Disputes are not rare among business partners. The very majority disputes can be resolved to the satisfaction of both parties. Sometimes the result can contribute to creating more better relationship as each party can see the other one's attitude toward disagreement or dispute.  And we fully understand that doing business with foreign companies, reputation and trust are the most important considerations and very difficult to establish. Once established, they are the most precious things which are worth certain sacrifice in order to maintain it.
(For example, we have once sent 110 scarves to a customer who only paid 55 scarves. Because the first 55 scarves were of wrong pattern. This is of our mistake, so we send another 55 scarves of correct pattern to them for free. These scarves are for a chorus singers who "will be singing soon in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Zelenograd, and Yaroslavl, and then in Tallinn as part of a massed chorus of 30,000 singers, and we must have color to be noticed at all. " and they did achieve great success partly due to our bright color scarves.  Also they voluntarily offer to sell those original 55 scarves to their sponsors, and they sell them within a year and send us full payment after this. Both sides are very satisfied with this result.)

However to resolve the following dispute, we have used out every means and finally lost patience. We state the things here for everyone to make judgement, no matter whether you are from China, United Sates, or another unrelated country, you can judge it from a fair attitude and determine which one is guilty and which one is innocent. All things stated below are truth, you can contact Yodamo, Inc to see if what we said here are truth. If they disagree any of the statements below, please let us know.

One party is us, the other party is Yodamo, Inc from United Sates. They have a kind of silk thread under their brand. The name is eterna silk. Here is a image about the kind of silk we are talking about, it includes all the 545 colors.Information about this thread and their other products can be found at:
http://www.eternasilk.com

Eterna silk was released at 1999, we are the manufacturer of these threads from the beginning. Things work out very smoothly at the beginning, everyone are satisfied. Reports from them also shows such silk are very successful in USA and several other countries. But they seem to have over-estimated the markets for these products. At 2001, they placed a very big order for such silk, amount to over 450 kilograms. We start manufacturing immediately.When we finish 20 kilograms, we send a package to them. But after several packages, they stopped sending payments. Although we trust them, as a old customer, the unsent payment amounts to over USD2000, we stopped sending packages. After this, there are many talks between them and us, they first asked us to delay sending new packages. Finally, after about half a year, they send a email to us, notifying that they want to cancel this order. This put us in great dilemma, as this is a customized order. All these products are custom-made according to their particular demands, no one else in China want such items, and we can't find other customer for them. And all the threads have already been manufactured to a raw state before dyeing. They can't be put to other usage. But they are very kind to promise that they will order out these threads soon, but in different colors than listed in their current order. They will notify us new colors in future, and the unsent payments will be sent to us step by step.

If they can keep their promise, this is still a satisfactory result. However their orders for these finished silk threads are far below our expectations. From 2002 to now 2006. they ordered about 10 to 20 kilograms per year. And there are nearly 300 kilograms of such eterna silk in our warehouse, it will take 15 years to order them out. Also for those unsent payment they owed us at 2001, they send about USD200 per year, still they owe us roughly USD1,500. It will also take another 7 years for them to pay us fully.

Now we have these 300 kilograms of undyed eterna silk in our warehouse, we don't know how to deal with them, it takes up much space. Also they owed us USD1,500.

The reason why we take this action now (April 2006) is: Their last order with us is at March 2005 about 15 kilograms of various eterna silk threads. At October 2005, they send USD400 to us through Paypal and also notifying us that they want to place a new order. We returned their payment back to them, saying they need to send large payments through bank wire transfer. There is no response from them, after our several inquiry on how to go about  their next new order, they send us a final email at November 2005 which was copied below:

Start of the email sent from Yodamo:

Hello Mr. Zuo!
Good to hear from you!

Yes, I had an order, but the payment for it sent to you was returned by you.

I had sent the payment to your Paypal account, which I thought was your preferred method of payment now. I remember you had told me that you could receive money from Paypal in China without needing the US bank account.

I have the order ready, but was waiting until you could receive your payments on Paypal again.

Thank you very much for your email,
-Peri Kettler

Please reply to web-resp-1234@yodamo.net as I do not check this ebay email account very often, thank you very much.

"Zuo Yu" <zuoyu@yahoo.com> wrote ..
> Hello! Ms.Kettler:
> We received a email from you 1 month ago talking about a new order. But
> we have received nothing from you since it. How about it?
>
> Best Regards
>
> Zuo Yu
> General Manager
> Changsha Xiangchu Silk Co.
> Email: zuoyu@yahoo.com
> Tel: 86 731 5683388
> Fax: 86 731 5683398
> http://www.china-silk.biz

End of the email sent from Yodamo.

You can see the main meaning of this email is about Paypal. They don't continue to fulfil their obligation under the order of 2001 because we don't accept large payments sent through Paypal. This needs some explanations of paying methods used by them to send payments to us.

At the beginning of our cooperation, we agreed that payments should be sent through bank wire transfer. Sometime at 2001, they opened a bank account in Bank Of America for us. This account was jointly owned by us and them together. They deposit their payments into this account and we write checks to ourselves to withdrawal it back into China. Another important benefit of this US bank account is that it allows us to withdrawal our funds in our Paypal account into China. Before 2005, Paypal's Chinese users can only withdrawal funds into a US bank account and then withdrawal funds from that US bank account into a Chinese bank account. We can't open a US bank account while we are in China. They offered to open this account on our behalf. We admit we appreciate this very much.

