Chinese Spam

My brother is a creative genious. Really. He could make a lot of money with his recent invention only he doesn't want to market it. So I decide to do it for him.

First we need to manufacture it. In his prototype he used a tiny part he hacked out of a product bought at a dollar store. Read this as - Made In China. The part is essential to the success of our venture only neither of us knows what it's called. We'll just have to work around that.

I start my search for the gizmo at Alibaba It's a Chinese-based operation, sort of a dating service for buyers and sellers. I fill out the usual registration information - name, email address, etc. and get busy. I spend an entire day searching fruitlessly for a supplier of this item-without-a-name then decide on a new approach. If I can't go to the supplier, let the supplier come to me. I'll use the "Post Buying Leads" feature.

I attach a photo of the cannibalized part to the advertising form. Next, I'm asked to provide a concise description of what I want. Since I don't know what it is, I wing it. Then I must fill in some key words. Those are pretty easy, I explain what it does. A description of what we want? "Like the item in the photograph." They want to know about our business, I make up a bio. What do we expect to pay? How do I know? I guess ten cents a unit sounds good.

Then I'm supposed to put in a "nice" request, an invitation that will entice suppliers into doing business with us, something to woo them. I write, "We are looking to form relationship with supplier based on trust and happiness." It sounds like a message inside a fortune cookie but I can't think of anything else.

I'm nearing the end and hit a wall. I have to fill in some boxes and the example given is "10~1000." Anyone know what this means? I sure don't. Maybe it's a price range so I put ".10~.20" Done!

I hit the submit button. Nothing happens. I scroll down the form and right in the middle, in tiny print, is the following: Failure due to --- the reason is written in Chinese! I bet it's those boxes. I change them to look like the example "10~1000", hit submit, and I am in.

After all that effort I've heard nothing. Nobody writes. Nobody calls. All I've gotten is an inbox full of Chinese spam. Hear my head against the wall? Bang. Bang. Bang.