Chinese Sellers with UK addresses?

[richardsuperstar]

how come there is at present so many Chinese sellers on here who are allowed to put their despatch location as here in the UK?

I've found loads of items which are undercutting most UK sellers and they all show their location as in the UK but then have their registered company address details as in Hong Kong.

its pretty clear that these sellers dont have offices in the uk and are just putting this to stop them being filtered out when someone clicks on show uk only.

surely there should be some check done by ebay to ensure that if a company claims to be in a country the address needs to be verified..

[4_bathrooms]

---

@fretsnikki wrote:

Thats bull**bleep**.... Most of these sellers ship from china and still use uk address it's just that eBay don't care as long as they are getting their cut... Customer don't meen a thing to Ebay.. Just money.... Other wise it would be jumped on but why should they.. They get paid abyway...

---

The post you are replying to dates from June 2016 and, at the time, would probably have been correct. Well, apart from the "perfectly OK" statement as such sales often went undeclared to HMRC.

Prior to April many Chinese sellers were exporting goods in bulk to UK fulfilment houses (warehouses) from where goods were despatched directly to UK consumers. These sales were undeclared so no VAT was charged nor paid to HMRC. Under EU rules all orders received by a foreign seller that are fulfilled from stock held in the buyers' country are liable for VAT; there is no VAT threshold for such sales.

HMRC (eventually) realised they were losing out on vast amounts of VAT so introduced the Fulfilment House Due Diligence Scheme. This made the owners of premises being used as fulfilment houses liable for the VAT obligations of their clients. They obviously realised that relying on such people to be honest and register did not go far enough so they also introduced joint and several liability for online marketplaces. This made online marketplaces (i.e. eBay) also jointly and severally liable for the VAT obligations of their sellers. All of this was surprisingly good stuff from HMRC.

As a result, eBay seems to use a simple solution for overseas sellers claiming to have UK stock - if the item location is UK but the seller's registered address is not then they must supply a VAT number, meaning they must also add VAT to their selling price. This seems to have tipped the balance somewhat so now a lot of Chinese sellers have, apparently, resorted to shipping from China whilst claiming to have UK stock.

At first, this might seem daft. A Chinese seller supplying goods from China does not need to register for VAT in the UK until they hit the domestic turnover threshold (£85k). So, they could keep their prices very low as they do not need to charge VAT and, under UPU postage, can deliver small items effectively for free to anywhere in the UK.

However, I believe Chinese sellers are well aware that most UK buyers will filter their results to UK only. If the stock is held in the UK they have to ship it - at UK rates - from the fulfilment house to the customer. This would now put them at a huge disadvantage to non-VAT registered domestic sellers who would pay the same postage but who do not need to add VAT to their selling price. By claiming the stock is in the UK - but actually shipping it from China - the Chinese seller makes one big saving: postage.

This is not going to change unless a fairer means of UPU renumeration is introduced and/or unless eBay police their item location misrepresentation policy more strictly. I don't think either will be happening soon.   

[recasterrelicingsupplies]

And VAT numbers are checked. Because the few I've checked have all be fake.

[4_bathrooms]

---

@recasterrelicingsupplies wrote:
And VAT numbers are checked. Because the few I've checked have all be fake.

---

May I ask how you checked and how you determined they were fake?

Supplying a fake VAT number would be unlikely to achieve much for the seller. eBay shares all seller data with HMRC and the validity of a VAT number - I should imagine - would be checked automatically if not by eBay then at least by HMRC. HMRC would then instruct eBay to remove the seller; if they failed to do so HMRC would hold eBay liable for all future VAT due from that seller.

I would also imagine that VAT bills for overseas sellers - being high-risk - would probably be raised monthly rather than quarterly. Even if they were raised quarterly it would not leave the seller much time to trade on eBay before HMRC issued a notice to remove them.

[yesterday-today01]

I read on EcommerceBytes that in the US Amazon are passing on what are big selling items to Chinese manufacturers and letting them produce and sell copies so maybe ebay is just joining in

[recasterrelicingsupplies]

What amazon have done for years: invited people to list items. If the item is popular, they buy all the stock or have it made. Very true. I doubt eBay ever want to get into actually buying stock, eBay seem averse to warehousing or doing any 'physical' activity. I think they're happy enough to top-slice on everyone else risk.
As much as I can see Amazon are parasitical, they have been innovative.
I don't see eBay as innovative, but they are parasitical.

[seamc64]

Couldnt agree more. Mine said manchester and london.then i found out one was delivering from usa and one from china..sort it out ebay or amazon here i come

[shopper.12345]

I have come across that, I ordered Slow Rising Squeeze Squishies Squeezamals Plush Squishy Soft Toy.  On the page the sellers address is in China but the location  is in the UK.

[Anonymous]

I have come accross numberous sellers reporting to be in the UK even the same city as me yet they are either international deliveries or some problem deveops and they can not send the item now etc.

I have contacted ebay about this and they stated that it broke ebay rules, however the listing did not change and ebay are not bothered, they imply that unless I tell them of every single seller ID they can not identify these sellers. I am on the brink of closing my account as I am sick of this. An ebay representative told me that I needed to check the information of the seller. **bleep** it is listed with a location which is false and they don't care., Added to this that the mobile app does not shoiw you the sellers address so I deleted the mobile app.

