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Reshipping centers are used heavily by people outside the US to get access to goods sold online. Tons of stores (especially on Amazon) don't ship outside a few

Reshipping centers are used heavily by people outside the US to get access to goods sold online. Tons of stores (especially on Amazon) don't ship outside a few select countries, so customers pay a small fee to these reshipping centers to have packages forwarded to them.

zodPod 8y ago
Do they do the opposite too? I feel like there have been frequent times I've bought Chinese components (like bulk LEDs or something) on eBay from a seller that has an address in the US but it still took a long time (about on par with shipping from China) to get to me. Could that have been a person living in China selling stuff on ebay and having an address listed in the US to trick me?
- dahdum 8y ago
  Those are dropshippers, many of those items you can order from Alibaba / Aliexpress and skip a layer of reseller.
  - gruez 8y ago
    definitely check the "ships from" to make sure it's not a dropshipper.
- notatoad 8y ago
  the other reply says it's a "dropshipper" without explaining it. for anybody who doesn't know, drop shipping is the practice of ordering a product from your supplier to be directly shipped to your customer's address. In the case of ebay sellers with american addresses, it's not a chinese seller pretending to be american, it's an american seller pretending to have stock. they just place the order on a chinese site with your address as the shipping address. You're still doing business with an american, which is presumably what you wanted when you chose a seller with a US address.
  - boojums 8y ago
    I would guess the main reason have a preference for US-based would be due to shipping time.
    - notatoad 8y ago
      Both Amazon and eBay display the estimated shipping time much more prominently than the seller's address.
      - zodPod 8y ago
        I don't do a lot of shopping on eBay anymore but this was a bigger problem back when I did for sure. I haven't been around since they started doing this accurately but it used to just be "Ships from US" so then you'd just "Oh ok so it shouldn't be more than a week"
  - zodPod 8y ago
    It's actually the shipping time I'm looking for. If a Chinese seller could get me an item in 2-3 days I'd buy from them no problem. It's the fact that it can take 2-4+ weeks to receive something that makes it a problem. I hate that they started doing this though. Why can't interactions just be reasonable and honest? Why does everyone have to try to trick you in to things?

zodPod 8y ago

Do they do the opposite too? I feel like there have been frequent times I've bought Chinese components (like bulk LEDs or something) on eBay from a seller that has an address in the US but it still took a long time (about on par with shipping from China) to get to me. Could that have been a person living in China selling stuff on ebay and having an address listed in the US to trick me?

dahdum 8y ago
Those are dropshippers, many of those items you can order from Alibaba / Aliexpress and skip a layer of reseller.
- gruez 8y ago
  definitely check the "ships from" to make sure it's not a dropshipper.
notatoad 8y ago
the other reply says it's a "dropshipper" without explaining it. for anybody who doesn't know, drop shipping is the practice of ordering a product from your supplier to be directly shipped to your customer's address. In the case of ebay sellers with american addresses, it's not a chinese seller pretending to be american, it's an american seller pretending to have stock. they just place the order on a chinese site with your address as the shipping address. You're still doing business with an american, which is presumably what you wanted when you chose a seller with a US address.
- boojums 8y ago
  I would guess the main reason have a preference for US-based would be due to shipping time.
  - notatoad 8y ago
    Both Amazon and eBay display the estimated shipping time much more prominently than the seller's address.
    - zodPod 8y ago
      I don't do a lot of shopping on eBay anymore but this was a bigger problem back when I did for sure. I haven't been around since they started doing this accurately but it used to just be "Ships from US" so then you'd just "Oh ok so it shouldn't be more than a week"
- zodPod 8y ago
  It's actually the shipping time I'm looking for. If a Chinese seller could get me an item in 2-3 days I'd buy from them no problem. It's the fact that it can take 2-4+ weeks to receive something that makes it a problem. I hate that they started doing this though. Why can't interactions just be reasonable and honest? Why does everyone have to try to trick you in to things?