chinese seller spam

[ale_broz]

Look this is just getting ridiculous essentially I've got Chinese sellers all specifying drop shipping locations related to Amazon when they're actually in China essentially they just creating dozens of accounts and lying about the location now I'd be fine if it was like one or two but it's like 20 plus and there's essentially just abusing the promotional algorithm and getting top three listing spots by like having 20 accounts and having like five percent promotion five percent times 20 is like still 100% of the time there at the top of the listing

I contacted eBay about this they didn't do anything now I've contacted the ACC it's basically just unfair business practices and eBay not being willing to enforce its own policy eBay needs to either get the employees required to do this which are pretty sure they're actually cutting back based on the customer service and I'm getting they need to list the actual sellers Origin location item location and buyer location on the listing and instead of having sort by a seller location not item location

this needs to have the seller's location as well as the item's location this would fix 100% of the issues  

Ideally given the billions of dollars of business eBay does with Auspost they could probably ask us Post to enforce a system for them to recognize forwarded mail from China

[sandypebbles]

What is your question for other members?

The regulars here are well aware of these tricks used by such sellers

The ads are very very obvious what these sellers are doing

Buyers continue to make the choice to support these sellers and their behaviour 

eBay are not going to do anything about sellers in China

The ACCC are not going to get involved  with sellers from China

eBay staff are not reading here, and would not do anything even if they did

[countessalmirena]

The solution is certain to be buyer behaviour because, as sandy has said, eBay will not be making buyer location a visible specification on the listing.

I do the following:

1) filter out unrealistically low prices for the items for which I’m looking

(This removes many of the Chinese listings in my search.)

2) ignore any listings where the gallery image shows an Australian flag or has the word AUSTRALIA emblazoned upon it.

3) click onto seller’s feedback score (check those negative comments) and click again to see country of registration.

Finally, I just don’t buy some things on eBay / or at least, not from eBay sellers who are authorised Australian sellers of the items with warranty etc.

[domino-710]

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@countessalmirena wrote:

Finally, I just don’t buy some things on eBay / or at least, not from eBay sellers who are authorised Australian sellers of the items with warranty etc.

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Have to question this one Countess. ??

[countessalmirena]

Ah, … er… slip of the finger. It should have course be… only from eBay sellers who are etc., or not from eBay sellers who aren’t etc.

[*casey*]

"when they're actually in China essentially they just creating dozens of accounts and lying about the location now I'd be fine if it was like one or two but it's like 20 plus and there's essentially just abusing the promotional algorithm and getting top three listing spots by like having 20 accounts and having like five percent promotion five percent times 20 is like still 100% of the time there at the top of the listing"

I absolutely agree with you and  really do feel sorry for sellers like yourself

whose listings may  show underneath  all these lying Chinese sellers.

Even  ticking 'Australia only'  still shows the shonky Chinese sellers to be dropshipping in various parts of

Australia  and as you say,  they just keep creating dozens of new accounts.

And my pet hate,  even when their feedback's bad,  they're still promoted as

"Top Rated seller:

One of eBay's most reputable sellers.

Consistently delivers outstanding customer service"

These days, there's not many sellers who post on the boards whose listings are competing with Chinese sellers.

Experienced buyers  know exactly  how to search and eliminate  the listings from all these lying sellers 

but many new buyers don't.

A couple of bad experiences with Chinese sellers means they'll often  not return to eBay   which in turn, hurts ALL  sellers

[giftsnbargainsoz]

I am so sick of ebay promoting all these chinese sellers who sell fake items from China and also cheat the system by showing their location as in Australia. It ios very obvious they are not in Australia because you can see in their description it says things like " We only post items to Australia" and things like the shipping can take 5 - 10 days or more etc, which reveals their real location is outside Australia. When I report these criminals to ebay I get an automated message such as this :

"We looked into your report and didn’t find the listing to be in violation of our policy. This determination was made using automation or artificial intelligence"

What a scam!!! They didn't even bother to check it and used an AI which cannot determine the truth for heavens sakes, absolutely terrible service, screwing genuine sellers over such scam artists. As a seller I don't thing ebay has much of integrity and am extremely dissapointed. Amazon has a lot more integrity but their customer service is slow and more complex to use. Really need to start selling on my own website and not use these platforms much as they are getting worse day by day.

[giftsnbargainsoz]

hi Sadly Because of these idiot chinese rip-off sellers sometimes we Australian sellers are so disadvantaged due to their riducolous low prices (selling fakes of course but stealing the images of the licensed products illegally) that we put the word Australia in our listing to weed out these criminals. How else are we to assure the customer that we are actually in Australia? I don't always do this but there are a few instances when I have done this. Not that it works, they always win with their dirty games. Ebay doesn't care about the location and their browser manipulation, all they care is the sales! All my reports are in vain as they use AI to look at these reports and it always comes back promptly with an automated reponse such as this: "We looked into your report and didn’t find the listing to be in violation of our policy. This determination was made using automation or artificial intelligence". Sucks.

[sandypebbles]

Checking the seller's feedback reveals they are outside Australia

But yes, stupidly long estimated delivery date range is also a giveaway

And, yes, humans rarely review it

Even if they did, eBay rules 'allow' the seller to say the item is located wherever they want

Neither human nor bot is going to 'know' if sellers registered overseas have a warehouse here to ship from or not

Every buyer could very easily check who they are buying from, and make the choice not to support scammer sellers

This is 'too hard' to do and these buyers simply do not care about who they are supporting

All the information anyone could ever need to make good buying choices is *right there* in front of the buyers eyes

So scammer sellers keep on being supported 

[springyzone]

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@*casey* wrote:

Even  ticking 'Australia only'  still shows the shonky Chinese sellers to be dropshipping in various parts of

Australia  and as you say,  they just keep creating dozens of new accounts.

And my pet hate,  even when their feedback's bad,  they're still promoted as

"Top Rated seller:

One of eBay's most reputable sellers.

Consistently delivers outstanding customer service"

These days, there's not many sellers who post on the boards whose listings are competing with Chinese sellers.

Experienced buyers  know exactly  how to search and eliminate  the listings from all these lying sellers 

but many new buyers don't.

A couple of bad experiences with Chinese sellers means they'll often  not return to eBay   which in turn, hurts ALL  sellers

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My pet hate too!

Many of the new people coming onto ebay just concentrate on the items in the ads, which is more and more what ebay is aiming for.

The layout of ads means the seller details, the feedback ratings, they are all still there but a customer has to work for them more than in previous times. Many newbies aren't even aware they are there or just how much is there.

To make matters worse, many Chinese sellers are passing off their goods to appear to be in Australia (and maybe some are,  but some aren't) but buyers often assume the seller is located in the same place.

I can't see ebay changing though unless it legally has to. They want the Chinese business.