I have contacted Trading Standards about this, lets see if that makes a difference.

[gilliakenned-8]

Its to late now may aswell just plod along like normal

As we know many have been using ABERDEEN HM REVENUE AND CUSTOMS

Super funny but it does make me think I wonder if theres some on Ebay that have The Whitehouse as their address

[Anonymous]

I was reporting another ebay seller just before . I included alot of informmation such as the seller stating it can be held in customs, can take 75 days to deliver, VAT registered address which was Scotand HRMC according to VIES VAT number validation, information from gov.uk which states ebay has 10 days to remove the incorrect information, that the co .ltd company was not known the companies house etc etc. However, when sending the email I fired it off by mistake to Amazon, hmm I wonder if they will do anything about ebay.

[wyntersemporium]

There's actually one seller, that has several IDs on eBay, and he's also on the big river as you can easily recognise his name and address.

[hosky4]

I am sick to death of being told I must abide by eBay rules or risk being barred yet eBay seem to have very sketchy rules about allowing sellers from mostly China pretending they are UK based. I always filter my searches to UK only but still many items appear that are NOT UK based. I just purchased some jewellery pouches which I use in my business and when they arrived they were badly damaged due to poor packaging. I sent seller a message and got a familiar reply (been here before) saying "sorry but to save me trouble of returning item would I accept 20% refund". The item is useless so no refund will cover the price I paid. I realised I was dealing with a foreign seller and have now got to wait for eBay to intervene and get me a refund. I really thought this was a UK seller and I am usually quite good at spotting fake sellers. I now have to search for another seller of same items at my own expense so as I do not let my customers down. eBay is totally taking the p... and need to practice what they preach regarding adhering to the rules. Everyone is equal except eBay are more equal than others apparently.

[preciousjewellerygifts01]

i am new to ebay and unfortualy the chinese sellers will not change as can see the compliants from 2010 since people have been complaoning about the falsle chinese sellers 😞

[dawnandpaul7]

We have inadvertently purchased 2 carbon dioxide detectors from a company in the uk we used them in a hall at new year where we had gas fires and they did not work although they bore the kite marks they were fake and I later realised they came from china not the UK as advertised. The chinese are messing with peoples lives.I am going to take the 2 detectors to trading standards to try and see if they can do anything about them.

[4_bathrooms]

Did they look like one of these? 

If so, when did you purchase them?

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

Just bought an item.

Big UK flag on listing.

Clicked on EU only.

Delivery time a sfew days.

So cant be Chinese ?

So bought it.

Now see seller is from China !

This is getting beyond a joke now.

Looks like a neg is rising.

[talkinpeace]

Interestingly just had an ebayer discussing on another forum how Ebay had removed all his listings until he put his VAT number in

and ebay saying HMRC had told tem to

I got them to call HMRC and confirm that was piffle

now turns out, chinese seller had hacked their account and linked itto a Chinese business 

sneaky

and ebay are still not dealing with it properly 

[elmo7676]

---

@nigel_paul_wright7557 wrote:

Just bought an item.

Big UK flag on listing.

Clicked on EU only.

Delivery time a sfew days.

So cant be Chinese ?

So bought it.

Now see seller is from China !

This is getting beyond a joke now.

Looks like a neg is rising.

---

Just because the seller is Chinese, there's no reason to think that it'll be dispatched from China when the delivery estimate is a few days.

Tonight I needed to buy a few sizes of heat shrink tubing, so faced this issue as I'd really like to have it in a few days. First thing I did was search UK only, which narrowed the results considerably. The first few listings I then viewed were showing delivery from 11th-15th of January, which sounded suspiciously like it was being dispatched from China, but where it's dispatched from isn't so much of an issue as how quickly it'll arrive, so I disregarded these listings. I noted with interest that ebay no longer allow buyers to filter for listings which qualify for fast and free (and they've never had a filter for express delivery), so I ran through the listings in order of price and selected the first suitable listing which displayed fast and free. The delivery estimate is for Saturday 5th or Monday 7th, so there's no way such a cheap product is going to be dispatched from China on an express service and therefore it would be reasonable to assume that stock is indeed being held in the UK.

As previously mentioned, there's no reason why Chinese sellers shouldn't dispatch from the UK (provided they comply with tax legislation), but the real issue here is the messing about that buyers need to put themselves through in order to find a suitable listing. If ebay were to allow buyers to filter listings by estimated delivery dates, this whole discussion would be at an end. @robinet_uk has previously suggest that ebay should allow buyers to search for items offering express delivery, but I'd like to see something which allowed filtering for estimated delivery within a chosen number of days - that way you could work upwards rather than being offered all or nothing. Maybe ebay could have this up and running by next week 😄

[dawnandpaul7]

They were similar but I have taken them to my local trading standards office now so they can deal with it. Hopefully if they are fake then Ebay will be told to do something about this. This is peoples lives they are playing with not just copying clothes. I have also purchased something else from another Chinese person which is not as described and I am having a problem getting my money back, first they offered 30% refund, but as they are no good to me I said no, and now they are offering 70% but I want all my money back as the items are useless to me. I see a complaint to Ebay coming on here......