eBay

gdw9042 · ‎05-01-2013

== I M P O R T A N T ==

When shopping on eBay:

ALWAYS BUY FROM CHINA, unless China doesn't have the item you want.

Buying only from China, I have saved: $9,876,422,531.00 - just in shipping charges in the last year.

If north america can't get their act together, then we have to show them, that we're not idiots - we won't pay $19.99 for an audio adapter cable, then pay $21.50 to ship it a measily 100 miles.

Let's all get together, so that, domestic item-prices, and shipping-rates will eventually go down.

Plus, the stuff from China is 95% great quality!

[ If ebay was "in tune" with its members, it would be an awesome website! ]

zhongjai · ‎04-04-2015

Yes, I buy a lot of things from Dollarama and most of the stuff are made in China and cost less than the same items bought in Canadian Tire which are also made in China. L.O.L.

mater721 · ‎04-07-2015

"Yes, I buy a lot of things from Dollarama and most of the stuff are made in China and cost less than the same items bought in Canadian Tire which are also made in China. L.O.L."

In most cases you get what you pay for - value-wise. If it costs very little, the quality will not be high.

At least with Cdn Tire you can return for refund if it does not work. Good luck making a return to China.

travelled1 · ‎05-03-2015

Well I for one am GETTING FED UP with ebay - China purchases.

I placed two orders and they did not arrive in the time stated and not even in the extra two weeks I allowed after contacting the seller and I doubt they ever would have arrived. This really gives a new meaning to "slow boat from China".

These are low dollar items with free shipping (multi meter test leads) and I doubt they even have them. Since they are low dollar items, I bet they are hoping the customer will forget or even bother to complain, so they are pocketing the money in most transactions without even having the item.

What an easy (fraudulent) way to make money.

pierrelebel · ‎05-03-2015

"so they are pocketing the money in most transactions without even having the item."

That is an easy assumption to make. Does it reflect reality?

Have you checked the sellers feedback?

How many positive? How many neutral? How many negative?

Does that reflect your assumption that "they are pocketing the money in most transactions without even having the item"?

Or is it possible that 97% to 99% of buyers do in fact receive their merchandise while 1%-3% somehow get lost somewhere?

pjcdn2005 · ‎05-03-2015

Or is it possible that 97% to 99% of buyers do in fact receive their merchandise while 1%-3% somehow get lost somewhere?

Anything is possible and it is not accurate to make assumptions however, I doubt that the average seller has had that many lost packages. I know that I haven't.

canadian.tree · ‎05-07-2015

I can't buy from china I will pay 5$ more to get from here I hate waiting for 30 days to get something I paid for.. the excitement is over by the time it arrives or it is a knock off from my experience.

I use to buy from china all the time but the amount of none quality control garbage that broke within 2 weeks I started receiving was crazy. i'm curious though 10 billion dollars on shipping what you buy.

nuvistors · ‎05-08-2015

@mater721 wrote:
"Yes, I buy a lot of things from Dollarama and most of the stuff are made in China and cost less than the same items bought in Canadian Tire which are also made in China. L.O.L."

In most cases you get what you pay for - value-wise. If it costs very little, the quality will not be high.

At least with Cdn Tire you can return for refund if it does not work. Good luck making a return to China.

That is somewhat inaccurate.

Many items purchased from Big Box store such as Cdn Tire may NOT be returned to the retailer for any defect or warranty. These items must be shipped , by the consumer, to a manufacturers designated warehouse for repair or replacement.

Sometimes this involves shipping to the US making any warranty worthless on large items.

badballscrewbob · ‎11-21-2015

Late to the party I know but I have been taken by **bleep**py tire more than once. Once for almost $600.00 when I returned a snow blower for a warranty repair after a couple of weeks from purchase and they LOST IT and told me hard luck ! Credit card company was great and it was **bleep**py's "hard luck". As for buying chinese. There are many occasion I don't get much choice unless I want to get screwed over by north american sellers. I buy electronic components and such and often that "free shipping" is too hard to pass on. I have ordered goods from America only to be told when it arrives that the customs duty and shipping charges have been more than the cost of the good purchased. Needless to say those sort of charges are never accepted and the delivery is never accepted followed by a call for a full refund. DHL are the biggest culprit for those types of charges but EBay global shipping is a close second. As for chinese quality...That's always a hard call. I have had "branded" goods from China that was clearly not the real thing despite being only a little cheaper than the real thing (shipping excluded). And on the other hand I have noticed a real fall in the quality of electronic components over the last couple of years. With soft plastic pin headers that melt when you solder the pins to temperature sensors with pins not much thicker than single layer tissue paper. Try leave HONEST VALID non derogatory feedback for those super nasty components and many times EBay sellers will wine to EBay and get them removed. The EBAY rating system to me is in need of a slight overhaul as is the length of message you can leave. Its is currently designed to get you to leave decent ratings. Even a mediocre rating from a buyer seems frowned upon by EBay themselves. Don't get me wrong there are bargains of good quality to be had on EBay from China but finding the better suppliers can be a roulette game. I have just removed two sellers from my preferred list as I have had at least 4 bad items in 3 separate deliveries recently. If you do get garbage from China I do urge you to follow up and wherever possible return it where cost allows. If it was **bleep**py Tire you would take it back and whine to get a refund so take buying online to that same level.

