China / Hong Kong and eBay

Lost User

It is not just eBay. Over the past two years I bought from Amazon some cheap (< $3) items with free delivery, on three occasions. (I have a prime account). When the goods arrived, I was surprised to see it was shipped from Hong Kong. I live on the East Coast of the USA. That's free shipping halfway around the world! I don't know how they do it. Maybe exporters from China/Hong Kong have subsidized shipping?

den2k88

That's why I usually check the "EU only" box on eBay :D terrible service from China and exoteric prices from US (6000 km from the East Coast are quite a lot...).

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Mike Hankey

You got to be willing to wait for it though, I've had it take as long as 5 weeks to arrive.

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Lost User

I sometimes buy parts for my model helicopters from Ebay, like five pairs of rotor blades for the price of one pair (of the same sort) here locally. The whole stuff is manufactured there and then exported anyway. I guess the sellers there buy that stuff for mere cents and still make a few cents despite having to calculate shipment into their price.

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RaviBee

I just received a couple of 6' HDMI cables that I bought on EBay from China. The price was great and they work fine. The only down side was it took 2 weeks to receive them. Not that I'm complaining. /ravi

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Rage

Johnny J. wrote:

I don't know if it really is, but it looks good...

I tend to avoid buying anything coming from China that gets in contact with your skin, and that I do not know what it is made of...

Do not escape reality : improve reality !

PhilLenoir

Clearly they've mastered instant matter transportation AND time travel.

Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.

W Balboos GHB

Concepts to Consider:

A shipping broker is sending out out, from mixed vendors, on a continuous basis. Huge amounts of little things can fit in a shipping container or air parcel or whatever.
Predatory trade practices: selling at a loss to drive competitors out of business. You'd imagine the state has to be in collusion with such a scheme - but that could never happen in China.
The Original Amazon.com business plan: they lose money on every order but make up for it in volume.

Suggestion: take advantage of the situation by ordering everything in dozens - since you'll need to replace the junk so often.

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Mark_Wallace

So you don't buy any Apple products?

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Rage

Not a single one (True!). I see no point in buying technologies that others do better, especially when they are more expensive.

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Mark_Wallace

I've bought no end of stuff from aliExpress and dx.com, a lot of it where the (free) postage obviously came to much more than the price of the item. Don't ask me how they do it, but it works. You also get stuff a lot earlier, if you buy it directly from China, rather than wait for western companies to import stockpiles of it and have all their price-fixing discussions with other companies -- e.g. I had a kree lamp on my bike at least a year before I saw any available here (for more than double the price). It still works, BTW, but it's not on my bike, any more, because the missus likes using it to hunt snails in the garden (on full, it's brighter than daylight). I can't think of an item I've bought where I was unhappy with the quality -- unlike when I buy from e-bay, where a good quarter of what I receive is disappointing.

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

Phil J Pearson

My son bought a hard case for PSP on eBay for £0.99. It arrived from China in about 2 days. It was clearly a knock-off; the logo was not as it had appeared in the photo but just subtly different (different enough, I suppose, to avoid copyright problems). Otherwise the quality was excellent and he was delighted with it but he emailed to complain about the logo. They quickly replied that they were sorry he was not fully satisfied and said they would reduce the price by £1 to compensate. They credited the £1 to his eBay account.

Phil

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