Reluctant to buy

[jackalgod]

Hey everyone.

First off I would like to apologise if this post is outside the relevance of this part of the forum and I should have posted elsewhere.

I have been looking at few particular items on ebay, from a few different sellers one of which who has been a member for a long time. However the other two sellers have identical background displays for their photos of the items in question as the long time member.

The long time member and the other sellers all have immaculate feedback albeit two of them being only active since 2020.

Is this a red flag as a buyer? Is this how sells

[padi*0409]

As a buyer your best actions are to look at the seller's feedback (that will show you where they are resistered as well as showing any neutrals or negs). If a seller has less than 99.5% feedback and is a high-volume seller be wary of them.

Seller registered in China particularly will say in their listing the item is in Australia, whilst in some cases that's true, most do not carry full stock here and will dropship from China.

[kopenhagen5]

The Chinese often have many individuals set up eBay accounts for the same products and supply the sellers with the photo's and descriptions. Hence exact same listings for different sellers.

I try to buy local products even if much dearer, cheap is not the best, often rubbish that I wish I hadn't bought.

[countessalmirena]

Can you post the exact title of the items?

That will help the responders here to take a look. It may be that there's nothing amiss (although I'll admit that padi and kopenhagen have probably hit the nail on the head).

[springyzone]

What countess said.

I know you probably didn't feel like telling the world exactly what you were looking at but in this case, a link to the listing would help.

It depends so much on what you are after.

If you are looking for something special, a particular brand or so on, beware of Chinese sellers as you're not likely to get the authentic product. Their photos may be identical but what you see won't be what you get. They sometimes copy photos off the authentic sites.

Buy local if you can ie from Australia.

On the other hand, if you are looking at a small item, sometimes several sellers will have the same ads for a product without it being suss.

If I were you, I'd steer clear of 'new' sellers, especially if you're looking to buy a dearer item and by that, I mean anything over, say, $100.

That is, unless you were able to pick it up in person and pay cash then. Or if they are in Australia.

But the red flags for me would be new seller, located overseas, selling an expensive item and very little or no feedback.

They may be okay but as a newish buyer, you don't want to risk it. If you buy something from Australia and anything goes wrong, it is easier to a fix from ebay with regard to refund/return postage paid by seller etc