[PLUG-TALK] shipping of stuff ordered on line

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Thu, May 13, 2021 at 07:15:42PM -0400, TomasK wrote:
> What does not ship from China these days? - I do realize that seeing
> this first hand on a box or tracking info irritates some people.

This misses a number of points.  The first is honesty;
lying about the distribution source suggests that every
other aspect of the item may also be lied about.  

Here's your 30 inch baseball bat.  Well, 30 millimeters ...

The blouse is actually red, but looks pink in thick smog ...

It's in stock.  Well, the ore it will be made from is ...

When you've been lied to, and a misdescribed item is
(eventually) delivered, you have no recourse. 
Ship it back and get a refund? 

Postal/UPS/other rates from the US to China are very high
(minimum $5, compared to pennies from China to the US with
combined shipping), so your "refund" for an $8 item won't
be much of a refund - IF the seller refunds you at all,
rather than blowing you off until the return window closes,
or just closing the "virtual shop" and starting a new one.

If you can ship it back.  Here's your return address ...
in Chinese characters.  The USPS needs a standard Roman
character address in addition to the Chinese.  Another
delay ... if the Chinese vendor responds with a usable
shipping label.

Bad feedback?  The Chinese fraudster will have a different
storefront next month, populated with 5 star ratings from
shills.

The key aspect of a US seller (even if they sell Chinese-
made goods, who isn't?) is that the seller is bound by US
laws, uses US shipping, probably understands English better,
and is three time zones or less away. 

If eBay (or a third party certification company) provided
oversight, verification, a US return option, and penalties
for fraud, I would confidently do business with honest
Chinese retailers. 

As is, a US seller (charging more, sometimes double) for
imported Chinese goods is also selling a low cost return
address, perhaps accountability and integrity as well.
I can take them to court, if I'm really pissed off.

I don't like purchasing from Amazon when there are other
options, and eBay used to be a pretty good option.  With
search engines effectively powned by Amazon, and small
retail displaced by big box stores, and eBay increasingly
dominated by fraudsters ... new retail channels with 
verifiable integrity are sorely needed.

Perhaps the biggest problem is "free" as in "zero cost"
internet - if you get something for free, you are the 
product.  I will gladly pay extra for access to integrity
and trust, and as much as I dislike enormous monopolists
like Amazon, they are, for now, mostly trustworthy. 
They DO take responsibility, and returns.

-----

This seems like an opportunity for new businesses and
collaborations.  Pay to join - what you pay for is an
investigation of you and your own integrity.  Fake
identity?  Banned for life.

Sorta like paying taxes as part of US citizenship.  The
jurists who prosecute you, and the jailers who imprison
you, don't come cheap.  The jury is cheap, until you are
selected for jury duty.

"What is truth?" jested Pilate.  "9.8 meters per second
squared", said the physicist-revolutionary, throwing the
pompous twit off the roof.  Pardon my anacronisms, both
historical and pre-internet commercial.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com