Comment on I left negative feedback on ebay for dropshipping and the seller has messaged me four days in a row asking me to change it

conditional_soup@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• daggermoon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  They just buy the item on Amazon and send it to your address usually at an inflated price. They sell stock that they don’t own.

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  • tiramichu@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    To play the role of the annoying five year old, “And why is that bad?”

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    • Protoknuckles@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      They offer no service or benefit. They are a needless middleman.

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      • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Can’t people just buy directly then, why do they choose to use these dropshippers?

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    • daggermoon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      They’re taking your money without providing you any value. It’s dishonest and it’s against eBay’s terms of service (unless they are working directly with the supplier, which I highly doubt is the case.)

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      • IceFoxX@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        It says that a refund is offered and you can still keep it. I see absolutely nothing negative for you. But the answer from another user makes 100% sense. That for later scams as soon as a positive reputation has been built up.

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    • Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      It’s a way of farming sales and reputation, to build an account for later scamming with.

      A brand new account running a scam gets picked up almost immediately as they’re watched closer. An account that’s been around for 5 years, selling products without reports of fraud, suddenly switching to scams stays under the radar longer.

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      • IceFoxX@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Great answer. Thank you.

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    • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      A deliberately deceptive business practice that does nothing to help consumers and only raises prices? If you have to have it explained to you why that is bad, well I’m sorry, but you are beyond saving.

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      • tiramichu@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Very kind and polite of you

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    • blueeggsandyam@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Drop shippers aren’t normally authorized sellers/resellers for the product so the manufacturer doesn’t have to warranty their products. Unfortunately, you won’t find out until 6 months down the road.

      It can also hurt small businesses because they don’t get to interact with their customers. Their products could get negative reviews on Amazon even if they never wanted sell the product on Amazon. Negative reviews could be because of the shipping or customer service provided by the drop shipper and the customer doesn’t know that the business had nothing to with those issues.

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    • AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      You should suspect it for items with really long delays. They are waiting for a sale or new pricing. They sold you something they don’t have and don’t plan to send until they find it cheaply enough to hit their profit target.

      Meanwhile you could have bought from someone who actually has it, direct from the original seller without extra markup, or waited for the same sale they are

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      • moody@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Also you may be avoiding Amazon, but end up giving them your business against your wishes.

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      • Brekky@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        They’re short sellers

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    • Ledivin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Why is doing literally nothing but adding cost a bad thing? 🤷‍♂️ they’re even selling on the same platform, it makes the actual-priced product harder to find or is just a full-on scam, pretending they sell higher quality products than actuality.

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    • Mokopa@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The complexity of returns wouldn’t be ideal I guess, you don’t have the original receipt etc.

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• TheFogan@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Basically the way it usually works is.

  Chinese knock off mass factory, makes stores and has the items.

  They find a guy in America and say "Hey can you list our items on ebay, when you sell them, we’ll take $20, you can probably sell them for $50.

  Guy lists item for $50, someone buys it, he then just e-mails the dropshipper and asks them to send it straight to the buyer. Sometimes he will have to give ebay a fake tracking number (because ebay doesn’t approve the practice).

  Point is the drop shipper is just there to conceal the actual source of the product. That’s generally because they are sketchy in some other way.

  A co-worker of mine at one point got into a drop shipping scam. She was selling golf clubs that way (she was selling them about 80% of expected retail, place she was buying from was charging her about 25% of retail. She didn’t know (but probably should have guessed) that the clubs she was selling were counterfeit, and she about had a heart attack when her 2nd customer called her out on it (she refunded him and took the loss).

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  • dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Yes, and it’s basically a given that most of this crap is counterfeit, unless it’s a scheme as dopey as simply ordering it from Amazon and shipping it back to you. Which still isn’t a guarantee that it isn’t counterfeit, come to think of it.

    That profit margin for the drop shipper has to come from somewhere.

    And this is coming from someone who deliberately orders counterfeit crap. (Yes, knives, how did you guess?) But if you’re okay with that you may as well buy it directly from whoever is making the knockoffs in the first place via Aliexpress or whatever and pay a lot less in the process.

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    • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Me? Order an obvious fake of an overpriced knife so that I can decide if I like the design in person? Nah, never!

      quickly shoves small box of counterfeits under bed

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      • dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Ha-ha, your box of counterfeits is small…

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• ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  To be a little more clear from what op said, it’s when someone sells it from eBay to a person that didn’t shop around to see if the product was cheaper from other retailers. The ebay seller than buys it from another retailer where the product was offered for less money and then the seller has it shipped from that retailer directly to the buyers house. It’s bad in the sense of some eBay shoppers purposely want to avoid giving their money to a specific retailer (like amazon), or they just feel mad that they could have gotten the product cheaper to begin with.

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  • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I don’t mind this personally with ebay, I might be out a few extra dollars sometimes but at least I am supporting independent sellers and not having to waste time visiting and put my info into many websites. If they are violating the terms of service of Amazon Walmart etc. to do so, great, I support that. If they are waiting for sales to get a better price, fine, I wouldn’t want to bother with that myself.

    If their lack of actually having the item resulted in me not getting it at all, I’d be a little pissed about it, but I haven’t experienced that. Overall I like ebay way better than other e-retailers.

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• finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The other replies are a bit wrong.

  The definition of dropshipping is that the seller / retailer does not have any stock of the product and instead orders the product from a supplier whenever a sale occurs.

  Many have pointed out this usually occurs with middlemen and scalpers turning profit on goods available elsewhere for lower prices, but it also technically applies to print-on-demand and other manufactured at point of sale goods.

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  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’m assuming that there’s no issue with print-on-demand and manufacture at POS; I know pretty much what I’m getting if I order a 3D printed dingus.

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