Sri Lanka Madison Reed Sellers

[lasvegaslady]

I have noticed quite a few sellers from Sri Lanka drop shipping Madison Reed products from Fort Worth Texas warehouse.  How is this possible?  I know for a fact Madison Reed doesn't sell this way.  So how do Sri Lanka sellers get items shipped directly from the warehouse?

[reallynicestamps]

Dropshipping.

The manufacturer is in China.

The manufacturer may have some facility in Texas, but probably a PO box.

The products are counterfeit.

They are shipped, one by one, from China-- which can be remarkably fast and which uses cheap subsidized China Post rates not the higher USPS rates.

You might have some success in getting them removed by telling Madison Reed about the sale of counterfeits and telling them about eBay's VeRO program.

MR has more skin in the game than you do and would have much more clout with eBay.

The SriLankan sellers have been suckered in all this. There is some sort of scam going on there which has apparently convinced hundreds of young men that selling on eBay is an easy path to vast riches. All use Chinese dropshippers as suppliers.

[itsjustasprain]

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

The Sri Lankan sellers have been suckered in all this. There is some sort of scam going on there which has apparently convinced hundreds of young men that selling on eBay is an easy path to vast riches. All use Chinese dropshippers as suppliers.

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I swear the Sri Lankan sellers seem to be lining up for one scam after another. 

First there was some sort of "training" program that they were apparently all signing up for - and presumably paying for - then they would all come here and ask us what they should be selling.

Then there was some recent scam in which they were supposedly going to get paid for posting comments to the Community groups here. We had a series of weird one-off posts - some simply copy-and-paste AI-like responses from the Help pages.

Now it seems like someone is setting them up for failure by dropshipping junk from China.

What seems really weird is that it is ALWAYS Sri Lanka sellers getting victimized here. I never even thought about Sri Lanka before getting into the Community Selling group here some years back. Why do we not see the same amount of clueless postings from any other countries in that part of the world?

[chapeau-noir]

FWIW, Madison Reed products are made in Italy, not China.

[fbusoni]

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@itsjustasprain wrote:

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

The Sri Lankan sellers have been suckered in all this. There is some sort of scam going on there which has apparently convinced hundreds of young men that selling on eBay is an easy path to vast riches. All use Chinese dropshippers as suppliers.

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I swear the Sri Lankan sellers seem to be lining up for one scam after another. 

What seems really weird is that it is ALWAYS Sri Lanka sellers getting victimized here. I never even thought about Sri Lanka before getting into the Community Selling group here some years back. Why do we not see the same amount of clueless postings from any other countries in that part of the world?

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The Chinese put hundreds, if not thousands, of people on the ground in places like Sri Lanka.   These Chinese "representatives" do all sorts of things, including setting up shop in the country, often in a classroom like setting, teaching locals how to make money online.   

Think of what Beijing is doing as a grotesque perversion of the Peace Corps, for lack of a better analogy. 

[reallynicestamps]

@ chapeau-noir

Madison Reed may be, but what is being shipped is Chinese counterfeit product.

Or possibly Vietnamese counterfeits, because the Chinese makers don't have to pay the Vietnamese workers as much.

[e2cosmetic]

You are the only one who listened to my concern.  Yes Madison Reed products are made in Italy.  I have bought Madison Reed products on ebay from
Sri Lanka.  The products I received are shipped from the Madison Reed Fort Worth Texas warehouse.  The products are authentic as I have purchased from the Madison Reed website.  I am asking how this is possible since Madison Reed does not sell to drop shippers.  Stealing?  An inside job at the warehouse?  Also there is one USA seller selling Madison Reed.  Not from her address.  The products come from the same location in Texas.

[chapeau-noir]

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@e2cosmetic wrote:

You are the only one who listened to my concern.  Yes Madison Reed products are made in Italy.  I have bought Madison Reed products on ebay from
Sri Lanka.  The products I received are shipped from the Madison Reed Fort Worth Texas warehouse.  The products are authentic as I have purchased from the Madison Reed website.  I am asking how this is possible since Madison Reed does not sell to drop shippers.  Stealing?  An inside job at the warehouse?  Also there is one USA seller selling Madison Reed.  Not from her address.  The products come from the same location in Texas.

