@sporthoflo wrote:
Hi Springyzone,
Per my previous comment, an individual experience does not negate the experience of others. A cursory seach on Google will reveal that my experience is not unique. That said, I would be slow to point the finger at AusPost solely. It may be the postal service overseas itself, the various intermediaries that a parcel passes through, and/or the interaction between a foreign postal service and Auspost when it lands on our shores.
Re "I've bought from China occasionally too and obviously things take a bit longer but again, nothing has ever failed to arrive."
Per above, an individual experience cannot be extrapolated and imposed on that of others. Obviously by the pure logic of probabilities, the greater number the transactions, the greater chance of things going wrong. That said, the point I was making is that the reliability seemed to have degraded over the last two decades.
You are right in that the experience of others does not mean that another person's experience is invalid or that it should be discounted. But you made the comment at the outset along the lines of 'either the post offices in Aust & China are really bad or there are a lot of dodgy sellers on ebay'.
I think in that context, statistics do count and can help to narrow the field as to the most likely area. The reality is that while no experience is invalid, some may be atypical. What we need to determine here is if the fault is likely to be mainly with Aust Post, mainly with the Chinese postal service, mainly with the ebay seller or a combination of a couple of factors.
It could be any of those places, it is just I suspect it is less likely to be Aust Post, although obviously that won't be true for every individual experience.
I've been hanging around these boards for a few years now and although Aust Post isn't perfect and gets a share of the criticism, I would say the majority of complaints about very long delivery times, items failing to arrive, buyers being urged to wait longer (often till the window to open an ebay claim has closed) are about overseas purchases and usually from Chinese sellers.
So on the balance of probablity, that's where your problem will be too, although for sure, it could be the wrong call in some individual cases.
I do not disagree. Which is why I ask in my original post where the problem lies. The hypothesis of an increase number of fraudulent tactics was one offered by AusPost itself.
They would be in a good position to know.
From memory it was listed as 1 or 2 weeks delivery, which would be consistent with the view of a purely local endeavour in Covid times. I didn't file a dispute as the item eventually did arrive, and worked with a simple AU adapter.
Yes, a 2 week time frame would indicate a location in Australia to me too. I think you are very forgiving to have accepted the item without filing a dispute. I am afraid I would have been livid as I don't believe that if you buy an item supposedly in Australia, that you should have to provide an adapter. And I am like Countess in that I would worry about the safety of the item. When you buy something in Australia, you expect it will be built to certain safety standards. Sometimes we are let down, I know, but buyers have the right to expect that if an item is advertised on ebay as located in Australia, it WILL be located here.
And yes, going on the posts here by quite a lot of buyers, there are a few dodgy sellers who misrepresent item location etc. I doubt ebay will do too much about them, especially the China based ones. The only thing we can do to look after our own interests as buyers is to not allow any seller to give us too much of a run around or to delay us so long that we can't make a claim or give feedback.
