Help and tips

Merkandi is an international wholesale trading platform, which brings together wholesalers, distributors, exporters, importers and volume buyers of end of line stocks, cancelled orders’ stocks, liquidation stocks, bankrupt stocks, overstocks, untested customer returns, excess stocks etc. Merkandi operates on the biggest European wholesale markets, and is available in many different languages. Thanks to our platform, wholesale buyers are able to reach the wholesalers and distributors of quality merchandise, which is available to buy for heavily reduced prices. Apart from one-­time deals, buyers and sellers are also able to establish a long-­term cooperation, in order to buy and sell pallets of stock, or even containers of products, on a regular basis.

Our wholesale trading platform provides our users with advanced, yet easy to use, IT system, which enables them to exchange information and discuss the transactions in an easy and convenient way. How is that possible? Our features make communication between buyers and sellers from Europe, as well as the rest of the world, much easier and more effectual. Moreover, Merkandi website consists of thousands of wholesale offers, which can be easily browsed or searched. All of the offers are listed by the wholesalers and distributors directly, therefore every buyer will always contact them directly, to find out more about the products, or to discuss placing an order with them.

Our wholesale trading platform is utilized by wholesalers, manufacturers, distributors, brokers, import/export companies, shop owners, e-tailers and car booters. Besides these groups of members, we are also very popular among auctioneers and major chain stores.

Merkandi is an international wholesale trading platform, which brings together buyers and sellers of liquidation stocks, bankrupt stocks, surplus stocks etc. from all over the world. Each visitor has full access to the offers at Merkandi, but to view the contact details of the wholesalers, he or she needs to either sign in to his or her user’s account, or create a new one. We are also offering an option of joining our daily newsletter, which includes the latest offers. Subscribing our newsletter is free of any cost.

To get an option of contacting the wholesalers, You have to create an account at Merkandi. You can choose between two different types of users’ accounts: STANDARD and PREMIUM. Of course, both of them will enable You to access the contact details of the sellers, and to find out more about the features of each of them, just go to the REGISTRATION section of our website.

Once You create an account, and pay the subscription fee, Your user’s account will be activated, and will remain active for one year.

STANDARD users have access to the wholesalers’ database, and are able to contact them directly. Apart from the database, the contact details of the wholesalers are also presented next to their offers, so users are able to contact them while viewing the offers listed on Merkandi.

PREMIUM users, apart from the contact details of the wholesalers, have also access to the opinions about wholesalers, and the suppliers’ blacklist. Moreover, PREMIUM acount is required to start offering products at Merkandi. This feature is only available for those companies, which will pass our verification procedure. Once verified, the user is able to list offers, and a profile of his or her company is available to other users of Merkandi.

For any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact our Customer Service Team.

In some cases, it is pretty hard to find the products You want to buy, especially if You have couple of thousands of offers to choose from. To make it far more easier, please use the advanced search options on Merkandi.

The search bar can be found on the top of Merkandi homepage. Just enter a phrase, and then hit ENTER, or click the magnifier icon, to proceed with Your search. The search results will be presented within the advanced search module, where You will be able to narrow them.

The list of advanced search options can be found below:

- search by country

- search by category

- search by grade of products, more information about grades of products on Merkandi can be found here: link

- if You will enter a search phrase or keyword, our search engine will check titles, descriptions and keywords of the offers, to find the most appropriate results

The more filters You will use, the more accurate the search results will be. Still, please do not forget, that in this case, the accuracy will decrease the number of offers to present, because many of them might not match Your advanced search criteria. That is why, You should always use the most important ones for You, to take the biggest advantage of advanced search options feature.

Example:

To find Red Bull offers, just enter the name of this brand to the search bar, and then hit ENTER, or click the magnifier. The search engine will search for this phrase in titles, descriptions and keywords of all offers at Merkandi.

Once the search results will be presented, You can narrow the list of offers by choosing the proper filters. In this case, You will probably be interested in the offers from the certain countries, so just check them in the country field.

Alternatively, You may also start from advanced search options straight-away.Just go to advanced search, choose the countries from the country field, and then enter Red Bull phrase.

