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eBay weirdness

Have you tried purchasing using a different account? many sellers do use different account names and locations. do a google on the item, you may find it for less than ebay. I have.
Maybe this is the case:
Dragon Boat Festival (18th century)
Observed by Chinese
Type Cultural
Observances Dragon boat racing, consumption of realgar wine and zongzi
Date Fifth day of the fifth lunar month
2021 date 14 June
2022 date 3 June
2023 date 22 June
2024 date 31 May
Frequency Annual
 
BilboBaggins said:
My guess is that something is wrong on your side. I bet someone else could purchase it. Take a close look at your account or call ebay customer support. As a potential buyer, you have access to them, although I couldn't for the life of you remember what I did to get an actual person. I have only ever been a buyer on ebay.
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I may give them a call at some point, but I should note that I've made one purchase and put other items into my cart no problem since starting this thread.
 
If I knew what the item was I'd see if I get the same results.
But I don't. So I won't.
 
Usually if the seller sets the vacation flag on their account, a notice is prominently displayed at the top of the listing page to the effect "this seller isnaway until (month, date). If you purchase this item now shipping may be delayed". That's not verbatim, but close enough. I see that in both desktop and mobile versions of ebay when I'm looking at stuff there.

I think the sellers all drop shipping from a common supplier may not be all that far off the explanation. Rather I suspect the sellers are all either the same - or affiliated - party runnning multiple accounts with listings for the same item. Are any of the photos identical across different listings? Still can't figure out what the point is, especially if the items cannot be purchased and no payment is being collected.

Which brings me to another oddity. Sellers in Japan listing gear (Sansui, since that's what I'm looking at, mostly) under multiple accounts with the same photos - frequently from some sort of resale shop - but usually having different prices. Most of the time the prices are fairly close, but in other cases one listing will have a much lower price (usually BIN) with a massive shipping charge and another near identical listing will have "free" shipping but that figure will be close to the combined total of the first listing with the shipping cost seperately broken out.

I can't figure out the rationale for this approach. Doesn't look like any kind of scam (what is the possible benefit to the seller?) Further, these are generally items rare enough that there is no apparent need to load the search results with multiple hits to benefit one seller over others offering the same item.
 
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Sansuiman said:
Usually if the seller sets the vacation flag on their account, a notice iz prominently displayed at the top of the listing page to the effect "this seller isnaway until (month, date). If you purchase this item now shipping may be delayed". That's not verbatim, but close enough. I see that in both desktop and mobile versions of ebay when I'm looking at stuff there.

I think the sellers all drop shipping from a common supplier may not be all that far off the explanation. Rather I suspect the sellers are all either the same - or affiliated - party runnning multiple accounts with listings for the same item. Are any of the photos identical across different listings? Still can't figure out what the point is, especially if the items cannot be purchased and no payment is being collected.

Which brings me to another oddity. Sellers in Japan listing gear (Sansui, since thats what I'm looking at, mostly) under multiple accounts with the same photos - frequently from some sort of resale shop - but usually having different prices. Most of the time the prices are fairly close, but in other cases one listing will have a much lower price (usually BIN) with a massive shipping charge and another near identical listing will have "free" shipping but that figure will be close to the combined total of the first listing with the shipping cost seperately broken out.

I can't figure out the rationale for this approach. Doesn't look like any kind of scam (what is the possible benefit to the seller?) Further, these are generally items rare enough that there is no apparent need to load the search results with multiple hits to benefit one seller over others offering the same item.
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I’ve seen this going on for years.
 
Sansuiman said:
Usually if the seller sets the vacation flag on their account, a notice iz prominently displayed at the top of the listing page to the effect "this seller isnaway until (month, date). If you purchase this item now shipping may be delayed". That's not verbatim, but close enough. I see that in both desktop and mobile versions of ebay when I'm looking at stuff there.

I think the sellers all drop shipping from a common supplier may not be all that far off the explanation. Rather I suspect the sellers are all either the same - or affiliated - party runnning multiple accounts with listings for the same item. Are any of the photos identical across different listings? Still can't figure out what the point is, especially if the items cannot be purchased and no payment is being collected.

Which brings me to another oddity. Sellers in Japan listing gear (Sansui, since thats what I'm looking at, mostly) under multiple accounts with the same photos - frequently from some sort of resale shop - but usually having different prices. Most of the time the prices are fairly close, but in other cases one listing will have a much lower price (usually BIN) with a massive shipping charge and another near identical listing will have "free" shipping but that figure will be close to the combined total of the first listing with the shipping cost seperately broken out.

I can't figure out the rationale for this approach. Doesn't look like any kind of scam (what is the possible benefit to the seller?) Further, these are generally items rare enough that there is no apparent need to load the search results with multiple hits to benefit one seller over others offering the same item.
Click to expand...

