Seller's listing represented their location as New York, but are actually located in China!

[retail-afterlife]

First, let me say this is not me whining about anything other than unfair conditions created by the platform that we are paying to provide fair conditions! That said...

The fact that we are being subjected to an invasion in our own country by a corporate entity, undermining the fair markets and deceiving our fellow countrymen/women and flooding OUR markets with substandard and defective products, in my opinion, is not only unfair, but disloyal to the country and people who provide the ability for them to exist at all.  Yet another shining example of Corporate America crapping where they live, which tells you all you need to know about their ethics and bottom line!

I really don't understand how America is all but at war with China and yet here we are being subjugated by an American company and forced to compete with our nation's enemy! To me, it would seem a simple thing to understand that economics play a significant role in wars and policies and much more, but my problem here today is with Chinese sellers, located in China, but representing they are located in the United States, which is what I recently went through when purchasing a printer. 

Not because I was warned by eBay or anyone else, but because I've been here a very long time and know that when push comes to shove, even in the most blatant of scams and rip-offs, we are on our own and eBay's contention that they will "step in" and mandate a fair and impartial decision based on the facts means absolutely nothing in the real world.  The partial refund policy is a joke, because one is never allowed to participate in the refund process if the buyer knows all they need do is file a case immediately in which case eBay issues an immediate return and refunds the buyer regardless of funds being available in your account or not! Again, it's not as if they will listen to anything you have to say on any issue, they are pretty well unreachable, with the same excuse from the support personnel being I'm not authorized to make any decisions regarding this problem.  There are so many road-blocks in place when a seller has an issue, which has become so frequent your financials and fees and similar become a time-warped incomprehensible cluster-fudge of chaos you'll never figure out how or why you got screwed yet again!

Yes, after getting bent over so many times the resentment just takes up residence and its hard not to want to explain the particulars. Call me crazy, I could care less what your opinion of me is. I'm not here soliciting opinions, I'm here trying to make a buck and finding it's just not possible anymore. It was years ago, but like everything, it's been replaced with this insanity that pervades our country, big surprise there!

Anyway, to the issue at hand... Why are Chinese Nationals, who reside (wait for it...) in China allowed to misrepresent their location? I find it utterly unbelievable that a corporation as tech savvy as eBay is unaware of how this obvious and serious violation of eBay's own policies could possibly be perpetrated and continue to do so at will and eBay having many and numerous complaints about such continue to allow it to happen!
Call me stupid, but I don't believe supporting our enemies economy is a good thing, but beyond that I think that if someone tells you they are in New York, they should actually BE in New York. It's called lying, deception, scamming, grifting and my favorite, FRAUD!

Now, if that isn't bad enough, and a serious violation of which we're threatened with all kinds of badness if we undertake such nefarious deeds, but taking it a little further, say like delivering (supposedly) your item in under fourteen hours New York to California without a tracking number or named carrier and sending you a message not three minutes after the item is (supposedly) delivered, with a photo of your item sitting next to your front door included in this message... Yet you have in your possession no item! Well, its not difficult to see the problem I imagine, but what might be a bit more difficult to understand is the unusual circumstances that occurred multiple times after I filed an item not received case. I'm not going into particulars of these circumstances for the same reason I dropped the INR case after the third occurrence in the same day of said circumstances. I will say that I received a very polite and to the point message very shortly after dropping the case, with some very interesting information in the header of said message which let me know I had made the right never alluded to choice!

I've learned over my many years upon this world that things are not often what they seem at first glance, and when things seem a little off the normal mark it is typically because they are!  I am presenting this as it is something I think needs awareness. My loss was such that it was easily recognized as a small price to pay for a lesson learned worth so much more! Things being the way they are currently I am very confidant that my complaints would not have elicited anything useful to me, probably very much to the contrary.

I believe it necessary to share my experience for obvious reasons as I am an American and do place certain things above others. If only more of us had these same characteristics I imagine much of the chaos and crazy happening in our country today would not be, but such is the nature of wealth, power and corruption.
I'm not expecting this to make it past the censors, but hopefully it will last long enough to inform some of you who can relate and so be armed with that which might protect you from similar situations and losses.

Thanks for listening and best of luck to you all.

[mudshark61369]

@retail-afterlife,

While I appreciate that you feel the need to rant, what should have taken precedence was the actual issue you had, which we may have been able to give you help with. However, because the transaction took place over 6 months ago, we can't help you now. Even your PayPal or credit card provider's time frames for getting resolution have passed.  Now all we can do is provide suggestions on how to avoid the problem in he future. A) Never trust a seller registered in China who gives a U.S. location for their items. B) Check feedback profiles for signs that a seller registered in the U.S. may be drop shipping chinese made products.  More about that below.

From your feedback:

I purchased 08-12-23. Item supposedly delivered 08-13-23. Seller sends message with photo of item sitting out in front of my residence.

If the photo actually showed your residence, is it possible it was stolen from there?

eBay shipping history says item not delivered. No tracking number provided. It's 08-28-23, seller's response to my "item not received" request is to ask if I received the item, through regular eBay messaging!

When you file an Item Not received dispute, it will show up on your My ebay summary page. The seller has to provide ebay with a tracking number proving they shipped the item and that it was delivered within 3 days. If they do not, you can ask ebay to step in from the dispute. You never pay attention to messages sent through regular ebay messages.

It was 3 days to ask for help, now its 6 days! I refused to play along!

It was you who made the decision, not to come back on the 7th day and ask ebay to step in.  eBay does not extend time frames unless the actual last estimated delivery date not passed, or the seller provides tracking that shows the package was received by a shipper and is in their system.

As for item locations, the chinese do have huge warehouses near several port cities in the U.S. that are basically drop ship centers for many China based sellers. Some items may be out of stock and may have to be sent from China, and if that happens, you can file an item not as described dispute forcing the seller to either send a return shipping label or to refund you if they do not do that.

Ways of determining if a seller is China based or drop ships from there.

On Listing pages:

• Items priced well below brand name items price.
• Items listed by many other sellers using the same photos and prices often.
• An item location address that does not give a city and state Ex: USA / United States, New Jersey / USA ...
• The use of U.S. flag symbols and several mentions of being a U.S. seller.
• Item descriptions that have wording in them that doesn't seem like it was written by a person whose first language is English.
• Very high volume sellers who registered after 2011.
• A  High volume Top Rated seller with a feedback percentage below 98.6%
• Item titles giving a brand name, and photos showing a brand name label, but in the Item Specifics it says Brand: Unknown.
• Items that don't have a recognizable Brand Name.
• The use of metric and standard measurements.
• Photos with Asian models in them.

On a Feedback profile page:

• The seller's country of registry, sometimes.
• Very high volume sellers who joined after 2010.
• All or most feedback is for Private listings.
• Those that do not list all items as private, have FB for items in many unrelated categories.
• Feedback numbers that don't add up. Shooting star feedback numbers  but a low number in the last year or 12 months. 
• Neutral and Negative feedback saying items came from China. That took a long time to arrive. Missing items from multiple quantity orders. Poor Quality,  Cancelled purchases.  Poor communications. (click on the numbers of neutral and negative feedback received, to read only those comments).
• Responses to non positive feedback written by someone whose first language does not appear to be English.

It may take a little time to use the above lists, but in the long run can save time and possibly money. It becomes second nature after awhile.