Thanks for pointing this out.
Yes, I knew that major changes had been made since I published my 2018 revision. This is a common problem in dealing with Alibaba. They have made numerous changes over recent years, sometimes as many as three significant changes in one year.
In fact the Assessed Supplier category no longer exists, although Alibaba's help section still contains copious references to the non-existent category. In some of their articles in the help section they encourage people to filter for Assessed Suppliers, but no such filter is any longer available.
The onsite check is still, as it has always been, a token gesture that is worthless in assessing suppliers. It only proves that they exist.
Their whole verification and assessment process that was already near useless has now become a shambles.
There is conflicting information on the site, and their explanation regarding the newest badge: "Gold Plus Supplier" is that in addition to the "Onsite checks and Trade protection" offered by ordinary Gold Suppliers, the Gold Plus Suppliers can boast of:
- Advanced trade protection with higher volume
- Assessed videos
- Panoramic pictures
- Factory inspection reports
- Verified production lines
The videos would never win any film festival awards, mostly showing images of buildings, signs, products being offered, people sitting at desks etc.
The panoramic pictures show bigger pictures of the buildings and sometimes even inside one of them.
I have read some of the new "Factory inspection reports" that include details of the
"Verified production lines", and they are a far cry from the old Assessed Supplier reports. They now provide very limited information. One that I read gave information that contradicted what appeared under a different heading elsewhere.
I am sorry to see SGS and TUV providing such reports.
The upshot of it all is that in my opinion, sourcing on Alibaba is now a very hit an miss affair.
Walter
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