@ctradeaustralia wrote:
surely Ebay must care about these concerns..
They would care if they could monetise the solution, just like all the other problems they found a way to "address" in a manner that increased profits. (I use the term loosely because their solutions don't generally punish or even discourage the bad practices, as much as they just stop overtly encouraging them, like the final value fee being introduced on postage).
The problem is also (apparently) a bureaucratic one - the listings are on eBay AU, which eBay AU controls, but the sellers are in China, and only eBay CN has jurisdiction over them. Or so ebay will claim if you ask why they don't do anything about it. (This answer has never made any sense to me whatsoever, for a multitude of reasons, not least of which sellers who list on another country's site agree to comply with that site's policies and even if ebay AU can't sanction eBay CN sellers, they sure has heck can end non-compliant listings).
The thing is, they can't introduce a system whereby seller location and item location has to match, unless they disallow dropshipping, because they aren't the same thing and there are just as many sellers listing correctly as there are sellers who aren't... Such a system could be easily circumvented, anyway.
The only policy that's been introduced that has a chance of hitting sellers who misrepresent item location in the hip pocket is the clause in the MBG that states if the return address for an item is not in the same location as was noted in the listing, the buyer may not have to return it, but this doesn't seem to be the default result in claims, or if it is, it doesn't occur often enough to make the sellers reconsider the practice.