badballscrewbob · ‎11-21-2015

LMAO I got bleeped for mentioning a Canadian store name whose last name rhymes with something on a car and the posts above mine lets it through. So along the lines of "X company will list and sell anyones stuff now matter what etc. and anyone is free to buy but nobody is allowed to tell anyone what companies or particular goods to avoid" (moderator friendly)

reallynicestamps · ‎11-22-2015

I have ordered goods from America only to be told when it arrives that the customs duty and shipping charges have been more than the cost of the good purchased.

That you for being honest enough to admit that imports from the USA do get duty and sales tax assessed. Plus the $9.95 Canada Post service charge.
Many complainers won’t admit that simple fact.

And, especially with NAFTA, the most likely fees are not for duty but for sales tax.

DHL are the biggest culprit for those types of charges but EBay global shipping is a close second.
The GSP charges the import fees (duty , sales tax and a ~$5 service fee) before the seller ships.
If you are being charged at the door, then the seller did not use the GSP for shipping. In some cases, the seller did not know that he had GSP enabled and did not follow the proper procedure, making the unhappy buyer pay import fees twice.

If you do get garbage from China I do urge you to follow up and wherever possible return it where cost allows.
Absolutely, but (sigh) the cost of returning with Confirmation of Delivery is so high, this is rarely feasible. When buying from China the cost of getting what you paid for should include the cost of discarding the bad purchase.

If it was **bleep**py Tire you would take it back and whine to get a refund so take buying online to that same level.
Canadian Tire is a franchised operation. When a problem like refusal to process a warranty claim comes up, first the manager/owner should be spoken to, and then Head Office be notified.
That being said, most products carry the manufacturers’ warranties, not the retailers’, although the retailer may do a lot more than your local Canadian Tire to help a customer.

mater721 · ‎11-24-2015

"Many items"?

Or more accurately some items... can't be returned.

On the whole, I'd say with the exception of a few specialty items most can be returned no problem.

In my experience I have never had a problem.

The point is, you stand a far better chance of getting your money back from Cdn Tire than you do from some anonymous seller across the ocean in China.

badballscrewbob · ‎12-13-2015

Having had quite a few items from the USA it has only ever been DHL that has had me go to a depot to collect on most occasions and ONLY dhl that has had many extra charges.

I will use an actual example.

Bought an MVIX media player a couple years back on a "black friday sale" from MVIX themselves (not a third party).

Cost included the basic shipping.

Price came in at around $60 online.

Got a notice in my mailbox to collect that had the additional fees listed

Additional fees came to over $65.

No way on this green earth were the sales or handling fees over 100% more than the price of the item.

Of course delivery was refused and I have at least 5 more actual instances of that practice from DHL.

Hence I will not buy from anyone where DHL is the only shipping option.

Now I look for same products from alternate sources even if I have to pay a couple more $ as I know it will make it to my door.

NEVER had a bad experience from other methods unless you count "EBay global shipping program".

That was another lesson learned and its on my CAUTION radar.

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y13/m05/i28/s01

I know its an older post but I got caught by that quite recently (about 1 month) in not being given the information at time of purchase and only noticed the extra charges later in my paypal account. I even went as far as thinking my paypal account had been compromised.

Returns to China. Yes its not always easy thats why I said clearly "wherever possible" But do chase the seller and also chase EBay about those items too. They don't like you doing that either of them but if something is not up to scratch then the only way others are going to know is from poor feedback and customers who are willing to push back. I will quite often let mediocre quality items pass and give an OK feedback but if its really poor I have no qualms about telling those involved.

C.T. warranty... In our instance we had taken it to the store..they sent it off for repair although it was pretty much brand new and less than a few weeks old. Somewhere in there somebody lost it and the store said quite clearly that our loss at their hands was our problem. We called head office and they told us it was a store issue (ping pong game ensues). We got fed up of run around and went to credit card co. who sorted it out in a few hours.

Moral of all this is that customers both online and on the ground can chase things. Sure its not always easy but even personal satisfaction of knowing you did your danged best to resolve a poor situation and you probably learned quite a lot on that small journey too.

reallynicestamps · ‎12-14-2015

Price came in at around $60 online.

