topic Re: Item/seller Location exploitation in Selling

Item/seller Location exploitation

bigdannoz — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 11:45:43 GMT

Never posted here before and a Google search revealed this has been going on for years and is getting possessively worse.

You have to understand the frustration here as a buyer.

Every time I look for an item I have to sift through hundreds of Chinese sellers, even after setting my search filter to Australia Only.

The item location says Australia and then you go to their store and they have 1000 items all located in HK. You can purchase an item thinking it's in the country then it takes 4 weeks to arrive which is not good enough.

I don't give a rats where my item is manufactured, I would rather pay more locally than wait 4 weeks to get my item that has been posted from overseas, after thinking I've purchased from an Aussie seller that actually has products IN AUSTRALIA.

I'm going to start shopping locally, I'll give it a month then check back but I wont be spending any more money on this site until I see some action being taken against these sellers who are clearly fooling the system, and the administrators.

Basically: Stop Chinese sellers from pretending they're in Australia.

Re: Item/seller Location exploitation

kopenhagen5 — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 12:11:24 GMT

eBay don't read here.

Try using a little trick we use.

Search by klms from your postcode and if you are on the East coast, just enter around 1500 klms.

Re: Item/seller Location exploitation

*tippy*toes* — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 13:59:42 GMT

Refining your search to Australia only doesn't just show Australian sellers. It's worded poorly. What it means is, it only shows sellers who post within or to Australia and nowhere else. If a Chinese seller only posts to Australia and no other countries in the world, their listings will show under Australia only. If that same seller only sells to the UK, it will show up in the local listings in the UK, but won't show in our listings.

The way the Chinese and other sellers get around that setting is having multiples of items and then listing one on each site so it shows up in all refinded searches. On the other hand, if a seller is in Australia and so are their items, if they ship worldwide, their listings won't show in Australia only.

Re: Item/seller Location exploitation

clarry100 — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 19:54:14 GMT

I so wish that ebay would read these forums sometimes.

In our particular category this is our single biggest obstacle to selling.

The flood of Chinese sellers and the mis-representation of location.

Money must be leaving this country by the truckload and that can't be good for the economy.

I even put a case together for our local federal member and he seemed very interested in our situation and was looking into it.

Then the election came and he got voted out of office and has since been in trouble for visiting an active war zone (know who I mean now).

The incoming labour candidate seems to have a distinct lack of interest in it.

Re: Item/seller Location exploitation

*sparklz* — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 00:13:11 GMT

Report the seller to ebay for item location misrepresentation

Look through the feedback for the seller and if there is lots there saying item is from OS then put that in the report as well.

If enough report them they should take action, if no reports are done they do not look

Re: Item/seller Location exploitation

clarry100 — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 00:22:25 GMT

@*sparklz* wrote:
Report the seller to ebay for item location misrepresentation
Look through the feedback for the seller and if there is lots there saying item is from OS then put that in the report as well.
If enough report them they should take action, if no reports are done they do not look

The problem with reporting sellers (read members), who are located overseas, to ebay.AU is that ebay.AU cannot take punitive action against any member not located under their jurisdiction. All they can do is to forward the report to the country where the member is registered. And ebay.CN will of course do nothing which is why when you raise reports against these sellers nothing ever happens.

The source of this info is from Tim Davies at PESA last year when I asked him about exactly this. Tim is an ex-ebay.AU senior manager.

Ebay need to clean up their own internal policies to close this gap. And until they do then its a waste of time raising the report at all.

So we are all better off registering in China but selling on the AU site and we will be immune to everything as indeed they are.

Re: Item/seller Location exploitation

bigdonut — Sun, 16 Oct 2016 01:20:09 GMT

This has been happening for years.

I started reporting them (Chinese), the more people report the soonier they might do something about it.

KLM Search is useless because they are say they are in Sydney, Darwin, Melbourne and I even seen one the other day at Broome.

Look at the item, Half way down the listing, Right Hand Side there is a Report Button, (Under Ad) Click it and Report Category : Listing Practices, Then Reason for report: Other Listing Practises, Then Detailed Listing: Item location misrepresentation.

The More People that do it the better chance something will get done.

If you message ebay they will say that they are warehousing in these cities (Which most are Not) Some are if they have Woolworths pickup but 99% are in Hong Kong and China.

Not only does it have an effect on our business but buyers are getting ........ (Not Happy)

Not only is it coming from overseas but ebay give them up to 30 days or more to deliver the item and what do they give us before we get a defect...

The other issue is Drop downs, when you search an item and it comes up for $1 when infact the battery that runs it is $1 but the item in the search is actually $10... Thus they get first up on the search by price.

If saying you are in Australia (Seller) then you should be liable for all the Consumer laws and paying GST as we are.

Chinese sellers get away with Blue Murder with 20 user names selling the same thing for 1c difference.

If ebay checked they would see that the payment goes back to the same Paypal Account, all they would need to do is cross reference the paypal account to stop it.