This seems a fairly common practise among Japanese business sellers, for some reason. Usually you can find the same items for much cheaper on their yahoo auctions account, because it's aimed at their domestic market.
 
When I go on vacation I just change my delivery time from 2 days to 10. Never had a problem .

If everybody that's selling this DVD is on vacation then buy it from someplace else. It doesn't make sense to me.
 
AudioAvarice said:
This seems a fairly common practise among Japanese business sellers, for some reason. Usually you can find the same items for much cheaper on their yahoo auctions account, because it's aimed at their domestic market.
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Yep, this is definitely it. If you reverse-image-search many of their auctions it will lead you back to a current or completed Yahoo Japan auction. I don't think the Yahoo Japan items even belong to the eBay user, they'll probably just try and buy it for you and charge you any extra for shipping. None of the usernames match and the numerous listings from various accounts suggest that multiple people just act as a service to bid for you on Japanese items.
 
^ that looks like an excellent theory to me. I guess you could refer to these as "proxy sellers" looking to reel in a buyer in the US (are there similar listings found on the various European Ebay sites?) by purchasing and immediately reselling items from Japan to an international market.

This would also explain the ridiculously high asking prices and shipping charges frequently seen on such listings They are not only looking to profit on the flip of course, they need to leave a large buffer on the price so that they can outbid other potential buyers of the item if necessary to win it, and then to resell to whoever is bidding on their listing In turn. Really it looks like these are just people trying to emulate the buyee or aleado business model on a small scale.

Rather a convoluted idea, I wonder if they are actually making any sales with it. Since the bulk of these items appear to originate from shops rather than individuals (the pictures frequently show stacks of other gear in the background) I'd think these shops would simply offer their own US listings and cut out those attempting to operate as intermediaries. The international market wanting to buy gear located in Japan has been strong the last few years. I've ordered a few things myself; but these were all sold and shipped directly by hifi resale dealers, not individuals.
 
Sansuiman said:
^ that looks like an excellent theory to me. I guess you could refer to these as "proxy sellers" looking to reel in a buyer in the US (are there similar listings found on the various European Ebay sites?) by purchasing and immediately reselling items from Japan to an international market.

This would also explain the ridiculously high asking prices and shipping charges frequently seen on such listings They are not only looking to profit on the flip of course, they need to leave a large buffer on the price so that they can outbid other potential buyers of the item if necessary to win it, and then to resell to whoever is bidding on their listing In turn. Really it looks like these are just people trying to emulate the buyee or aleado business model on a small scale.

Rather a convoluted idea, I wonder if they are actually making any sales with it. Since the bulk of these items appear to originate from shops rather than individuals (the pictures frequently show stacks of other gear in the background) I'd think these shops would simply offer their own US listings and cut out those attempting to operate as intermediaries. The international market wanting to buy gear located in Japan has been strong the last few years. I've ordered a few things myself; but these were all sold and shipped directly by hifi resale dealers, not individuals.
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The thing is, many of the postings on Western auction sites are completely different from the advertised product and oftentimes false. You can find feedback for these resellers stating that the object they received wasn't the one in the picture and had other scratches/scuffs/damage etc. Some customers stated that they never received the item they purchased (likely the reseller was outbid).It seems some of the eBay resellers have a single BIN item for, say, a Technics SL-1200. If someone buys one, then they immediately go on the hunt for one to buy off of Yahoo Japan.

It'd be nice if Japanese stores would resell to the West, but it may be that many of them want to avoid the language barrier and packaging issues that other proxy buyers have made their business.
 
It's pretty easy to use companies like Tenso/Buyee as proxies for any Japanese website ime, and they offer a good range of packaging, shipping, and insurance options. As long as you factor in import tax, it's a pretty safe way to buy online, even when compared to ebay purchases in my own country.
 
I've been burned by the Japanese Scam, they had two different Ebay Listings for a mic at two different prices, they were very rare and usually bought in pairs when new. I bought both but guess what, there was only one, one of the sellers said he didn't have it anymore. Now anything I see on Ebay from Japan, I always check for multiple listings and assume there's only one and look for the cheapest one. The price is usually significantly different between the listings.
 
I was damn close to getting burned by a seller, he had a turntable with a rare cartridge listed for sale. However, I checked his feedback and most of it was from the same account buying a $1 item from them like over a hundred times. I tracked down the real listing on Yahoo Japan and found out that it was sold weeks earlier (and the original seller didn't even include the cart :().
 
@MrNegative, I'm glad you've run this down and posted about it. So apparently it is a sort of quasi-scam. I've not yet come close to considering buying from one of these listings, but it's good to have some better background on what is going on there to avoid getting burned.

Nice touch with the MD player in your avatar, BTW.
 
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