I have let it go many times, particularly when I thought I was helping a small home business during lockdown. Lately, its appearing much more common, probably due to my increasing purchase of home office and hardware items and for those items, the rise of drop shipping, sellers clearly lying about item locations and Ebay's tolerance of it .
I frequently buy items disclosed as located in China and that's fine, since I can base my purchasing decision and price on real information.
In recent months, in relation to alleged local items, I've come to realise the extent of seller dishonesty about item locations and delivery delays, e.g. item disclosed as located in Sydney or Melbourne, doesn't arrive after 3 - 4 weeks, you enquire with seller, Ebay postpones estimated delivery date (presumably because of something the seller did) and you get an answer from the seller like:
Covid related delays. Please be patient.
or
Your item is in a sortation facility. Please be patient.
or
Please ask the Fastway (sic) to check it for you.
or (my favourite for an alleged local item)
The delivery of the order may get procrastinated due to the arrangement and process from the local authorities.
or (close second)
Inbound international deliveries in Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia may be delayed due to a covid – 19 disruption at our Melbourne Gateway facility. Would you mind waiting for it?
You look at the tracking information and see an entry from about the date of your purchase like "Your shipping information has been submitted" or "your item is in a sortation facility" and nothing further for weeks. That item's on its way from China, right?
In the meantime, I've had Chinese items (Ebay and non Ebay) and US Amazon items arrive in 10 days and interstate Amazon items arrive next morning after an evening purchase. The delayed items are mostly things I could buy same day at Bunnings or Officeworks. I want to support small local business and it would be nice if Ebay fixed the problem, but otherwise, what do you think I'm going to do?
