Extremely slow shipping from China - eBay isn't being honest about this

[mbeaumont7]

I have been having massive problems buying direct from China since the pandemic hit as shipping has been very, very slow (3+ Months). And nobody seems to want to acknowledge it.

From eBay, I've had two sellers cancel my purchases - one instantly, another after a month. I believe the second had the package returned to her because the Chinese postal system is so broken at the moment it's doing that to the average Chinese person.

On another site that shall not be named, I have had a seller cancel on me, another with shipping taking 3 months, another who had appearntly not even shipped the item for a whole month (I have no idea why), and two whose items have not met the 3 month mark so maybe they'll arrive? Shipping indicates the item has "left china" - but I think this can only be bogus? I think the postal system over there must say "it's left china cos it's in a huge warehouse full of stuff to ship over" when it hasn't actually left. I know Auspost aren't that terrible as items from other countries are still coming in a reasonable time.

One of the eBay sellers sought to mark that I had requested cancellation of the sale - I spoke to eBay support and complained, but said that I didn't like that eBay is not offering sellers in China any way to indicate that the cancellation was due to force majeure rather than their fault. I mean, eBay could say that they should not be offering items to Australia if they can't actually ship them - and they would be right except it's their postal system failing and not the sellers themselves.

(as a side note listings have dwindled a bit in certain catergories and I have noticed that it's become very hard to get consumables over the past few months for phones and prices have surged due to what seems to be lack of supply)

I don't know why eBay cannot be honest about this? this has not been the only group of sellers in force majeure situation lately and those east coast US sellers were really angry at eBay about the lack of honesty on eBay's part regardiing the USPS' problems.

What are others' views?