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..

[shantanu_impex80]

You are right, 

I'm an eBay seller and facing stiff challenges from China registered businesses, this is destroying my revenue and business and surely to many other UK sellers.

I'm definitely going to write Business secretary to point out this issue and also expect that eBay should have to take some actions to support local businesses.

this is really frustrating for UK seller but Government and online platforms should take some actions to support local business.

[h-p-c-sales]

When i complained to Ebay regards Chinese sellers putting false location address details and late delivery . The Ebay agent said i was racist ?

That about sums up ebays atitude to its customers

[barrettsbargains518]

They don't have a 'warehouse' in the UK on my experience, has a UK address and gives a reasonable delivery of max a week. The day after ordering I get a message sorry out of stock, new stock will usually take 10 working days and then delivery a further seven. This would rather suspiciously take it to a delivery time that you would expect from China. So in my opinion, the items are never in the UK, it's a scam to gather business

[cosmic_jester]

EBay don't give 2 hoots about Chinese cheap knock offs. EBay is only interested in making money and pushing seller's from the UK out of the market.
Maybe UK buyers should boycott eBay until they do more checks on sellers listing as UK based.

[Anonymous]

That is so true.... every month i reporta  list of chinese sellers pretending to be in the uk... the feedback says it all. Yet strangely after several months they are all still there claiming to be in Manchester! Funny how the business address is always in  china and never see a warehouse address in the uk.

It is not helped by the subsidies the chinese get to post to here set up by the UN decades ago, ( I see Trump has just jumped on that... finally something i totally agree with him on!).

I mean they are selling items that would travel through royal mail as a small parcel... yet selling for £1.49 delivered! Now i have a RM business account and we get some large volume discounts... but postage,item, paypal fees, ebay fees and vat for £1.49 whiloe still making money?! I don't think so!

Ebay don't care.... they make money via the seller rather than the buyer. Sadly what theyn have been completely missing is that with no buyers.... they wont be needing any sellers!

[price.dropuk]

The problem is that China now gets subsided postage cost due to China being a third world country can’t see how that works and this is all implemented by the United Nations. Trump has recently pulled out of this so USA will no longer be part of subsiding the cost so US sellers will obviously be please by this decision.

However in the UK the government does not really care or are bothered to take any action the Chinese are allowed to lie not pay taxes regardless of them being registered for VAT a majority of them don’t bother paying VAT when it becomes overdue they just shut up shop and open another account on another family members name I know this because our manufacturer in China was telling me this is what’s going on and the UK government allow this or must be oblivious to this not only is it tax/vat evasion but it’s also now effecting the economy/businesses who reside and trade within the UK, it’s an absolute shambles.

[i_failed_my_dna_test]

If you run a check on some of the addresses that Chinese sellers give for their UK place of trading you get some very strange results .

Like a well known fast food establishment beginning with M.

Or a back alley in London with no entrances .

Or a RM sorting office in Wales.

Or a luxury mansion on the outskirts of Manchester .

But the best must be one that several Chinese sellers use in Aberdeen .

It is a VAT Office !

Perhaps    ilona_uk@ebay.com

can tell us why ebay permits these illegal sellers to trade .

[frombabetotot]

I don’t automatically think eBay is totally to blame, as eBay is in principle a for-profits business and as such in order for it to keep its shareholders happy it does have to try in no uncertain terms to stay ahead of the curve.

If eBay was to ban the Chinese sellers from doing this then it could accelerate eBay’s competition “the river” & Chinese websites infiltrating the UK market faster to peddle their wares and ultimately hitting eBay’s bottom line along the way.

I’m not sure if anyone else has noticed but over the past six months China seems to have dramatically improved its postal service and now seems to have the ability to get products into the UK within days rather than bygone times of weeks, before anyone shoots me down I am aware that it can still take months.

Some do seem to have distribution warehouses or subcontract the distribution but who knows how many of these are arranged/facilitated by an eBay China global type scheme?

My experience when dealing with the Chinese sellers, firstly that their hard to avoid if you wish to buy on eBay, secondly it is a little harder when things don’t go too well.

