Don't cut corners with your supplier

Another excerpt from John Wiley Spiers' "How Small Business Trades Worldwide" (2001)

Another way suppliers can cut corners to make up the loss of revenue is to ship you defective goods. Normally, if your order is for, say, 2,000 pieces, they would make 2,200 pieces, sort out the defectives, and ship you 2,000 excellent items. (The other 200 pieces they can sell to some poor fool who comes from the United States and says, "do you have something cool I can sell and make a killing?") But if you squeeze the supplier on price, they might make you 2,000 pieces, ship you 2,000 pieces, and you can pay the freight, taxes (duty) on the defectives and have to sort them out yourself.

The bottom line is that you must never deny the supplier just compensation for his efforts.