All of the payment options accepted by us are available within the last step of creating a Merkandi account. Once You complete it, just click the “Register” button at the bottom of the form. You will then be directed to the checkout, with the payment options listed below:

* Paypal - You can pay using Your Paypal balance, or one of the cards connected with Your Paypal account. If You do not have a Paypal account, then You will still be able to pay with Your card, but the system will create an account for You, during the payment.

* Online payment - all major debit and credit cards are accepted. This option also enables you to pay via Sofort or Giropay.

* Wire transfer - payment over the bank, from Your bank account, to our bank account. All payment information are available once You click this option.

Apart from that, You will also receive an email entitled “New Merkandi account has been created”, as a confirmation of creating an account with us. The email notification will also include a link to Your proforma invoice and payment options, just in case You did not complete the payment straight-away.

PREMIUM account is the flagship offer of Merkandi trading platform. The features of this type of membership are very useful for both, buyers and sellers.

The most important feature for sellers, is of course an option of listing his or her products at Merkandi. To have this option activated, a person needs to send us the documents of his or her company first. The most important thing for every potential seller, is to send us the most up-to-date documents of the company, because as soon as we will receive them, we will start a verification proccedure. Obviously, only the positive result of the verification will allow us to activate selling options for the member. 

In most cases, the verification proccedure takes a few hours, but sometimes it might take even 2-3 business days. The documents we need are basically a VAT/Tax registration certificate of the company, and the document of company registration. 

As a result of positive verification, a seller will have his or her company profile created, and will be able to start listing offers at Merkandi. Please remember, that only other members of the platform will be able to view the company profile. The short version of it will be presented just next to the offers, and a full one will be available to find in the wholesalers’ database (“Wholesale” section of Merkandi website).

1. The basic advantage is a fact, that the company is listed among the other companies verified by us. 
2. Another is the ability to list 50 offers in a Premium account
3. Each seller is able to list offers in all language versions of Merkandi. This option is also free of any additional charges. The only important thing about this feature, is the fact that if You want to list offer in the other language version of Merkandi, You have to translate it to this language, i.e. if You would like to list Your offer in Italian language version, You need to translate it to Italian first. 
4. The offers listed at Merkandi are being promoted on other websites. Moreover, we also promote the offers within Google search results. This highly improves the response rate, and increases the sales volume of the wholesaler.
5. PREMIUM members have also access to the opinions system. As a buyer, You are then able to make a short summary of the transaction with the certain wholesaler, and read other users’ opinions about the wholesalers.
6. Only PREMIUM members have access to the opinions’ system.
7. The opinions are very important source of knowledge about the wholesalers. They are listed directly by other buyers, who are members of Merkandi. They might be really helpful in making a final decision about purchasing products from the certain wholesaler, they also point out some important information about wholesalers.

STANDARD account at Merkandi gives You 12-months access to the platform. As a member of the platform, You will have full access to the contact details of each of the wholesalers registered at Merkandi.

This includes the physical address of the company, phone number and email address, languages to communicate with the company’s sales department, and url, if the company has it’s own website. Obviously, once a person becomes a STANDARD user of Merkandi, he or she gains 12-months access to all previous and future information about the wholesalers, until the very last day of his or her membership.

Merkandi wholesale trading platform offers Yout two basic types of users’ accounts: STANDARD and PREMIUM. The features of both of them are strictly connected with the users needs and requirements.

STANDARD account

This account has been created for those users, who need simple and convenient access to the verified European wholesalers of regular products and liquidation stocks, end of line stocks, bankrupt stocks and overstocks. STANDARD user has full access to the wholesalers' database, where he or she will find contact information of the wholesalers from Merkandi. All of these contact details can be found within the wholesaler's profile, and include company address, warehouse address, phones numbers and mobile phones numbers, email addresses and wholesaler's website url. The buyer is therefore able to swiftly communicate with the wholesaler, and ask him or her about the certain offer, send him or her his own inquiry, or any other business proposal.