After operating about 2 years, we don't want this US bank account, there are several reasons: 1,Since 2005, Paypal allows their Chinese users to withdrawal funds into China directly by issuing a check. 2, It is not safe, we have 2 instances that someone want to withdrawal funds illegally from our account. (Due to our negligence, our account information was revealed by our publishing it in our web site. We don't know these information are enough for other people to withdrawal funds from it. This is quite different from Chinese bank account.) 3: This account is expensive. We need to pay USD10 per month to maintain this account.  4, They place only 1 small order per year. It is not worthwhile to maintain such a account.

So at early 2005, we notify them that we can withdrawal funds from our Paypal account into China directly, and we won't pay USD10 monthly fee for the US bank account. Shortly after this, they closed this account. At October 2005, they send this payment and email. At first we returned their payment and notifying them that we prefer large payments sent through bank wire transfer and also explain the reasons. Every Paypal's users knows,   Paypal charge a transaction fee for every transfer. This fee is calculated on the percentage of the total amount being transferred. They charge us 4% of the amount being transferred. Unlike bank wire transfer, the fee is fixed no matter how large the amount is. But they ignore all of our emails. (Do you think this is a reasonable demand?) At least, at 2001 when they first placed this order, there is no mention of Paypal as paying method. How can they add such a condition now to fulfil this order?

However finally we give up, we notifying them that they could send payments to us through Paypal but they must cover the 4% transaction fee. (We give them a low price of USD70.00 per kilogram at 2001. This price remains same after all these years. Every one knows the prices of Chinese silk material rise quickly during last several years. But our price with them always keep stable, no change at all. With this 4% transaction fee, we will end up in a loss for their every order.) But they also ignore our this email. We also notifying them that they can send the payments of USD1500 they owed us since 2001 through Paypal. They also ignore such emails.

Finally, we realize that they only use this as a excuse to not fulfilling their obligations to us. (From their web site, we can see their business focus has changed to embroidery designs.) So we end up with a almost waste of 300 kilograms of their customized silk threads and a debt of USD1500. We can't afford such burden and losses!

Please make a fair judgement. Are we innocent? You might think that they want to cancel their order because our products quality gets lower. Please ask them to show you if there is any bad silk threads in our packages. Also they are satisfied with our quality because they continue to place orders with us although at a very low quantity. (The above email shows they want to place a new order at last year October 2005). Also at 2003, they reached a agreement with us to settle this dispute. They promise to send a payment every month. If there is a order in that month, then that payment is for that order. If there is no order, then that payment is for their debt to us. But they end up sending a payment every year.

During early years of our exporting business, we are desperate in finding new customers. So we have made several risk business actions such as allowing customers to send payments after receiving products, not requiring deposit before processing a customized order, etc. We should bear some blame for this result.

So finally we lost patience with them and want to quickly put a end to this to empty our warehouse to store our other products, like scarves, etc. We also notified them that we might publish our dispute over Internet if our requests are continually ignored. But they ignored all of our emails. They only have a telephone number listed on their web site and we can't speak English so professionally as explaining all these things clearly. So we have to state this dispute here in the hope to catch their attention. Also we'd like to hear your comments on how such things are treated in other countries, especially with such customized orders. You can send your comments through email, fax or telephone, mail.

We must emphasize here:
1,We don't think Yodamo, Inc is a bad company. They do business professionally. At the beginning, they work with us to select colors, and we must admit that they are very good at colors.  Also they are very strict in quality control. This trouble maybe caused only by their once over-estimate the market for such product in 2001 and placed this big order. This proves to be a too much burden for them and they even can't overcome it after all these years. They may indeed want to do business with us in good faith, but very unfortunately, due to this once mistake, has lost this ability.  So we don't discourage you if you want to do business with Yodamo,Inc.

2,It is NOT our normal practice to publish disputes over Internet or through other media. This dispute is special, you can see, it started at 2001 and can't get resolved for all these several years. (It takes much space in our warehouse, we need the space to store our other major products as silk scarves and shawls.) We have no other unresolved disputes. We don't expect our every business deal will work out very smoothly, international exporting is a complex and risk business, and we do prepare to suffer losses if we should take the blame. For our old or frequent customers, we are very tolerable. (For example, for this dispute, although we suffered all the burdens, we have not taken any actions until now, April 2006.)

We put this page here for 2 purpose::
1, This may catch their attention for them to send us payment they owed us and order out those silk custom-made for them. (If you have any suggestions, please let us know.)
2, This also can serve as a advertisement to sell out those nearly 300 kilograms of undyed silk threads. They are kept in prefect condition and we can dye them in any colors you want. They include several different types: tightly twisted, flat, heavy silk size 3, 5, 8, 12. The price is USD125.00 per kilogram. (Of course, you can't use their trade mark name. Eterna silk is their trade mark name.)
During these years, there are some foreign inquiries asking us whether we have other silk threads than our normal silk threads, we have never mentioned this particular threads, although they have been in our warehouse for several years and we are very desperate to sell them out. We understand selling them directly might hurt their business. But now, we have no other way, there is a limit for us to cover trouble caused by other party. Now this limit is reached.

Once again, we welcome anyone's comments on this subject.