here, and if keep waiting could reach too late.
I would avoid them.
We contracted with them well over a year ago and they have done absolutely nothing. They have a beautiful convincing website, promise the world, contract to make guaranteed purchases and do nothing. They even turned down our offer to hold a product training and Q&A session for their sales team.
The kicker is today we received an email that was sent to dozens of suppliers by an individual claiming to being one of their sales representatives warning myself and around 40 others that we had all been scammed. Many of those contacted responded to the group affirming this claim. Thus far nobody has shared a positive experience only stories of loss.
So do your due diligence and proceed as you see fit.
We have been approached too, the initial requested fee was € 15.000 - we kindly said “no, thanks”.
Hello Guys…
I wanted to share my input / experience on BuytoSell… We signed off a contract in sept 2023 with a down payment of 12k for the promotion of 8 wines. We are a French company and we had a French guy as commercial who helped to walk thru the contract. We heard funny comments on this company but that head of sales gave us confidence… Between French nationals, one has to show a bit of trust (wrong move…), email of vineyards happy with their deals, videos, sales invoices to some of their big clients, communication and marketing campaigns across Vietnam, etc…
The contract consisted in a mandatory 1st order of 8 to 10k within 3 months from the sign off of the contact.
For an initial 12k investment, the maximum purchase order of wine was 80k annually. All in the contract…
Guess what… Nothing happened… A lot of blah blah blah from the commercial team…
We sent samples, documentation, marketing material and provided training the following month of signature of the contract … We met the management team twice in HCM city, in their lovely office, to ensure they had all in hands to be successful. they are all very smiley, confident and super friendly, taking fotos and being buddy buddy… but it is all facade and fake. Make no mistake… they are clever funny monkeys.
We had monthly calls with those guys… Their commercial team kept saying they had large customers interested by our products and an order will pop anytime soon. Buls…
They keep making you hoping of a big order which will never happen…
Vang Online / Buy2sell has in their stockholders 2 or 3 key people linked to the local communist party which are untouchable, not accessible…
We discussed it with the economic dept of the French Embassy and we had confirmation of the legalized scam… It is all political and sensitive. Remember, a legal contract in this country can be barely enforced so… all the clauses out of the window and as they are related to the communist party… Out of touch.
For now, the status quo holds but with the series of huge scandales (bank & construction) related to corruption in the country… a lot of things may pop up soon coming to tarnish even further the reputation of the country which has been seriously, tainted by untrustworthy for business.
Conclusion :
Yes… it is a large and political Scam even if you see stores in all the country… Just a facade…
Yes… they live on your money you invest. some sort of Ponzi scheme… Bloody clever
Yes… They have an Intl commercial team representing all the winemaking countries so to create a bound of trust… speaking to a national abroad makes things easier, right ?
Yes… We are attacking them in Justice thru our embassy in Vietnam and Singapore
**** Funny enough, the Top management recently moved from Singapore to Vietnam as a contract is enforceable in Singapore and you dont play around with law, there…
Yes… The Former MD stepped down but we will make sure is held responsible as well as the new one… as a welcome gift
Yes… I have managed to track the French guy who made us sign the contract. The dumb is back to France (how stupid is that…) and he will be receiving notification of our lawyer. as if you could get away with this so easily…
Yes… We intend to organize a class action as a lot of small producers, not only of winemakers but also small/ mid cap food factories too, have been scammed.
Yes… We will inform all the cooperatives and winemakers association ( Vignerons Independants…) but also, Italy, Spain and all the winemakers worldwide…
PLEASE PASS THE MESSAGE INTO THE COMMUNITY…
- BUY2SELL IS A SCAM …
- STAY WAY FROM THEM
- VALUE OF A CONTRACT IN VIETNAM. ==> ZERO
- DONT BE FOLLED by their stores.
I am ready to share by email the original contract signed with their entity in Singapore, all the correspondence I had with Buy2sell over the year demonstrating the scam in a country where contracts have NO VALUE…
I will also provide names of the bad guys…
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Hello Bruno,
My name is Joe. I am the Sales Manager at JVA Trading, a company based in Canada.
First of all, thank you for this information.
We have also been scammed by this company. We signed a contract to sell gin so that they can distribute it in Singapore.
We would be happy to join you in standing together against these scammers.
Let us know where to start.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
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Has anyone thought to request they pay the marketing up front BUT you will contribute the 30% share as a discount off their first order? I don’t think it will go anywhere but that is my most recent request/negotiation.
Anytime… you can reach me on brunozgor@me.com