PREMIUM account
This type of account can be used by both, buyers and sellers of wholesale products, closeout stocks, excess stocks and clearance stocks. Just like the STANDARD account, the PREMIUM will also give You access to the wholesalers' database, but this also includes some additional information, which are not available for STANDARD users.
These additional information include:
- Wholesalers' blacklist  - a list of unreliable wholesalers, who commited fraud or abuse. Most of them are still actively seeking for new victims on the internet under changed names of companies.
- Opinions system - PREMIUM users are able to add opinions about wholesalers, and rate the deals with them, including their reliability and a level of professionalism.

Another very important feature of PREMIUM account is an option of listing offers at Merkandi. The selling options are available for those PREMIUM members, who will verify their companies with us. Once verified, a user is then able to list offers by an intuitive and easy-to-use "Add offer" feature. For each of the offers, a user is also able to upload pictures and files. Finally, every seller is given a professional showroom, where buyers are able to view some detailed information about his or her company, including the contact information to his or her sales department.

All members of Merkandi trading platform can count on professional help of our Customer Service Team. If You have any questions or concerns about Merkandi, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are offering You three basic forms of communication with us:

• over the phone
• Skype
• live chat
• via email. 

Of course, we offer You full support in all languages listed in the contact section of our website. Our Customer Service Team is at Your service from Monday to Friday, 6:30-14:30 BST.

We do our best to answer all of Your email questions as soon as possible. Any emails sent to us outside our working hours, are in most cases answered next business day.

Just please do not forget, that the members of our Customer Service Team are taking days off, or going on holiday, just like You do. In this case, You will always receive an automated reply about that, with an information when the certain person will be back in the office. Alternatively, You can contact us in the other language.

We also try to call back those of our members, who tried to call us outside our working hours.

Finally, if our office will be closed for some reasons, You will always find this information in the contact section of our website. We always list this announcement in advance, and always inform You why our office is closed, and when the Customer Service Team will be back in the office.

Every STANDARD user is able to upgrade his or her account to PREMIUM, at any time. The upgrade is a one-time cost.

To upgrade Your account to PREMIUM, please follow the instruction from below:

1. Sign in to Your STANDARD account.

2. Click the “Change the type of account” button, the button is available in Your dashboard.

3. Click confirm Your order button.

4. You will then be directed to the payment options.

5. Once Your payment will be recorded, Your account will upgraded to PREMIUM.

Please remember, that upgrading Your account to PREMIUM will not renew Your account. This feature will only change the type of Your user’s account, so the expiration date will not change.

To view and download invoices, please sign in to Your Merkandi account first. After that, please go to “Orders' history” section of Your user’s account. To previev any of the invoices, just click it’s number. To download them, or to pay the invoice, just click the proper button, which is next to the number of the invoice.

Please remember, that these are invoices for the services of Merkandi. If You want to get an invoice for the products You bought, please contact the particular wholesaler.

The Exclusive Zone is a place reserved for the most active members of Merkandi who are looking for the best offers on our platform and expect to find real bargains. You will find here specially selected offers that may not be available to the public for reasons such as:

• an agreement with a manufacturer that prohibits publication of the offers in the public domain
• the products are subject to sales restrictions in certain countries
• the products' price cannot be available in public
• the goods are branded, but their further distribution is subject to restrictions

These abovementioned conditions are most often imposed by the brands, manufacturers or distributors, and are not subject to negotiation. For this reason, the products they cover cannot be offered through publicly available sales channels. Merkandi knows about this specificity of the wholesale market, so we decided to satisfy the needs of our users by creating a closed special zone for such offers.

The buyers interested in this type of wholesale deals can buy access to the Exclusive Zone from the user dashboard. Once purchased the access, the user will be able to view special offers from the home page and in individual categories. The access to the Exclusive Zone is valid for 12 months from the day of purchase, and it is closely related to the validity of the account.

The sellers owning goods that comply with one of these restrictions may publish their offers in the Exclusive Zone by checking the box "Offer visible only to a selected group of users with access to the Exclusive Zone" in the offer publication form. Once you publish your offer, it will be visible only to the users who have purchased access to the Exclusive Zone. Please note, that the seller who does not have access to the Exclusive Zone may also publish their offers there.

