"based in China" Filter Please

[willinoisbmx]

Hi folks,

This has been discussed before, but I think it needs a refresh.  First, I have had little issues buying stuff from China for a long time.  However, recently there has been a couple issues, and the unprofessional communication I have received recently while trying to resolve has me filtering item location.  This works well, but the items can be in the US while the seller is based in China.  It is one thing if the item shows up incorrect or defective, it is another if the seller is completely unprofessional and the communication is hard to translate.  I would like to filter sellers that are "based in China" no matter where the item distribution point is.  Please post your comments and thoughts.  Perhaps if this has enough support then eBay will provide us another filter.

[trehar_4]

I really wish that eBay's search would filter out sellers that are registered in another country. Such a waste of time having to check the seller's profile to see where they are really located. Most of these Chinese sellers state they are located in major metropolitan areas such Greater Los Angeles,  New York, or New Jersey.  Those are on my radar. In California  the most common are La Puente, Hacienda Heights,  and City of Industry.

[eburtonlab]

@willinoisbmx 

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, regardless of where they claim their items are located.

[pburn]

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@trehar_4 wrote:

I really wish that eBay's search would filter out sellers that are registered in another country. Such a waste of time having to check the seller's profile to see where they are really located. Most of these Chinese sellers state they are located in major metropolitan areas such Greater Los Angeles,  New York, or New Jersey.  Those are on my radar. In California  the most common are La Puente, Hacienda Heights,  and City of Industry.

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There are a couple of misconceptions in your post and on this thread.

There are two "locations" in play here:

1. The country in which the seller is registered. 
2. The city/state/country where the item is located.

There is no filter for Location #1. There is no way to filter out locations where the seller is registered.

There is a filter for Location #2; however, apparently there seems to be no way eBay can manage to find out whether sellers are being honest when they enter the location of the item. There are indeed international sellers who warehouse items in the United States or have contractual relationships with United States suppliers or manufacturers who ship items from a U.S. location. How would eBay tell the difference? I mean, literally, how would they tell?

There is a well respected community participant who lives just across the border in Canada, but she has her packages driven across the border and mailed in the United States. She is registered in Canada (Location #1), but her items are all listed as being located in Niagara Falls, New York. She has just short of 5,000 feedback comments, and a 100% feedback rating. Should she be "filtered out," too? 

[pburn]

That's probably an option, but many, many U.S. sellers do not qualify for the Guaranteed Delivery program, either. In all my purchases since the Guaranteed Delivery program was introduced, I've had ONE transaction that qualified for Guaranteed Delivery.

I tried this approach the other day. I got a pretty fair list of items from U.S. sellers that matched my search criteria; however, when I applied the Guaranteed Delivery criteria, my results were zero. None of the original listings qualified.

[eburtonlab]

@pburn 

That's probably an option, but many, many U.S. sellers do not qualify for the Guaranteed Delivery program, either.

That is quite true -- even when using the "4-day" setting it is a fairly harsh filter that works best if you have lots of results to work with, as many domestic sellers will not qualify either, particularly if they are on the other side of the country.

But if you are mainly concerned with weeding out sellers that are far away, it is one quick and dirty method to do that without having to open each seller's profile page. Of course if none of the sellers in your search qualify, you will have to fall back on more subtle techniques.

[pburn]

Not only with a seller being across the country (I'm smack dab in the middle), it's also handling time. A number of sellers have lengthened their handling time because of their participation in Managed Payments or, at this point in time, because of complications due to COVID-19.

I'd hate to miss out on their stuff . . .

[mudshark61369 · Accepted solution]

@willinoisbmx,

  "Please post your comments and thoughts. Perhaps if this has enough support then eBay will provide us another filter."

Ever since about 2012 people have been asking for that filter, and ebay management has not responded.  They made a deal with the devil, hoping to tap into China's buyer market, which has only lead to a huge imbalance, since there is no chinese buyer market except for a few from Hong Kong. Even with the filter ebay helped many china based sellers register businesses in the U.S., so the filter ill not block them or the sellers who drop ship from China.

You can use the U.S. or North America filters to get rid of some of the sellers, but the best way to avoid even more is not to shop using Price: + shipping lowest first.  US based sellers can't sell items for well under the trending price, and ship for free.   Also if a search returns a bunch of results that look exactly the same from different sellers. Those are usually China based sellers, no matter what the item location says.