Item and shipping locations

[hitechseeker]

There are many of us trying to buy form the nearest locations, by searching for "nearest" location. Often, these items cost a lot more than say items from China. Unfortunately, technology has allowed sellers to use virtual locations. It should not take 7-10 days for an item in the same city to be shipped. So I can only conclude that location in the listing does not mean much. It should not be possible to list an item in a city or location that is not real. Does Ebay have a policy against this kind of false advertising ?

[eburtonlab]

eBay does have a policy:

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-policies/item-location-misrepresentation-policy?id=4244

It is not clear how well it is enforced.

The "US only" item location filter selects items that are listed as being in the United States; however, as you have seen, not every seller that lists items in the US ships from the US as they should. You can report such sellers for item location misrepresentation, but until eBay actually cracks down, your best course of action is to avoid such sellers entirely.

Before ordering you should check the estimated delivery dates -- that is usually a good indication of how far away items actually ship from. Also, going to a seller's profile page or feedback page will tell you where the seller's account was registered. If a seller is registered overseas, that raises the likelihood of an item shipping from outside the US, particularly for multiple quantity commodity items. Checking seller feedback will often reveal if there are problems with long shipping times, canceled orders or other supply chain warning signs.

[mudshark61369]

@hitechseeker,

In looking at your feedback profile it strikes me that yo do not seem to check the feedback profiles of the sellers you buy from. One seller has over 5K combined negative an neutral feedback another over 1,500 yet both of them have percentages in the 99% range.  Many that you buy from are getting their items from China or China based suppliers who have warehousing in the U.S. judging by the number of poor quality, and fitment comments, not to mention ones for slow shipping and wrong parts sent.

As for estimated delivery time frames ebay does not base that on shipper's time frames, but on the average time a seller's items take to arrive.  It also includes a seller's handling time which can vary. Often a handling time can be found by clicking on the 

   box on a listing page. 

[hitechseeker]

Generally, I do check feedback and buy from people with decent number of items transacted and their ratings. However, sometimes I am looking for something that will get to me fast, so I look for "nearest". This is where the issue is. Most sellers on Ebay are realible, but the location of the seller does not indicate where the items is going to come from -- sometimes. Hence trying to filter by "nearest" has been hit and miss. Its not always a useful filter. Ebay does not let you communicate by phone for obvious reasons and th eotehr party is not always very quick to respond. A bad seller can be left with bad feedback but a seller that ships for a different location to advertized ?

[hitechseeker]

Here is an example of a listing from San Jose:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/145105932538

But the item is coming from China.

It is a very low cost item !

It says free standard shipping and located in San Jose.

I guess I should have read in detail and seen the long extended handling times -- but item is not located in San Jose as described in the listing  !

I had hoped that one should not need to be a great "detective" to buy on Eaby.

[mudshark61369]

@hitechseeker,

Because of the number of sellers who are China based or who drop ship from there, on this site, you do have to do a little sleuthing to avoid them. Not using the Price: lowest filter, is one way to avoid some. 

I opened the link you provided and checked the seller's feedback profile page. They have only one negative feedback about the quality of an item. However they do have a neutral feedback asking why an item supposedly located in Florida, took so long to get to Georgia.  All I had to do to find that comment was to click on the number of neutral feedback they received to read those comments. It took all of 5 seconds to do that.

Just opening their profile page and seeing the items they have sold that received positive feedback, confirmed what I suspected when seeing their 10 day handling time frame on the listing. Bluetooth adapters selling for $2.28 w/ free shipping?   Those 5 batteries selling for $2.20,  even if they were sent in an envelope would cost 60 cents to mail and after ebay's fees where would the profit be, unless they were coming from outside the U.S. ergo the 10 day handling time. Even then I doubt they are really Toshiba batteries.  

[hitechseeker]

I undertand but I did not suspect what you have just found out and allowing item location to be posted in San Jose does not help ? Its not the price that I was complaining about ? I dont want to end up buying tons of batteries, I only needed 2, and they have expiration dates. Yes, I could have gone to a local store, but thought I would get my items within a couple of days from the seller in the same town.  Anyway, I ended up buying another set ( more expensive !) -- pretty much the same issue. So your telling me that I just loked for the lowest price is not true. Its false advertizing of the loacation. Here is the link to the second purcahse.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/125166079401

Good thing about  these is that these are just batteries and not expensive. Unforunately, one buys batteries as soon as they run out and hopes to replace immediately ( within a week or less). I guess the lesson is not to go by item loaction in teh listing, but spend a lot of time figuring out where it comes from instead of where its stated to come from ?

[khetzel]

I would focus less on the stated location, which as you noted is not always true.

I look at estimated delivery date.  The ones coming from overseas always have an excessive handling time like 10 business days (that's 2 weeks) and another week for shipping.  

Just look for sellers/listings with an EDD of a week or less from now.  They aren't going to claim they can deliver in less than a week if it's coming from overseas.

[hitechseeker]

Ok, will do that going forward for critical shipments. Thanks.