And yes my sales have also fallen off a cliff in the past 2 Weeks from 20-30 a day to 1 or 2 sales a day

Ok I have had my 2c Worth

Re: Item/seller Location exploitation

lyndal1838 — Sun, 16 Oct 2016 03:50:27 GMT

@australia-1 wrote:

If saying you are in Australia (Seller) then you should be liable for all the Consumer laws and paying GST as we are.

Chinese sellers get away with Blue Murder with 20 user names selling the same thing for 1c difference.

If ebay checked they would see that the payment goes back to the same Paypal Account, all they would need to do is cross reference the paypal account to stop it.

How do you know they are not following our consumer laws? Or paying GST? Depending on turnover, not all ebay sellers are liable for GST.

If a seller has 20 accounts as you seem to think, they cannot all be using the same paypal account.....only 8 email addresses can be attached to the same paypal account.

And there is nothing illegal about having more than one selling ID.

Re: Item/seller Location exploitation

beakychew — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 09:53:11 GMT

I realise this is an old topic, but I was about to post a similar rant.

Both as a buyer and a seller, I'm sick of this practice.

Many (most) of the sellers are also drop-shippers. They are "middle-folk". They take your order and send it on to the supplier for fulfillment. They have no knowledge of stock levels. They can't manage preferences (such as special packing) or enquiries. They only know as much as the stockist tells them. That's why their communication is lousy, and items often don't arrive at all. The sellers keep going, offer refunds when things don't arrive, and when they get too much -ve feedback, start again under a new Ebay account.

Interestingly, in some cases, shipping via these sellers *is* fast. Fast shipping from China to Aus is is relatively cheap. In these cases, the itemcost on Ebay (incl postage) will be more expensive than those where the item location is listed as China (HK, etc), and quoted delivery time is long. But the Ebay price is often cheaper than an Aus seller can offer and would not be enough to cover costs, incl Aus Post postage costs if they really were in Aus. However these sellers work on volume, (very high volume, and the discounts that go with that) as opposed to high (or even moderate) profit margins.

Here's the rub: Australia Post still handles the Aus end of the delivery. They sticker over the original mailing label (since they need the new label for delivery purposes). *But*--and this is one way to tell the item is not shipped from within Aus--there is no tracking number sent by the original seller. And Aus Post is fairly expensive, but guess who subsidises the domestic part of the shipping (via Australia Post) for items that come from overseas? Aus taxpayers 🙂

Apart from the dishonesty, and the fact that profits leave Australia, we are also paying a large part of the postage for sellers based overseas and shipping here. So Australia loses on that too.

(And finally, Ebay pays almost no tax on their fees, so Ebay purchases of from overseas sellers are a lose-lose-lose for the Aus economy).

Something Ebay.com.au *could* do about it, would be to offer a filter for "Seller located in Australia" (as well as Item). That would allow separation of the sheep from the goats.

Re: Item/seller Location exploitation

zulu_99 — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 22:13:19 GMT

Will this not change in July when the $1000 GST free limit on imports is removed? Surely a message saying import duty will be added to the price will make people realise they are ordering from China??

Re: Item/seller Location exploitation

beakychew — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 01:28:05 GMT

The extended GST collection wn't start until at least 1st July 2018.

The Senate Economics Legislation Committee Report supported the bill but recommended futher consideration and consultation and a delayed start date.

Re: Item/seller Location exploitation

zulu_99 — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 02:24:39 GMT

Oh, I didn't know that. The ATO website is still stating that the change will take place on 1/7/2017

https://www.ato.gov.au/general/new-legislation/in-detail/indirect-taxes/gst/gst-on-low-value-imported-goods/

Re: Item/seller Location exploitation

beakychew — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 02:45:59 GMT

Ah, legalese.

The bill (GST on low proced imported goods) was introduced to parliament with a proposed introduction date of 1/7/17.

The bill wasn't passed by parliament and was instead referred to a specific senate committee for investigation. On May 7th the committee presented their report, recommending further consultation with stakeholders and a delayed start date.

Nothing further has been discussed in parliament that I know of. The bill wasn't passed in its original form, which means it's not yet part of Aus legislation.

The page you refer to was last updated 06 Apr 2017 while the bill was being considered by the senate committee.

Re: Item/seller Location exploitation

beakychew — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 02:55:48 GMT

@zulu_99 wrote:
Will this not change in July when the $1000 GST free limit on imports is removed? Surely a message saying import duty will be added to the price will make people realise they are ordering from China??

I imagine it would be based on where the goods are coming from rather than where the seller is based.

I'm not sure on whom the onus would be to prove that the goods are already in Aus and have already been subject to GST. If they go for a Vendor Collection model (which seems favoured bby most atm), that would be Ebay's responsibility. They would hate having to do that! Either Ebay wouldn't bother to check and would allow listings with fraudulent locations to continue (indeed, those listings would expand greatly), or they would increase their fees to cover the extra work.

Re: Item/seller Location exploitation

mblocka — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 13:52:10 GMT

Give the seller bad feed back really stick it to them they hate it

Re: Item/seller Location exploitation

lyndal1838 — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 15:39:41 GMT

It is nearly 2 years since this thread was started.....way to late to leave feedback now.

Please look at the posting dates on threads before jumping in.