Clear and honest add practices

[micmoli-1141]

This is a dishonest practice. The home office or point of origin should be clearly labeled in Sale this person has an American flag in the corner of her add and she is based in China EBay has a responsibility to its customers to avoid dishonest representation from its sellers,

[mam98031]

Ebay's rule is that the location stated in the listing MUST be the location the product ships from.  It doesn't matter where the seller has their account set up.  International sellers often have US warehouses they ship from.  And where the product ships from is what matters.

[fashunu4eeuh]

I see where you are coming from. It seems disingenuous to include the American flag on their listings when the items are apparently Chinese made. Although they are not claiming they are made in the USA. They are claiming they ship from the USA. So I did check out the seller's listings, and found no item location misrepresentation. The seller's home base may be China, but their warehouses are here in the States. So that isn't against eBay policy. It is up to the buyer to do his due diligence when shopping. While this seller did not break the rules there, they are breaking policy on a number of other things.

One violation is that they cannot instruct buyers not to leave negative feedback without contacting them first.* In fact, sellers are not supposed to reference feedback in listings at all, though it happens often. (It's considered feedback manipulation.)** Sellers also cannot impose a restocking fee on returns. Restocking fees were forbidden a couple of years back. Then there is all the text in this seller's pictures, which is also against policy.

The bottom line is that eBay does not catch all the violations--there are just too many listings to police. It is possible for anyone to report offenses to eBay, but the outcome of such reporting is not shared with the public or the reporter.  (Every listing has a "report item" link in it, but selecting the correct violations can be confusing in the multiple drop-down boxes.) You just have to decide if it is worth your time and effort. Sorry you were disappointed in this case. The good thing about eBay is that there is always another seller waiting in the wings who can satisfy your expectations.

*https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/feedback-policies/feedback-seller-terms-conditions?id=4229

**https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/feedback-policies/feedback-manipulation-policy?id=4231

[jayjaspersgarage]

I recall that a clothing manufacturer was importing clothes and sewing  "Made In U.S.A."  tags on them.  Maybe they were importing the tags from the United States and sewed them on at the manufacturing location?

Once the shirt was on the shelf at xyz store the shopper would read "Made in U.S.A." and figure they found a diamond in the rough.  Congrats, you just bought a TAG that literally was Made in some sweatshop in New York or Los Angeles.

I think an undercover show infiltrated the overseas sweat shop and exposed the practice.  As far as having an American flag icon on an ebay page I can relate to the OP's concern.  I willingly pay more for products Made in the United States.  If more people did shop for domestic products or at least slowed the pace of buying so much "stuff" from overseas they would have saved our economy over the past 40 years and most likely wouldn't be so dependent on handouts when things got tough. 

[jayjaspersgarage]

Interesting aspect of enforcing policies is that just as in every business how can you trust that those who are entrusted to equally enforce ebay's policies? 

I once worked for a manufacturer that bought a production facility in the United States and less than a year later summarily closed it down and relocated it to Mexico.  But they also opened a warehouse in San Diego for reshipping.  We were all instructed to only talk about the facility in San Diego during sales meetings.  

You can guess how the products were promoted and in many cases labeled.  To avoid the government's 'Made in USA'  fair trade regulations they removed the hardware and fasteners from the individual boxes labeled Made in China and used a bin marked "Made in U.S.A." to transport them into government facilities including schools.  Discovering this was standard operating procedure in a dozen distribution locations was like a spear through my heart.

I devised a plan to leave that job and eventually left after pouring over a decade into it.  Life is too short to help multi-millionaire owners of corporations lie and cheat their way around laws!