New Chinese seller scam

[lewmur]

Seems the Chinese have found a new way to get around "US only" buyers.  Their ads will claim "US stock" and have a Ca or NY address.  When you place an order, right away you'll get a USPO tracking no.  But there isn't actually any "US stock".  There is merely a Chinese shipping agent in NY or CA that creates the shipping label and then orders the item from China, along with many other orders.  When they have accumulated enough orders they are shipped by air to the agent in the US, who then repacks them with the USPO shipping labels.  Problem for the buyer is that there will be a long delay between the time the USPO llabel is created and the time the PO actually get the shipment.  I have such an order right now where the label was created on Nov 22 and the PO still doesn't have it on Nov 30.  When I looked up the item in my PayPal transactions, this is the co that received the payment. 佛山市盛耀网络有限公司

[615ann1111]

Yea, there is nothing they won't try.

[eburtonlab]

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. Although some overseas sellers do use US warehouses to ship their items (and some US-registered sellers may employ overseas 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 comments will often reveal if there are problems with long shipping times, canceled orders or other supply chain warning signs.

When faced with a long list of search results that you want to narrow down to sellers that can ship and deliver quickly, using the "Guaranteed Delivery" filter will often help; very few sellers that ship from overseas qualify. That is a rough filter, though -- many domestic sellers may be filtered out as well.

[lewmur]

I feel a lot the problem is that eBay doesn't seem to care.  Their "filters" just don't work.  The "location" filter is useless and so is trying to exclude ads containing the work "China".  Then there is the problem with the "Select" option in ads.   You click on an ad that shows "Bread" and a price of $1.  You click on it and there is a "Select" box that has the choice of "Bread" and "Bread Wrapper".   When you select "Bread", the price changes to $3.  If any "Brick" store did that, the BBB would be all over them for "Bait and Switch".

[lewmur]

You can avoid buying from them but you can't avoid having to scroll through 20 ads "From China" to see 1 from the USA.  And Chinese co.s have no problem lying about "estimated delivery date".  Check my OP.  The date has come and gone but complaining to eBay would just give me a "bad" mark as a buyer.

[southern*sweet*tea]

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@lewmur wrote:

The date has come and gone but complaining to eBay would just give me a "bad" mark as a buyer.

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No it won't. Buyers don't get bad marks for opening legitimate cases.  Ebay has a very good Money Back Guarantee (MBG) for buyers, but it won't work if buyers don't use it.

One day after the estimated delivery date has passed, open an item not received complaint. Seller will have to provide proof of delivery. If they can't you get your money back. You have thirty days from the estimated delivery date to do this. If you've gone past that date, Paypal and many credit cards allow 180 days from the date of purchase.

[donsdetour]

Leave appropriate negative feedback: Says ships from US but is really from china with a big old flat red negative. ...

[lewmur]

The first  thing that happens when you open and "item not received" is  that you get an email telling you to wait longer.  "Been there, done that, got the tee shirt."

[southern*sweet*tea]

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@lewmur wrote:

The first  thing that happens when you open and "item not received" is  that you get an email telling you to wait longer.  "Been there, done that, got the tee shirt."

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Then wait a couple of days until the ask Ebay to step in link becomes available, then click that. It will escalate the case and you'll get refunded. If you just let the case sit there, it will eventually close out on it's own because it is assumed that your item was received. 

[lewmur]

It isn't just a couple of days and by the time it happens the package will have had time to arrive from China.  The problem is that eBay will make NO attempt to make the seller stop the deceptive practices.  Afterall, the tracking lablel says it originated in Springfield Gardens, NY. 

BTW:  I don't have any desire for a refund.  I WANT MY WRENCH!!!  If this were an isolated event, I wouldn't be complaining.  But trying to buy from US shippers is becoming harder and harder.  The Chinese are hijacking eBay and eBay doesn't seem to care.

[eburtonlab]

@lewmur 

Their "filters" just don't work. The "location" filter is useless and so is trying to exclude ads containing the work "China".

The filters do work with the data that is available, but the filters cannot distinguish if  sellers are feeding them faulty information or not.

If overseas sellers list items as being located in the US and do not include the word "China" in the listing, then Item location filters and -china keyword exclusions will not help you. You must work with what data you have.

If you use the Guaranteed Delivery filter, you will not have to scroll through twenty listings from overseas sellers, no matter where those sellers claim the item is shipping from, if they cannot actually deliver consistently in four days or less.

Price variation listings are another problem entirely; you can choose to skip over any listing that includes a price variation (or just assume that the item you want is the highest price), or else not use the lowest price sort at all for some categories. In some cases you may be better off sorting by highest price first, then scrolling down to your price point and skipping all the low price variation listings entirely.

[lewmur]

**bleep**.  The words "From China" are there for everyone to see but the ads still appear.  If somehow they are disguised as an image of some sort, then eBay needs to upgrade their software to detect it.

[eburtonlab]

@lewmur 

The words "From China" are there for everyone to see but the ads still appear. If somehow they are disguised as an image of some sort, then eBay needs to upgrade their software to detect it.

If the words "From China" are actually in the text of the listing, then you should be able to exclude those terms provided you are searching title and description. The default is just to search the title (and item-specifics).

eBay's search will not match text included within an image -- which is one reason why scammers include email addresses or other contact information in images; so it cannot be detected by searching.

[southern*sweet*tea]

Look, I get it totally. In my opinion, Ebay killed the golden goose when they opened the doors to overseas, mass produced trash, but it is what it is and we have to work with it. It's all a numbers game to Ebay - they'd much rather have 1000 $1 sales than 10 $100 sales because it makes things look busy.

First off, set search to US only. (you already do that) Second, don't sort by lowest price. Third, sort by nearest zip code. This works very well if you don't live on either coast AND it gives the added benefit of shopping locally, which is always a good thing.  That's what I always did. It may or may not help for the things you buy. After doing all of that, you still need to vet the seller by looking at the profile page and making sure they are registered in the US and not overseas.

[tallpall7]

Those chinese sellers are scum. I think my days with Ebay are numbered. When people started filtering their results to omit China then they started with the phony North American and European locations. I've been with Ebay for 20 years and it was never this bad. You can tell they're in China because if you send a private message prior to purchase asking where they are really located you never get a reply. They know the fake location they tell you will be used against them. If their account is terminated they'll just open another one and keep doing the same thing