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Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.
Agree that many of the cheap things are not worth ordering, altho some are exactly the same as I see on Amazon for 2-3 times as much. Until this year, I never ordered much from foreign sellers.
But I’ve been surprised by the reliability of cheap shipments from China. Low expectations, but every single thing I’ve ordered — about twenty things in the past few months — has arrived. It has taken weeks sometimes, but the little plastic packages have shown up.
I do skim the negative feedback before buying and if there are too many reports of nonreceipt (as opposed to dissatisfaction with an item itself) I don’t order. As far as the items themselves, it’s a buyer beware environment out there, full of deceptive photos, descriptions, etc. Ebay helps this along by making it cumbersome to report a case other than nonreceipt.