The Exclusive Zone is an innovative feature on Merkandi that serves both the buyers and the sellers. The former have access to unique offers, not published on other websites, whereas the latter have the opportunity to present goods covered by sales and distribution restrictions and get in touch with the buyers who are looking for this type of products.

Therefore, the Exclusive Zone is a perfect completion of the database of offers which due to sales restrictions cannot be presented on generally available wholesale trading platforms.

Opinions on our platform can be issued by the buyers in the sellers' profiles. Depending on their type and number, they can generate trust in your company and increase sales or deter your potential customers. How does the opinion system on Merkandi work? Below you will find some practical hints and tips.

How do comments on Merkandi work?
Each buyer has the right to make one comment per transaction, if no more than 2 months have passed since the date of the seller's invoice. A comment can be one of three types: positive, neutral or negative. In the case of the first two, the publication is immediate and the wholesaler receives a notification of a new opinion published on his/her profile. In the case of a negative one, it is sent to our team. If it is correctly formulated, we move it to the queue of pending publications, whereas the seller receives an automatic notification generated by our system. From this moment, the wholesaler receives 7 days to clarify the situation with the buyer or to report to us that the transaction did not take place. If within this time the buyer wishes to remove the negative review or it results that we have not been able to obtain evidence of the transaction after being informed that the transaction has never taken place, we remove it from the wholesaler's profile and inform both parties about it. Otherwise, after 7 days the opinion is published and the wholesaler receives a notification. 
Another aspect of the comment system is the evaluation of the seller in 4 categories: 
- conformity of the item with the description
- contact with the seller
- lead time of the contract
- shipping cost
Each of these categories can be rated from 1 to 5 stars. The average rating of all the categories is then averaged and displayed in the seller's profile.

Can I remove a negative opinion from my profile?
Any comment can be removed if the buyer reports to us that the dispute has been solved with the wholesaler. We may remove comments in justified cases, e.g. when the transaction has not taken place. In other cases, we do not mediate in the disputes about comments. Each buyer has the opportunity to issue a negative comment and the wholesaler, with the exceptions indicated, has no right to claim its removal.

Taking care of reputation and avoiding negative comments
Negative comments undoubtedly have a negative impact on sales and customer confidence. Therefore, we recommend that every wholesaler ask their clients for positive opinions from day one. There are several reasons for such advice:
- positive comments increase the credibility of the seller
- if a negative comment is received, positive comments reduce its strength and help to maintain the seller's reputation at a high level
- a large number of positive comments generate higher sales.

How to encourage buyers to make comments?
No one needs to be encouraged to publish negative opinions, but in the case of positive experiences, buyers are not so willing to share their opinions. Therefore, we recommend several methods of obtaining positive opinions, which are known and tested by our wholesalers:
- discount on the current order or another order
- bonus added to the contract as part of the publication of comments
- offering better quality goods as compensation for the opinion

What should I do if a buyer publishes a dishonest comment?
If for some reason a comment is unfair and untrue, every seller has the opportunity to respond to it. In this case, the opinion will also be followed by a response in the profile, which will allow potential buyers to know the opinion of both parties about the transaction and give them the opportunity to defend themselves against fraudulent buyers.

There is one more important thing that is worth mentioning. Merkandi is a platform operating in many different countries and languages. If you receive a comment regardless of the language of its publication, our specialists will translate it into all other available languages. In this way, while gaining a positive opinion in one version, the wholesaler receives positive comments in each available version. Of course, the same applies to negative and neutral comments.

We recommend that everyone use the opinion system to reward wholesalers for their professional transactions and to warn others about dishonest contractors. Both the comments and the sales evaluation in the case of customer care always bring positive effects for both parties to the transaction. 

I have been cheated, can I do anything else apart from a negative comment?
Thanks to the fact that we verify our sellers, check the authenticity of the goods, and enable the users to publish comments, we significantly increase the security of transactions on our platform. Nevertheless, there are situations in which some sellers fail to comply with the terms of the contract for various reasons. In this case, the first step that the buyer should take is the publication of a negative opinion in the wholesaler's profile. This is usually sufficient for the transaction to be completed successfully.

