An anonymized real case handled by our office. Details are changed or summarized to protect the parties; the strategy, the legal reasoning, and the outcome sequence are as they happened.
The short version: a French buyer paid in full for two excavators from a Chinese supplier. The supplier refused to ship, then demanded more than USD 10,000 in last-minute surcharges. After the evidence was locked, one bilingual demand letter — for a modest fixed engagement fee — and the buyer paid nothing further and recovered all goods within the week.
A French buyer found a Chinese supplier on a global sourcing platform, moved the negotiation to WhatsApp, and agreed to buy two excavators. The machines were specified as brand new, FOB Shanghai, for a mid-five-figure USD price. To be careful, the buyer flew to China, inspected the machines at the manufacturer's yard, photographed the nameplates and hour meters — all normal, about ten hours on the clock. Then he paid in full, in two instalments.
Money paid. Time to ship.
The delivery date slipped — the promised custom extended arm took nearly three weeks. Then, the day the final payment landed, the machines "changed":
Confronted, the salesperson's answer on WhatsApp: "That's totally normal — other customers came to test-drive them before selling to you." And then the line that mattered most: "If the hours don't pass customs, we can adjust the meter to whatever number you specify."
From a lawyer's perspective, that message was a gift: the supplier had put its own breach — and its own willingness to tamper — in writing.
The instinct of most buyers at this point is to fire off a lawyer's letter immediately. We deliberately did not.
A demand letter is an open card. Once served, the supplier knows you mean business — and the typical response is to move the goods, go quiet, and change the facts on the ground. In this case the supplier had already been tipped off that lawyers were involved. Sending the letter then would have been a heads-up, not a demand.
So the plan was eight words: lock the evidence, then show the letter.
When the buyer's representative went to the supplier's premises, he carried three things: a color-printed demand letter (sealed, not yet served), an evidence checklist, and a recording phone. On arrival:
Evidence locked. Only then did the letter go over the table.
The letter was drafted in the office, in the bilingual format we use for cross-border matters: Chinese as the operative legal text, English line by line, with every cited statute followed by a plain-language explanation of what it means. A Chinese supplier's managers shouldn't be able to claim they didn't understand, and the buyer should never be in the dark about what his own lawyer wrote.
It was not an emotional outburst. It pinned three legal points:
The letter gave the supplier seven days and three demands: rescind the additional invoice and waive all extra charges; deliver the goods with EU-compliant nameplates and documents, free of charge; and confirm in writing. It closed with arithmetic — a realistic estimate of what litigating would cost in court fees, preservation, notarization, travel, and counsel. In plain words: if you want to keep score, we'll keep score — and the math won't end in your favor.
On the agreed day, the representative was on site. Even after the letter, the supplier held out: "Pay part of the surcharge. License? No."
Three conditions had now converged at once: refusal to show identity, refusal to deliver, and broken negotiations. This was the red line agreed in advance — so the final step was taken: police were called.
The legal basis was straightforward: withholding all goods while refusing to identify the company could cross into contract fraud (Article 224 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China). Having the police verify the identity of the entity was not a bargaining stunt — it was the lawful remedy for a party whose counterparty refused to be identified.
Five hours, three sides, one question at the core: are you actually this company? Bluster, excuses, and delay eroded under the police's verification. At hour five, the supplier signed:
Zero extra payment. All goods returned within the week.
The buyer's own summary, sent afterward: "We spent 5 hours with the police and reached an agreement — I pay nothing more and recover all goods this week."
None of this guarantees the same outcome in another case. Every dispute has different facts, documents, and people. What transfers from this case is the method: organize the facts, verify the entity, lock the evidence, sequence the pressure, and keep the arithmetic on the table.
Send me what happened — a few sentences and whatever documents you have. I'll tell you which step makes sense and what it costs.
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