Got a notice in my mailbox to collect that had the additional fees listed

Additional fees came to over $65.

No way on this green earth were the sales or handling fees over 100% more than the price of the item.

There would be sales tax -- 13% in ON there's $7.80

There might be duty, depending on the place of manufacture (not purchase)- maybe 5%? there's another $3.00

And I don't know about DHL but UPS' brokerage fees start at $25 and go up with the value of the item , so we are already at $32.80.

And at a guess the $60 was USD so we have to multiply all the prices by 1.05 to 1.35 depending on exactly what foreign exchange was at the time. And the $65 would be reduced by some amount because it was probably collected in CDN.

I won't defend DHL, but a courier charging $65CDN on a $60USD purchase is not beyond belief.

Which is why the post office should not be privatized, nor run by managers from the private sector.

xenotime · ‎12-14-2015

I love buying from China. The shipping is almost always FREE. I've never had a problem with any of the stuff I've ordered,

badballscrewbob · ‎12-18-2015

You are not alone there apart from problems with a few items.

On that point a lot of the sellers I have dealt with have been very good and refunded for the particularly bad items.

They don't want too much of a bad reputation so am seeing some of them do the right thing.

I would like to see EBay use a fully moderated "name and shame" list though because its not just Chinese sellers that need to smarten up.

jedbramwell · ‎12-12-2016

I will never buy from China ever again. I've been burned by the ridiculously long delivery time scam and then, surprise, the item never arrives.

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me.

I won't get fooled again!

i.am.vivian · ‎12-12-2016

@jedbramwell wrote:
I will never buy from China ever again. I've been burned by the ridiculously long delivery time scam and then, surprise, the item never arrives.

I agree with your principle but must argue that you DO have options. The decent thing to do is wait for your items to show up. True. But on eBay you have 30 days AFTER that last delivery date to file a claim so don't let that 30 days pass by. People who buy from China regularly all say basically the same thing: Items DO arrive but can easily take 2 months or more. Usually less, but 2 months is not unheard of.

If you miss eBay's date, go to your PayPal account and use the Resolution Center there located under TOOLS. You have about 6 months to file for an ITEM NOT RECEIVED that is paid for from a PayPal account. Even the slowest item, or that never-sent-but-promised replacement will arrive within 6 months. (Officially it is 180 DAYS from when you paid).

If you don't have a PP account but used a credit card, cards also have long time frames for items that do not arrive. You call your Customer Service number on your statement and find out about it.

I applaud you for buying from North America but even if you want to keep trying China there is no reason to ever get scammed. Just know the dates for claims and don't let them pass buy.

graeme_9261 · ‎02-20-2017

A cautionary note I ordered two massage shower Items from a big bathroom seller in China 10 Oct 2016 the most expensive parts of the package arrived damaged I contacted the seller he agreed to resend replacements the start of Nov 2016 I contacted them mid Dec 2016 because they still haven't arrived, he said might have been delayed because of Christmas, I then contacted them again between Christmas and New year he said he would resend out again,I have my strong suspicions that no replacements were ever sent out, and the seller was being untruthful and using this as a delaying excuse, as he is now ignoring all emails from my account. Ebay wont refund because its after 30 days, Paypal came down on my side and said if I returned package they would refund the amount I paid ,not my return postage.I paid 320cdn for the shower Items to send it back to China is over $400cdn, China is the only Country not covered where the seller has to pay return postage if an item is faulty. I'm stuck with damaged items that are worthless because i cant use anything cant return them because it costs more to return than the Item costs.Remember china ships to you so cheaply because it is subsidized by the China government remember where China sellers are concerned buyer beware they know they don't need to refund you because it costs more to send back and they drag things out until the refund time has expired. i hope this helps someone its too late for me, never will I buy anything from China again that i'm not prepared to just throw in the trash if its damaged or missing. What should have been a Showerdream has turned into a nightmare

kevin_camera · ‎02-22-2017

In general, I've found that the buyer is always on the hook for pre-paying for shipping (regardless of which country they are from).

Where does it say that China return shipping is specifically not covered? Is that part of the buyer protection fine print?

I've had issues dealing with ebay even for an item that came from the US -- eBay will make it really hard for you on the phone hoping that you'll work out with the seller and then have one of you eat up the cost.

eBay will always claim they can't do anything on the phone but you have to keep pressing on and reason with them (they have full access to your ebay inbox, they can see that you've opened a claim and tried to have a conversation with the seller). So you can call BS on the 30 day limitation if you've consistently made an effort to contact the seller.

You need to be able to break down the problem for ebay so they understand your point of view -- remember the guys on the phone get hundreds of calls per day so they may not have the energy to truly understand your problem.

Good luck on claiming your money back!