If the comment has not brought the expected result, the buyer should report the issue to the local Police and to the Interpol. It is worth having a set of documents confirming all stages of the transaction. More information on this topic can be found in our guidelines on good practices in making transactions.

Due to the fact that we do not mediate in transactions between users, all actions on our part to help resolve the dispute can be taken only after receiving confirmation of reporting the case to the Police, which should be requested for when giving evidence.

Merkandi does not offer test accounts.

Before publishing their offers, each wholesaler undergoes a verification procedure. Such verification aims to increase your security during transactions. In addition, we also verify offers on branded products to confirm the authenticity and origin of such goods.

The world is striving for more and more digitization. As it progresses, more and more threats appear. One of the most common threats is Phishing.

What is Phishing?
It is an attempt at phishing data by impersonating a person, company or institution. Here are some examples of how this type of scamming works:

• Phishing login data through a fake website - criminals make an identical copy of the website, but at a different internet address. Then they send mailing impersonating interested customers or the company itself with a request to log in / view a specific offer. In such cases, be vigilant. The easiest way to avoid this is to look at the address bar when logging in. If it is different than merkandi.com or another of the Merkandi domains, you should refrain from logging in. Please visit the Merkandi website and immediately report such a situation to our Customer Care. It is also worth noting that criminals often use different types of tricks to make the domain similar to the original one. Examples: Merkondi.com or merkandi.com.domainname.com. In the first case, we see a typo in the name, which is easy to overlook, while in the second, a subdomain that is identical to the domain, however, it is not the Merkandi domain.
• Phishing by e-mail - criminals send an e-mail from a company-like domain, asking for a login password, sending documents, etc. At the same time, they take care of the details by sending message templates and footers that our Customer Care agents actually use. Before responding to an e-mail requesting sensitive data, always check who the sender is - all our agents use only addresses in the merkandi domain - [email protected].

These are just two examples of the most popular attacks. There are definitely more of them and each of them may have its own varieties, which depend only on the creativity and cunning of criminals.

Due to evolving threats, we decided to use a proactive solution in the form of a mandatory two-factor account login. When you try to log in, after entering your login and password, you will be asked for an activation code that will be sent to your email address. This way, even if you lose your login details, the criminal will not be able to login to your account.

Do I need it? There is nothing interesting on my account on Merkandi
Many people falsely think that criminals will not be interested in their account. This is not true for two reasons:

1. If you are a seller, your account may contain sensitive data such as customer and transaction data. This data can be used by the criminal to compose a further attack or blackmail. It should be remembered that the applicable provisions of the GDPR also impose on each entrepreneur securing this type of data in the best possible way.
2. Your account can be used to coordinate attacks on other people. The criminal from your account can send information and messages to your clients on your behalf. In this way he can, for example, publish offers and then ask interested parties to pay for the order on the account he has provided. Although it is not you who cheat people in this way, it loses the image of your company and may cause problems with the law, because until the matter is clarified you are the person who has extorted money from customers.

I am a victim of phishing, what should I do?
Report the matter to Merkandi customer service immediately, change the account password to Merkandi and make sure that no one has changed your email address in the account settings. If you use the password to log in to Merkandi also in other places - change it also in other places.

Important note
The two-factor login is an additional layer of security, which increases your safety, but it does not guarantee 100% security. It makes hacking your account with the stolen data much more difficult, but there are other phishing methods in which the confirmation code is also scammed, so you should still check the sites where you log in for possible phishing scams.

The Merkandi team is constantly working on the security of data and user accounts by introducing new functionalities.

Offering the highest level of customer service is a very good business practice, especially for sellers. One of the most common mistakes in the wholesale industry is neglecting the response to messages received from buyers/sellers.
Merkandi is an international platform on which we place great emphasis on proper contact and business relations between users. To ensure a high level of service, we care about indicators and statistics of response to messages. Therefore, you can receive notifications from us if your panel contains unanswered messages.

Why do we do this?

