Please check with your factory.

跟工厂确认 is the phrase you use when you suspect the person you’re talking to isn’t the person making your product. In the Chinese export ecosystem, many “suppliers” are trading companies (贸易公司, mào yì gōng sī) that act as intermediaries between foreign buyers and the actual factories. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing — good trading companies provide language support, quality control, and logistics coordination. But it creates an information gap: what the trading company tells you is only as accurate as what the factory told them, and sometimes that chain of information gets fuzzy.

Saying 请跟工厂确认一下 signals that you understand this structure and you want verified information from the source. It’s a polite but pointed request: don’t just tell me what you think, go ask the people actually making the product and come back with a real answer. The phrase works because it’s framed as a joint activity (跟, with) rather than an accusation. You’re not saying “you’re lying” or “you don’t know what you’re talking about.” You’re saying “let’s make sure we have accurate information.” That distinction keeps the relationship functional while improving the quality of the information you receive.

The key situations for deploying 跟工厂确认: when a lead time seems too optimistic (the trading company promised two weeks but the factory is probably booked for six), when a price seems too low (the trading company quoted without checking current material costs), when a specification detail seems uncertain (the agent is guessing instead of checking the production file), or when you’ve received inconsistent answers to the same question asked at different times. In each case, the phrase moves the conversation from “what the agent thinks” to “what the factory says.” If the agent resists or gives vague answers, that’s information too — it might mean they don’t have a direct line to the factory, or worse, they haven’t actually secured production capacity for your order.