Lots of Chinese sellers I see on the site at the moment don’t seem to be held accountable to the same metrics as UK sellers, this is just a general assumption given their poor feedback scores.

China is a little bit of a double-edged sword at the moment on the world stage it is trying to present itself as a superpower, but then seemingly is allowed to make large gains by using past concessions when it was seen as a third world country. E.g. the universal postal scheme that enables them to ship parcels here for next to nothing.

Love or hate Donald Trump he does seem to be aware of this issue in the USA, and he has thrown down the gauntlet to the Chinese & in no uncertain terms told them it is to be renegotiated for the USA or he will walk away from the deal.

I’m not saying for one minute I condone Donald Trump’s overall actions to be the correct course however from the viewpoint I am at the moment it is really hard not to take my hat off to him for trying to re-level a slanted pitch.

Not sure if we could even do the same here in the UK as it may have to be done under a Brussels directive or something of the such, until such a time that we do fully leave the EU and if and when this happens we will be that busy sorting out the current legislation to be passed over to the UK I don’t think they will be an appetite to consider amending universal postal schemes for some considerable time.

I think the only way the postage slant will change if vast quantity of people were to lobby their local MPs, however, a vast amount of people don’t rely on eBay sales for their main income so it is highly unlikely a small amount of lobbying would make any real difference.

[tawx2]

Blatant one this morning. 

Wife ordered jewellery gift bags and filtered on UK sellers only. ordered 2 x 100 bags. Delivery? Over a week. Thought thats a long time but we need them. When the order confirmed? Selleres in China

Theres over 11000 listings for Jewellery bags listed as UK located. Really????

And what are eBay doing about it??????

[ascotscalemodels]

I couldn't care if my item comes from mars as long as it arrives within the time stated,bought something recently from a so called chinese uk seller and when i checked given rm tracking details it was false but found it on a chinese shipping company.To cut a long story short i got my money back am now extra careful who i shop with.

[retro-watches-harrogate]

This has been going on since 2013 I’m surprised people are only just realising. HMRC have already identified they’re losing millions in vat but nothing really changes.

Royal Mail have a deal set up to help the Chinese ship so they don’t care. Ebay make fees so they don’t care and fear losing business to aliexpress..

Worst of all consumers don’t care. They want the cheapest and couldn’t care where it comes from.

Ebay shut my shop and after working temp jobs all summer I landed an IT role. My boss buys loads on wish and it all comes from China.

Retail is dead in the uk. We all have to deal with it and move on.

[true1_4diamondz]

I check, then have to check again, then have to check again, because thier is soo many claiming to be UK when in fact they are not, so I waste my time, get fed up of this deception & have no option but to buy else where, ridiculous!k oh and get ripped off buying a fake car ioniser, which turned out to only be LED lights & circuit board upon inspection, china! And get ripped off buying sketchers that didn't exist loose money again china! And get my eBay account hacked email adress turns out again to be Chinese! What the heck did eBay do!! Nothing absolutely nothing to help my situation on every account.

[elmo7676]

Being registered in China, or anywhere else for that matter, doesn't mean the stock isn't held in the UK. The only way to prove that stock isn't held, where a seller claims it's held, is to make a purchase.

Plenty of overseas sellers legitimately hold stock in various parts of the world, including the UK. Of course plenty of others claim to, but don't.

[gifts2suituk]

I have just checked a purchase I made recently and the item location address in the UK states Liverpool, yet states 10-15 days to arrive so obviously comes from China. The VAT number is registered to an address in Mancheter, which upon checking appears to have over 200 Chinese companies at the same address!!

VAT Address profile: UNIT 204 SALFORD INNOVATION FORUM, 51 ...

Overview of 199 companies located at: UNIT 204 SALFORD INNOVATION FORUM, 51 FREDERICK ROAD, SALFORD MANCHESTER, UNITED KINGDOM, M6 ...

I think we are all beating our heads against a brick wall on this, as I have contacted ebay on various occasions and nothing is being done. I have also written to my local MP and HMRC and still it goes on......

[4_bathrooms]

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@gifts2suituk wrote:

The VAT number is registered to an address in Mancheter, which upon checking appears to have over 200 Chinese companies at the same address!!