• To notify you about unread messages - sometimes it happens that the messages go to your spam inbox or they are overlooked. We make sure that no message escapes you.
• To educate you about good business practices - many people are unaware that not responding to messages can have a negative impact on their business. We try to explain why replying to messages is so important.
• To increase your sales - if you don't answer today, the user may not be interested in your offer in a week. You need to serve everyone to maximise sales.

Why is this important?
Imagine running a store. A client enters it and asks a question. In how many cases have you encountered a situation where the seller pretends not to see the customer? We have not encountered such a situation, so why should it be different in e-commerce?
As we mentioned earlier, if the customer does not receive an answer today, then next time he or she may not contact you at all. Therefore, it is better to write "I am not interested", "No, thank you", etc., than not write anything back. Such short information will take you a few seconds, but it will not discourage the customer as much as no answer.
 

Can we require an answer?
We can't, because our goal is to make users aware and increase the response rate. We can't force you to reply, but we will always contact you for unanswered messages. If we do not receive a reply from you, we will prompt you to contact us. If we don't receive any response from you within two weeks, we reserve the right to disable the seller's option on your account.

Online threats are becoming more and more common, and phishing scams are getting smarter. However, you can significantly increase your online security with a few basic rules:

• Merkandi never asks for a password for the user's account on the platform or any other password for e-mail or any other services;
• Always make sure that you log in to the merkandi domain (merkandi.com, merkandi.de, merkandi.fr) and that the login page is secured by a certificate;
• Always check that the message you received was sent from the correct merkandi domain (merkandi.com, merkandi.de, merkandi.fr, etc.). We never send messages from other addresses;
• In case of doubts regarding the authenticity of the received message, please contact our Customer Service Office immediately. If possible, please send us the received message to [email protected] for verification.
• If you are a victim of phishing, please immediately report this to our team.

What is phishing and how does it work?
Phishing is an attempt to steal someone's data, in which a criminal impersonates a company or other person. In such situations, the sent messages usually contain information about account blocking, deactivation of some functionalities, non-payment of the order, etc., and a link to perform a requested action. This link usually leads to a page that is identical to the original, but in reality is only a copy of it at a completely different address. This site usually requires us to log in, upon which the data goes to the impersonator. An example of such a page is below:

How to prevent this?
Check the domain. If the domain differs from the Merkandi domains (merkandi.pl, merkandi.com, merkandi.fr, merkandi.com, etc.), do not log in!
Check if the connection on the site is encrypted - there should be a padlock with a valid certificate on the left side of the url address. If your browser informs you that the site is not secure - do not log in!

I provided login details on a fake website, what should I do?

• Report immediately to our Customer Service for assistance. At the same time, we recommend that you do the following:
• Change the password on your Merkandi account.
• In case you used the same password on other portals or websites, we recommend changing it as well.
• Log out of other sessions on other devices.

Do you need more information on how to avoid scam in wholesale trading?

You can check out this post from our Merkandi blog: 
• https://blog.merkandi.com/articles/10-ways-avoid-scam-wholesale-trading/

And our article on how to ensure the security of wholesale transactions: 

• https://merkandi.com/articles/how-to-ensure-the-security-of-wholesale-transactions/11

To ensure the widest possible reach and number of potential customers, all offers published on Merkandi are automatically translated. The principle of operation is simple - when publishing an offer, the seller fills in the language in which he is able to do it, while for all other languages ​​the translations are completed automatically within 24 hours.

Opting out of automatic translations

We have introduced this functionality due to numerous requests and questions from users. Therefore, if you are a seller on Merkandi and for any reason you do not want your offers to be automatically published in other languages, just contact our customer service department to deactivate the automatic translation option. However, if it concerns only one offer, all you have to do is select the edit field in the list of offers and remove the title, description and tags from the language you want to cancel. After saving the changes, the automatic translation will be deleted.

Benefits of automatic translation of offers

As time progresses, trading becomes easier. Trade with other countries, in particular within the European Union, has become extremely simple. Therefore, in order to meet buyers who are looking for goods regardless of their country of origin, and wanting to support sellers who are looking for new markets, we have created the functionality of automatic translation of offers. Offers are translated using tools such as Google Translate, Yandex and DeepL to ensure the best quality and results.