Feedback to ebay developers: Item location incorrectly indicated - can you help buyers?

[bekesi.l]

I am using ebay since 14 years but considering leaving.

I live in EU and use ebay for private purposes (and also using Am* and Al* so have some comparison basis).

I always filter the search results by location to see only the EU located items.

But now I have increasing number of cases where I am running into sellers (even with big selling numbers) who indicate their item to be sent from within EU, but ultimately it is sent from China, which takes ages and I do not like to wait for those items who I need. Actually with the filters I am trying to avoid this, but sellers got around...

Can ebay do something to prevent these cases to happen in this increasing number? It is impossible currently avoid these to happen, we have no tools for this as buyers, and we consider other marketplaces to buy from where you can do this.

My suggested solution: Can you indicate at the seller name in the item’s listing what is the IP number (or the country) where the item has actually been listed from? Or indicate that there was a VPN used? This would tremendously help us buyers to avoid these to happen.

And this would tremendously help ebay to lose market share.

[eburtonlab · Accepted solution]

@bekesi.l 

Can you indicate at the seller name in the item’s listing what is the IP number (or the country) where the item has actually been listed from? Or indicate that there was a VPN used? This would tremendously help us buyers to avoid these to happen.

eBay is unlikely to provide the IP address of sellers, or identify VPN users, in my opinion.

Even if eBay chose to do so, that would not help in situations where domestic sellers use drop shippers to fulfill orders, or in the case of foreign sellers who use a domestic account to list their items.

You may be better of relying on some of the other information that is already at your disposal.

Before ordering you should check the estimated delivery dates -- that is a good indication of where items actually ship from (or at least from how far away). 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 another country, particularly for multiple quantity commodity items. Checking seller feedback in detail will often reveal if there are problems with long shipping times, canceled orders or other supply chain warning signs. Those might be indications of a drop-shipper, or else just a poor seller who should be avoided regardless of location.

In the US, when faced with a long list of search results that I want to narrow down to sellers that can ship quickly, using the "Guaranteed Delivery" filter will often help; very few sellers that ship from overseas qualify. I am not sure if there is a similar option available in the EU, however.