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There is no reason to suspect this is unusual or illegal. The address in question appears to be a large industrial unit that is divided into many small offices. The fact a VAT number is displayed means the seller must add UK VAT to their selling price. eBay shares details of all sellers (business and private) with HMRC so all sales made against that VAT number will incur a VAT bill from HMRC.

It does make me wonder, though. Maybe a lot of the Chinese sellers have realised that registering for VAT and claiming the item is despatched from the UK - whilst actually despatching it from China - yields more profit than despatching from a fulfilment house in the UK now that HMRC have clamped down on unregistered fulfilment houses. For most items under £10.00 and virtually all under £5.00 (assuming RM large letter or small parcel) the amount of VAT added to the selling price plus UPU postage would be less than the cost of UK domestic postage plus import costs, etc.

So, HMRC are happy as they are getting their VAT whilst eBay sellers of similar items will be in pretty much the same boat they were before, i.e. unable to compete on price. The buyer may have a longer wait than they expected and may get an import VAT bill from HMRC if their item is picked up during a spot-check - even though they have already paid VAT on their purchase. But they did, at least, get a good price...

[i_failed_my_dna_test]

The building that you mentioned provides office space for business startups .

It does not provide storage or warehousing for any businesses .

Not everyone in the unit is fake or Chinese , but most are .

However the Chinese companies that use that address mostly appear to be run by a Chines couple who use a mixture of names and claim to have a limited company xxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx Secretarial Services Ltd .

There is no trace of any of the Limited Companies that they claim exists . This is simply illegal .

Several of the companies listed for that address have been dissolved . So they should not be trading .

Every other Chinese company in that unit is dormant , and essentially should not be trading .

Apart from that there is the question of legality for a company to use what is nothing more than a mail drop address as the address of their main place of business .

So maybe you should be having a word with trading standards , or perhaps someone in the media .

[4_bathrooms]

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@i_failed_my_dna_test wrote:

Apart from that there is the question of legality for a company to use what is nothing more than a mail drop address as the address of their main place of business .

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A registered office can be almost any physical address located in the same country the business is registered in, even a PO Box. When I first started working for myself I did not want my home address publicly viewable in the register nor on any websites that I operated so I rented a virtual office and used that address instead.

If the seller is displaying a valid VAT number that is registered to an actively trading company they are most likely paying all the VAT due on their sales. The only people likely to care about the item being sent from China - when it is advertised and being sent from the UK - are eBay (item location policy) or the ASA. However, if the seller generates a lot of sales I wouldn't expect eBay to take too much notice.

[personalisedgifts2suit]

I have contacted a journalist who is very interested in writting about this problem, so if anyone wants to contact her with their story send an email to fightingyourcorner@gmail.com or contact her on Twitter - Leah Milner. She writes for 2 national newspapers the Sun and the Mail, so hopefully our concerns will be heard!!!

[oneofakind19792012]

I wouldn’t trust the media and certainly not the sun newspaper. I’m a buyer on eBay and not a seller and I am still awaiting another refund from a crafty Chinese seller listed as in UK before closing my account for good. Shopping on eBay is proving very expensive awaiting for Chinese sellers to refund me and never do. It’s like alibaba and aliexpress it’s shocking.

[oneofakind19792012]

An inside source told me Ebay Uk is under new ownership and is now owned by the Chinese. I don’t know if this is true and searching google comes up with nothing but it has had me thinking as I’ve noticed a few things on here recently that suggest it’s now owned by China. Just some of the wording I’ve seen changed in several help articles etc come across like someone from China as wrote them up. 

It wouldnt change much where Uk is concerned as nothing is 100% British in uk anymore as nearly everything is owned or manufactured by another country. If eBay isn’t owned by a Chinese person then owner must have found himself a Chinese bride or something and she now part co-owns it. The whole website as been on a decline for years but lately I’ve noticed a massive landslide as no matter what I’m buying on here I cannot escape trading with Chinese sellers despite making a dozen changes to avoid them. I suppose time will tell🤔 Welcome to United China kingdom 👍