The town of Mortlake has more ebay sellers than residents! - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: glentek
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2023, 01:43:41 am
content: I was searching for some items on ebay with location set to Australia only. I noticed a lot of sellers located in Mortlake, only a hundred km from me. Fast delivery assured!Looking at their About page lists them as China. Imagine my surprise.If you search for items located 2km from Mortlake, you get hundreds of hits.Mortlake has a population of 1400. I wonder if they know how popular the town is with the Chinese.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2023, 10:53:35 am
content: I've often received items quickly from these sellers. I suspect they are drop-shipping, no way the item could be in my hands economically within 3-4 days otherwise.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2023, 10:12:51 am
content: Probably there is a PO box rental there that is cheap, and does not care about them actually having multiple boxes, or even being local. Might even have a single large house or barn they rent that acts as warehouse, filled to the brim, and then they work nights filling orders, and taking the next morning to the post before the first collection, then sleep the day till the last delivery arrives to fill it again.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2023, 10:25:12 am
content: According to the ABS, there are no Mandarin speakers in Mortlake and no-one there is born in China. If an eBay product from Mortlake has its details in Chinglish (ie: poor spelling, poor grammar, lack of plurals or no sensible description), don't buy from them. Another red flag (excuse the pun) is the shipping time.

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2023, 10:58:40 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on January 06, 2023, 10:25:12 amABS says otherwise:https://abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/quickstats/2021/SAL21767so the ABS finds people in Mortlake (VIC) who recognize their Chinese heritage (Ancestry multi response, ANCP) and speak mandarin at home (Language used at home, LANP). Which is a much stronger indicator than "mandarin speaker" as people could well be fluent/conversational/functional communicators in mandarin yetnotspeak it at home (or not tick those boxes on the census).There could well be people born in China living there but hidden by the ABS data borging:https://www.abs.gov.au/census/guide-census-data/census-methodology/2021/how-data-processed

author: retiredfeline
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2023, 11:46:54 am
content: Nah, doesn't have to be that complicated. All it needs is some sender's registered address is in Mortlake. Doesn't even have to be Chinese, could be partner in company. Warehouse could be elsewhere. Same sender is used in multiple listings.Not saying this is how it is, just heaps of possibilities.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2023, 01:03:11 pm
content: If it is a legal warehouse/re-shipping center there in Mortlake, I'd say it's a positive, win-win.(Legal meaning they pay the necessary taxes and duties on the stuff they sell/re-ship.)Unfortunately, it can be just about impossible to check as an end customer.I do know that Banggood does the same for a few warehouses in Europe, and although they only specify the country for each warehouse, they do seem to be registered for tax purposes. The downside here in Finland is that they tend to use PostNord, which is extremely unreliable deliverer (their couriers basically never deliver the packages to the door (probably don't even have the packages in their vans), and instead you have to go and pick them up at their warehouses –– I've personally had the courier stop in front of my building for ten seconds, then drive away without the driver even stepping outside the van!). Funny thing is, I'd rather have them deliver to a pick-up point, because I have several nearby, and it should be cheaper for the sender that way too.

author: Geoff-AU
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2023, 05:43:41 am
content: Lots of fakes on ebay now. The products, and the vendors too.Back in 2020 I ordered some MH-MINI-360 (MP2307-based) buck converters. I needed them kinda quickly so I filtered by Australian location on ebay, and to hedge my bets I bought 4pcs each from 3 different ebay sellers figuring I'll use these in hobby projects in the future and they're cheap. Plus, whichever one arrives first will let me keep prototyping.None of them arrived for 3 weeks, which was frustrating.Then I got 3 identical packages in the mailbox, on the same day, with almost identical labels on them (including the sender's address) but different "ebay seller" IDs.I'm very selective about what I buy on ebay these days, usually the fake vendors sell a ton of unrelated products. The real ones are quite obviously an online presence of a real store, and they're much better.