[PLUG-TALK] eBay and China

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Sat Jun 20 20:56:29 UTC 2020


On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 11:07:24PM -0700, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> These days I find countless listings that are listed as shipping from
> the US, but as soon as I buy the item the listing changes saying that
> it is shipping from China and it will be here sometime next year.
> 
> This is not just annoying, it is fraud, but I haven't found any way to
> stop it. At least it would be helpful if my eBay account was blocked
> so that buying from outside the US was not possible, but you can't do
> that either.

Same thing happens to me - I order "A", then they change the
item version to "Z" and ship it from China.  The tracking
number for one recent item led to a delivery in New York.
We'll see if the item ever arrives.  I assume the vendor is
"exploiting the float", taking my money now to purchase items
already promised to others, laddering exponentially until
they have enough money to abscond with.

In a just world, if the seller can switch items and sources
and delivery times, we should be able to switch payment
currencies.  $9?  O.K., here's 9 Zimbabwean dollars, worth
2.5 cents U.S.  Or, specify that the purchaser's payment is
held in a third-party interest-bearing account (the interest
accruing to the purchaser) until two weeks after the item is
delivered, and disputes have time to resolve.

Ah well; only the young die good.  Ebay is old now.  Omidyar
is still a board member (among 15) but not imposing his once
admirable personal ethics on the company.  Given the 2019
eBay cyberstalking campaign against ecommercebytes.com, now
starting into criminal trials, it's time to support other
platforms, like bonanza.com .

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com



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