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@reallynicestamps  has a good point, though - some counterfeits are pretty good.

If it were me, I'd be contacting Madison Reed itself. 

ETA: And yeah, theft.

[a_c_green]

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@e2cosmetic wrote:

I have bought Madison Reed products on ebay from Sri Lanka.  The products I received are shipped from the Madison Reed Fort Worth Texas warehouse.  The products are authentic as I have purchased from the Madison Reed website.  I am asking how this is possible since Madison Reed does not sell to drop shippers.  Stealing?  An inside job at the warehouse?

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Madison Reed doesn't need to offer drop shipping arrangements. All a Sri Lankan seller needs to do, when he gets a sale of one of their products, is to turn around and buy it from Madison Reed, then have it sent to his buyer's address. It's standard practice when purchasing on-line that you can have the item sent somewhere else.

[fashunu4eeuh]

@e2cosmetic @lasvegaslady 

The way the Sri Lankan sellers are doing this is by violating eBay policy. They are listing goods at an inflated price that they do not physically have. When one sells, they then order one directly from Madison Reed and have them ship it to the buyer. (The seller will usually have it sent as a gift to avoid discovery and prevent any documents appearing with the shipment.) It’s called retail arbitrage. eBay policy regarding drop-shipping specifically disavows this practice. Traditional drop-shipping is allowed. Retail arbitrage is not. 

[lasvegaslady]

The items I ordered came directly from a authentic Madison Reed warehouse.  I was asking how is this possible.  Madison Reed only sells on their website.  And authorized retails stores like Ulta, Walmart, Sally's etc.  The ebay sellers are selling Madison Reed at a reduced cost, less than half the regular cost.  And the products are legit shipped from a authentic Madison Reed warehouse.  I have purchased from the Madison Reed website and ebay.  Both have the same packaging, return address etc.

[fbusoni]

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@lasvegaslady wrote:

The items I ordered came directly from a authentic Madison Reed warehouse.  I was asking how is this possible.  Madison Reed only sells on their website.  And authorized retails stores like Ulta, Walmart, Sally's etc.  The ebay sellers are selling Madison Reed at a reduced cost, less than half the regular cost.  And the products are legit shipped from a authentic Madison Reed warehouse.  I have purchased from the Madison Reed website and ebay.  Both have the same packaging, return address etc.

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How were able to determine this? 

Did you look up the street address on Google maps and see a building that said "Madison Reed Warehouse"?  

The warehouse could be a 6" square mail box at a USPS store.

Packaging, labels, invoices can all be forged and made to look authentic.  Not merely the product itself.

And all this activity is sponsored by our good friends in Beijing to help undermine confidence in US manufacturers.

[golfingaddict]

Buyers could stop these drop shippers or counterfeiters if they would stop buying these low priced fakes.

It's the age old "if it is too good to be true"

They do it because people keep buying from them.  

[buybuy42]

When you try to save a little money, you will become burdened by the fact you purchased a fake.

[a_c_green]

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@fbusoni wrote:

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@lasvegaslady wrote:

The items I ordered came directly from a authentic Madison Reed warehouse.  I was asking how is this possible.  Madison Reed only sells on their website.  And authorized retails stores like Ulta, Walmart, Sally's etc.  The ebay sellers are selling Madison Reed at a reduced cost, less than half the regular cost.  And the products are legit shipped from a authentic Madison Reed warehouse.  I have purchased from the Madison Reed website and ebay.  Both have the same packaging, return address etc.

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How were [you] able to determine this? 

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Because, as she stated in a sentence above that is not highlighted, purchasing directly from Madison Reed's own website yielded the same product in the same packaging. (Although it was not stated, I would expect that tracking will show that the eBay purchase was actually shipped from the MR address.)

The most likely explanation here is that the Sri Lankan sellers were simply listing the MR products at higher prices, then ordering the products from MR, shipped directly to their buyers, and pocketing the difference, standard retail arbitrage.