OT<Be Careful

[Patti Feinberg]

Near the past holiday season, I did some shopping on ebay. I had an account, but really always loved Amazon (notice the 'slight' tense of the verb....)

Anywho, and this is by no means exclusive to ebay, I find it now on Amazon.

There's A L O T of stuff which ships from China.

Few things to 'warn' my cousins about.

First, you know how you can usually 'track' your package/delivery? Well, if it's coming from China, you can't (the US Post Office can't tell China what they should do).

Then, I bought my daughters cell phones. I'm on my 3rd Windows phone. These Android phones (they've both had Windows phone also), but they wanted back w/droid. When I opened the package, they wer soooo pretty. But, I really was never that jazzed with Android.

Complete garbage were the cell phones, that finally, I contacted ebay, who told me that since it was past 60 days of purchase, I'd have to go through PayPal.

Fine, whatever.

On Feb. 22, 2016, at the Post Office, I shipped the phones back for a refund.

If I were to go on USPS  & track, it would S T I L L say it arrived in Orlando, FL on 2/24/16. It may say it's in transit.....?


Sooo, if you like that bag, cell, etc, etc., and there's one coming from China or one in North America, stay away from shipping to China (or ordering, cuz, what if you need to return it)?

Patti

[CastleBee]

Hi Patti,

I find this interesting because I had a similar issue at Christmas.  I ordered a tunic style top for my sister way back in November...did not pay attention to where it originated. It didn't show up in a month's time so, I went online to check it out.  Yep, China. Unable to properly track it so I waited a bit longer.  It finally showed up. However, the size was really weird - number-wise it was 3 sizes larger...actual size however, was about two sizes smaller. I called Amazon and asked how I could get a refund (no info in the packaging).  Without hesitation (as if they were use to this) they said they would issue a refund.  They did but, I was never given any info on how to send the package back. The company was no longer listed on the site and that was pretty much the end of it.  I have the feeling this was a major Ooops for Amazon. This was my one and only problem - if you could really call it that - I have ever had on that site.

[Robot_Quentin]

It used to be a simple thing on eBay to tell which sellers were in North America and which are overseas... I recently bought some HDMI cables for dirt cheap, and the seller is listed as being somewhere in California, but their "distribution warehouse" is in China, they tell me in an email AFTER it's been almost two weeks and I hadn't received them yet...

It's tough especially with electronics when these sellers have 45,672 ratings to really gauge how good (or bad) they actually are... Scour the recent ratings and sort by negative ones to read the details.

This is a VERY deceptive practice for eBay, which unfortunately is very commonplace now.

CAVEAT EMPTOR!!