@lupo-store wrote:
I was lucky enough to be invited to present at Royal Mail's conference last week. I am speaking with their Director of Parcels. Another person is looking into why so many parcels are coming from China.
One thing they did tell me is that they offer this service below
https://proshipping.royalmail.com/Account/Login?ReturnUrl=%2F
The Chinese send the items in and when received by RM they put the labels on and send out from Heathrow etc. I have reported a couple where the tracking shows via RM International logistics centres. Looks like this issue is party caused by RM assisting the Chinese in this abuse. I am not sure if it’s just because RM is so large one part is pulling one way whilst the other part is wondering why UK customer revenue is down.
Just yesterday I spoke with someone who gave me a negative feedback due to RM losing the item. His FB was as follows:
AVOID not UK seller, item didn't arrive and false tracking numbers sent
I phoned him and it turned out he didn’t understand RM48 only had delivery confirmation but furthermore he used to be an eBay seller and sent 7 sacks per day but had just given up due to being unable to compete against this item location misrepresentation. I personally think these above issues are causing lots of people to walk away from eBay (as they did 2012-2014 when this happened before).
Now that is interesting news, a thing we don't see every day on threads like this. Your link is available only to account holders, but I get the general idea.
I'm sure Royal Mail intend this as a service to sellers who declare their stock as being in China. It would then be permissible under current eBay policies, and between eBay and the Royal Mail whether they want to change them. It would be a violation if the stock isn't in the UK throughout the listing period, but surely one far less likely to disappoint the buyers than mailing from China or trusting a private fulfilment dentre to individually mail items from a large consignment.
We had a thread some time back including a post from someone who had visited one of the commonly used centres, and found it very large and efficient. But there are Chinese frauds, albeit no more common, apparently, then caucasian frauds. I tracked down a centre address on Google street photography which had figured in severa. It was a roller-blind door in a back street, apparently the back entrance to what, around the corner, was a drop-off point for several courier services. It even showed a conspicuously anglo bald head in the front window. The Royal Mail scheme, while subject to abuse, seems like an improvement on that.
In one way eBay must be a uniquely favourable trading environment. For nobody ever goes out of business because they can't run a viable business. It is always the policies. I think you correctly identify competition for sales as the main reason for anger at the Chinese seller situation. I believe action against them would contravene regulations on which WTO membership depends. It is also hard to imagine it happening without agitation from buyers. I don't believe a decline in the use of eBay due to location misdeclaration is likely, as long as buyers are getting their items within the delivery estimate. If it was, it would surely happen the sales of Chinese sellers declaring UK stock would surely decline first, and we all knnow what3 those are doing.
If anecdotal experience is worth considering, then so is mine. I have bought freely from Chinese sellers, with stock here and there, and have never found it misdeclared.
You have 113 non-positive feedbacks out of 17,944 this year, with one of them an accusation of delivery from China. Plenty of very large Chinese sellers have a comparable record, and it doesn't seem impossible that their 0.0000015 of sales for this violation could have come the same way. The buying-ID threads have given a convenient stick to hit them with, and In the Middle Ages it would have been devil-worship.
