Experiences buying from China

[nojusticenopeace]

I was repeatedly warned not to purchase products from China, even though Chinese listings flood every category you care to peruse.  Being stupid and wanting to see for myself, I made a handful of purchases, most of which I ended up regretting.  For example, I purchased a "carved" and "wooden" smoking pipe which was neither carved nor wooden; it was a cheap plastic pipe-like object which no sane person would ever use to smoke from.  I did manage to purchase a couple of genuinely wooden pipes, but the stems have bizarre pinholes no human could actually smoke out of.  And I subsequently discovered with some research that rosewood, from which the pipes are constructed, is considered a sensitizing allergen and irritant; not something you want aerosolized in your mouth, throat, or lungs.  It makes me wonder whether the plastic used for the stems is even food-grade plastic or rubber.  All of them ended up in the trash.

In addition to this, one or more of the Chinese vendors is either NewFrog.com or sold my email address (scooped from my PayPal account info) to NewFrog.com, who have been hammering me almost daily with spam ever since.  And when I filed a complaint to NewFrog and NewFrog's provider, Nigerian prince and **bleep**-enlargement spam began arriving too.  I tried complaining to the spam-friendly mass-mailing outfit NewFrog uses to send their spam and my email was blocked "for containing spam" (ie/ a copy of the spam NewFrog is sending).

In short, I would think long and hard before ever doing business with a Chinese eBay vendor again.  What is everyone else's experience?  Given how many people warned me not to buy from Chinese vendors, I'm thinking my experience must be pretty typical.

[momcqueen]

That sounds painful.

It's been a long time since I bought anything from that corner of the world for the reasons that you cite. It's just not worth the aggravation. Of the dozen times I tried, I recall being pleasantly surprised only once. Otherwsise.....

My email address was sold to a spam email sender after I had a bad experience with an American seller. I take it that it was their version of revenge for having lost a Resolution Centre case. Of course, I have no hard proof they were responsible, only suspicions.

I feel your pain. 

[xenotime]

I buy 80% of my ebay items from China, mostly because of GSP. Never had a problem. Sometimes it takes 4 weeks for my item to arrive, but with FREE shipping I can live with that.

[femmefan1946]

I would think long and hard before ever doing business with a Chinese eBay vendor again. 

There is probably no higher a percentage of sketchey Chinese sellers than there are sketchey American or Canadian sellers.

Or for that matter, buyers.

But there are a LOT of Chinese in the world.

If 1% of the US population was a bad eBay seller, that would be 330,000 bad guys.

If 1% of the Chinese population was a bad eBay seller, that would be 1,700,000 bad guys.

Couple those stats with a nation with no Rule of Law and the high cost of returning unwanted items overseas.

There are some caveats.

If you pay dollar store prices or less, you will get dollar store quality.

If you are unhappy with the item, would you be ready to trash or donate it? Because a refund will be very difficult.

If your item is fine, but doesn't do the job (like clothing which is notoriously cut small by Chinese makers) are you willing to resell or donate it?