I limited a search to items from US only. Seller's listing says they are in CA but are in China
I try to buy from US sellers as much as possible. I especially do not like buying from China since (in my opinion) they use our postal system and can undercut US sellers due to their postal advantages.
I did a search for a product and limited the search to US only. One item that came up said on the listing that the seller was in California so I ordered the product, only to find out they are really in China. I had to drill down after the sale to find this information.
Why does EBay allow this?
It usually takes forever to get something from China and the seller did not provide a tracking number; shipping just says, "Standard Shipping" so if they have a CA location they are not shipping from that one.
4 comments
mudshark61369
·6 months ago@patternsaver ,
Beyond what @eburtonlab wrote there are ways to weed out China based sellers, who give a U.S. locations for their items. Open the link below and once it loads, click on Go To Best Answer to learn how.
Many sellers only list items with Standard or Expedited shipping, not just China based ones.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Buying/Why-is-Ebay-Backing-China-Sellers-with-a-lie-in-there-post-there/m-p/35168893#M526369
12345jamesstamps
·6 months agoIt's possible a seller is in one country but 'drop shipping' in the USA.
If you clink on the shipping and the seller 'only ships in the USA' it could probably be drop shipping.
eBay buyer ID feedbacks will usually show what country buyer is in.
fullers_uk
·6 months agoI am in the UK but sell on .com I have noticed more and more sellers from China saying they are in the US to make themselves look more favorable due to the tariffs, in a few cases a little of there stock might be held in the US but when they say 10 to 12 days delivery its clearly not, its on China. The other thing is that sellers from China dont care much about tariffs, they pay them in China when they ship and the chinese government refund them so its neutral to them, tariffs have not created a level playing field for US industry when it comes from China.
eburtonlab
·6 months agoItem location and seller location are not necessarily the same thing. It is possible for a seller to be in one location and ship from another. There may be good reasons to avoid buying from such sellers, though.
Probably the best way to deal with sellers that misrepresent item location is to avoid them whenever possible. 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.
Before ordering you should check the estimated delivery dates -- that is 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. Although some overseas sellers do use US warehouses to ship their items (and some registered US-sellers may employ drop-shippers), 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 closely will often reveal if there are problems with long shipping times, canceled orders or other supply chain warning signs, particularly if buyers that encounter problems with drop-shippers leave feedback indicating that.