@woodduck*2012,
The seller to whom you're referring has some of their stock listed as being in Sydney Australia, and some in China. This is a high-volume seller with bad feedback score (96.7%). The following feedback gives a bit of a hint about item location misrepresentation:
Item has a hole. Ordered 5XL but it wont fit my 7year old. Not shipped from Aus Buyer: s***- (72
)
Misleading ad. NOT AUS STOCK. Seller proceeded to pretend he had no idea Buyer: 0***0 (12
)
Arrived late. Package came from China instead of Sydney which was listed as the Buyer: s***w (107
)
HK not Sydney not sent goin refunded not in stock but you still selling on eBay Buyer:f***l (18)
Products are NOT from sydney. Took 3 weeks to arrive. Blamed Aust Post. Lies. Buyer: a***m ( 114)
Not Australian stock. Chinese writing all over packaging. No tracking. Buyer: a***b (151)
Liars. Not aus stock. Marked it as sent. Never sent it. Never told me. Chinese. Buyer: s***a (1082
)
Wasn't based in Aus at all. Then lied the package was lost in mail Buyer: o***r (203)
Misleading Seller. Stock obviously not in AU, but items list as if in Sydney Buyer: o***a (1759)
(The items to which these feedback comments refer are stated in the listings as being in either Chullora or Sydney.)
I've ONLY listed some of the recent feedback comments relating to item location. There are many worse feedback comments in relation to the quality, items not being received at all, items being fake, items being wrong size, etc. I would not purchase a spent match from this seller.
Unfortunately, you cannot trust eBay's Best Match results. You will do better to sort on the basis of price, distance, or time. Forget Best Match. It doesn't give you the the best result for your search terms.
Secondly, always check the negative feedback. By clicking onto the clickable score under Feedback Ratings (select Negative over 12 months), you can see if there's a pattern to the negatives. If there's even a suggestion that the item location is incorrect, ask yourself whether or not you can trust a seller who lies about item location.
You can report sellers like this to eBay for item location misrepresentation, but as this is a Chinese seller, registered on eBay.cn, I think you already have a good idea of what will happen to the seller. Very little. It's not the fault of the eBay members here; all of us are frustrated by this. Look, I'll even go so far as to say eBay.com.au is not 100% happy about the situation either, but eBay Australia simply don't have the authority or legal power to do anything with these sorts of sellers, or to enforce any eBay policy on them. eBay.cn will not take the action that we as Australian consumers would expect to occur if the sellers in question were in Australia. (Chinese consumer law is completely different to Australian consumer law.)
So... the best action you can take is to avoid purchasing from Chinese eBay sellers for the most part, and to spread the word among other Australian buyers. It won't work as a grass roots protest movement, because unfortunately there are too many human beings who will always always ALWAYS go for the cheapest option and ignore all warning signs of their purchases contributing to long-term negative effects for Australian buyers and sellers - but who knows? Perhaps human nature or your persuasiveness among others will surprise me.
