Are there any British sellers on Ebay any more?

vet88

I recently bought something from Ebay and it was supposed to be from Manchester. I always select UK sellers only. I previously bought something from another site that turned out to be from China, after several months of faffing around it never arrived, so I do not buy from China at all. Not that I want to support that country any way. But this item also actually came from China and when it arrived it was total rubbish, not at all like the picture or description.

I then tried an experiment and searched for an item from UK sellers only. I checked the top 10 results and all of them were actually based in China even though they said they were based in London, Essex etc.

Can Ebay be trusted any more?

RFW

vet88 said:

Can Ebay be trusted any more?

I don't think it's anything new, it's been going on for years.

It depends what you're buying. Loads of the Chinese sellers now have UK bases/stock. It depends what you're buying. The chances are though that if you're buying product X and most of the sellers are Chinese then when you find a UK seller they'll have just imported it from China. The best way to deal with it is to check the delivery time. If it's up to 4 days it will generally be coming from the UK.

I'm based in the UK, manufacture everything in the UK but I can be fairly certain that some of the raw materials in my manufacturing line are from China. My area has a few Chinese sellers but they tend to not understand the market so don't last long.

forgotmyname

Millions but you do need to check the delivery timescales. I but a lot of small electronic items where the bulk of the sellers are from China.

Usually that's OK but sometimes I just need it faster and you have to ignore the cheaper end of the results and look for the estimate
delivery times. Anything over 3 days you need to check carefully, I sort by cheapest first most of the time.

Used to get many quoting 7 - 10 days and sometimes you do get them that fast but usually they don't arrived and the seller says wait
another few days taking it to the 12 - 14 day average delivery time.

Ordered something different last list and spotted delivery 28th March, scroll down and found another one £2 dearer with the 3-4day
delivery estimate.

soolin

As above delivery times are a key point to watch when buying. They are clearly displayed on all listings, so as suggested if you choose estimated (and eBay estimates can be a little optimistic) delivery times of 3-4 days it is likely you are buying from someone in the UK. If you are unsure sometimes the feedback gives a clue as well.

vet88

Thanks for your advice. I was just annoyed at the entire system. I used to sell books on ebay several years ago and then it seemed to be local people running small businesses, now it seems like Chinese mega businesses taking over.

forgotmyname

Costs too much to ship a book in the UK so nobody wants them...  So we pack them all into shipping containers and
ship them 4500 miles to China where they sort them and burn the unsaleable ones creating pollution.

They then sell them back to us for less than the UK postage costs with another 4500 mile journey and
2 weeks later you get your book for less than buying in the UK.

Makes perfect sense (to someone) creating all that pollution only to have RM deliver the parcel for a fraction
of its UK over the counter price.

RFW

forgotmyname said:

Costs too much to ship a book in the UK so nobody wants them...  So we pack them all into shipping containers and
ship them 4500 miles to China where they sort them and burn the unsaleable ones creating pollution.

They then sell them back to us for less than the UK postage costs with another 4500 mile journey and
2 weeks later you get your book for less than buying in the UK.

Makes perfect sense (to someone) creating all that pollution only to have RM deliver the parcel for a fraction
of its UK over the counter price.

I know there are a load of reasons but the fact that RM handle some overseas post for less than they handle internal post is a ridiculous anomaly. It's been going on for decades now so there's been plenty of time to change it.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

forgotmyname said:

Costs too much to ship a book in the UK so nobody wants them...  So we pack them all into shipping containers and
ship them 4500 miles to China where they sort them and burn the unsaleable ones creating pollution.

They then sell them back to us for less than the UK postage costs with another 4500 mile journey and
2 weeks later you get your book for less than buying in the UK.

Makes perfect sense (to someone) creating all that pollution only to have RM deliver the parcel for a fraction
of its UK over the counter price.

I'm not sure that happens? There are a lot of UK based "mega sellers" on eBay and other places doing books, with many sold for below what it would cost you or I to post.

There are also companies recycling unwanted materials in the UK, I would have thought paper was valuable as it's easily recycled and online retail creates a lot of demand for cardboard.

Regarding the OP, there are many sellers who are based in China but have stock in the UK, either as a sort of drop shipping set up or as proper fulfilment, depends what you are buying as to the quality but generally speaking you often get what you pay for.

The problem nowadays is when you pay extra to buy from a UK company are the selling the exact same item as the person in China drop shipping/using fulfilment?