If you met a company in a very traditonal way, such as on an exhition, and you find quoting and samples are going smoothly, then the risk of doing business with them is much smaller than wiring money to a company name which is obtained from the internet, even it is shown on a B2B website, the B2B website will never pay your possible losses.

If all the companies you get are from the internet, how to judge them?

Tip 1:  Look at their websites to see the products range, choosing the narrow & deep one other than the wide & skin deep one. 

There are a lot of "metal mesh" or "wire mesh" companies, but the fact is: the wire mesh or metal mesh are a huge industry, it covers hundreds kinds of products and hundreds of specifications for each product.  if a company survives very well, they must be good at some specific product and focus on it.   For example: you are looking for business partner who can provide the 100 mesh stainless steel wire cloth used as liquid filters, thousands companies say they can do it, choosing the ones introducing stainless steel wire mesh and related products like filters, quitting those ones which introducing not only stainless steel wire mesh, but also a lot of unrelated information such as chicken cage, U type binding wire, bird net, etc.  The website of a company shows some of their business philosophies, if it is not focusing on stainless steel wire mesh too much, it is most likely they are not doing stainless steel wire mesh very well.

TIP 2: Look at their websites to see how many mistakes there are, and how many images are copied from other websites. 

There are a lot of mistakes on the websites of “wire mesh” or “Wire Cloth” companies.  They name Dutch woven stainless steel wire mesh for a plain weave wire mesh, and may give wrong specifications for a wire mesh product, and they copy a lot of wire mesh images from the internet. 

The reasons for them to tolerate these mistakes are:

There is only one or two persons in that company, and they do not have enough staff to write down the correct information.

This is just their habits, as they treat everything like this including your order.

That company is not a company; they register and disappear very quickly.

TIP 3: Call their phone number to see if you are contacting a real person.

In case you can not make a visit to the company, it is very necessary to make a phone call to the company, talk to the person who wrote to you, tell them that you have sent a inquiry of stainless steel wire cloth 200 mesh to them, and discuss other topics you discussed in the email.   In this way  you will make sure whether  you are contacting a real person. 

Good companies can always reply to you very quickly in a very professional way.  Considering the time difference, a good company may reply to you within 24 hours or even shorter, but not on weekends.  They know what are important in your inquiry or if they handle your job, they may need to clarify some issues which are not very clear in your inquiry.   That is much better than a company that gives you a quotation based on incomplete information, which is meaningless.

TIP 5: Tell them that you may pay for samples, ask for their bank details to see if it is different from the one you are contacting.

Some companies are using different beneficiary names when you want to pay.  It is very dangerous to pay to a different company name or to a personal bank account.  Even if you finally decide not to pay, it is not cheating.   It is only a way of preventing you from fraud.