Why do sellers lie!

chippy2u

Why do sellers lie about all their stock being UK based. Several times now I have ordered (usually small) items from sellers stating that items are in UK based warehouses and they will be dispatched via Royal Mail with a delivery date of 3/4 days only to receive the item 3 weeks later from Hong Kong/ China. I am worried that if I ordered a more expensive (ie. mobile phone or similar) from a seller who stated UK stock and it arrived from China/Hong Kong would I be liable to pay Custom Duty/VAT and PO handling charges? I do not have a problem about ordering items from abroad if I am not in a particular hurry for it but if I want it quickly I order from UK sellers.

soolin

chippy2u wrote: »

Why do sellers lie about all their stock being UK based. Several times now I have ordered (usually small) items from sellers stating that items are in UK based warehouses and they will be dispatched via Royal Mail with a delivery date of 3/4 days only to receive the item 3 weeks later from Hong Kong/ China. I am worried that if I ordered a more expensive (ie. mobile phone or similar) from a seller who stated UK stock and it arrived from China/Hong Kong would I be liable to pay Custom Duty/VAT and PO handling charges? I do not have a problem about ordering items from abroad if I am not in a particular hurry for it but if I want it quickly I order from UK sellers.

If seller sends from abroad then yes you are liable for all the normal import tax and handling charges.

on eBay The shipping from abroad sellers are usually fairly easy to spot though, but a quick read of feedback usually helps. I domfund it harder though to spot the Far East sellers on Amazon if you buy from the front page 'box' as their info is well hidden away.

RFW

soolin wrote: »

I do fund it harder though to spot the Far East sellers on Amazon if you buy from the front page 'box' as their info is well hidden away.

Sadly the checkout process on Amazon can throw up some problems, especially as most of us want it over with asap. It's always best to check the expected delivery times, which should tell you where items are coming from, if that hasn't already been made clear.
My big peoblem with Amazon is that search doesn't show item price plus postage, so you have to click through to find postage rate.

soolin

RFW wrote: »

Sadly the checkout process on Amazon can throw up some problems, especially as most of us want it over with asap. It's always best to check the expected delivery times, which should tell you where items are coming from, if that hasn't already been made clear.
My big peoblem with Amazon is that search doesn't show item price plus postage, so you have to click through to find postage rate.

I'm struggling with Amazon where someone has the selling box or whatever it is called. I see what I want and where usually it gives me the option of seeing other sellers, more and more now it doesn't, and I seem unable to navigate anywhere that shows me more about the seller- including delivery times.

In some categories every single seller appears to be separate, so a search for my item shows say 8 pages of sellers, and I need to go into each individual page one at a time to see what the total cost is with postage. Once in those individual pages I can't see any info at all, have to come out and start again to see the next seller. All identical items all apparently on different catalogue numbers.

Books and CDs are still easy though, find the one you want, open to all sellers and compare at a glance what you want.

I'm looking at a camera at the moment, the same camera is listed about 11 times on a search- but it is the same camera. Mixed in with that search I also get other similar cameras that I am not interested in at all.

Brywalker

chippy2u wrote: »

Why do sellers lie about all their stock being UK based. Several times now I have ordered (usually small) items from sellers stating that items are in UK based warehouses and they will be dispatched via Royal Mail with a delivery date of 3/4 days only to receive the item 3 weeks later from Hong Kong/ China. I am worried that if I ordered a more expensive (ie. mobile phone or similar) from a seller who stated UK stock and it arrived from China/Hong Kong would I be liable to pay Custom Duty/VAT and PO handling charges? I do not have a problem about ordering items from abroad if I am not in a particular hurry for it but if I want it quickly I order from UK sellers.

The simple answer to why they lie is that people are more likely to buy from a UK source than a Chinese one!