mjkzz wrote:Lou Jost wrote:Yes, I see your point, but this particular practice seems uniquely Chinese, because it depends on Taobao's inaccessibility to most of us, and all of the sites that duplicated the listing were Chinese. Are there non-Chinese sites that engage in this particular practice of falsely implying on eBay that they have an item which they do not have, and doubling or tripling the price? Anyway I will change the title of this thread.
Regarding my old post, you are right, the equivalence only applies to resolution on the subject. Blowing up the image blows up everything. The apo objective I was discussing doesn't have any noticeable CA at 20x, but I imagine there is some magnification sufficiently large that CA might be detectable.
I think until we, as a professional community, establish a sounding governance that can get rid of any form of corruption, bias, and most importantly, deliver impartial judgement (can we, I doubt it), this type of post, to the lesser extent, is like kiddo's house play without adult supervision, however innocent, still irresponsible.
To more serious extent, this can be considered as libelous statement that has serious legal consequences . If any of the parties in the list decides to take legal actions, filing libel suit, you are most likely to lose the suit. Why? The court will likely consult statement from trading platforms (ebay, paypal, taobao, etc), and if the suing party is not being thrown out for dishonesty, this could be considered as libel (ie, your statement is not true and your statement is defaming those in the list). I think, even if the involved party sues the vendor and win, the court would not take that as evidence of dishonesty, rather a trade dispute.
Of course, I am not a lawyer, just my two cents for your benefits, consult a lawyer if you want to.
Nah I think you're reading too much into this. Take this example:
I don't like red apples.
"So you don't like all apples? Why are you singling out apples, what about oranges?"
No, it's the red apples, not green ones.
Dishonest Chinese sellers.
"So you don't like Chinese sellers? Why are you singling out Chinese sellers? What about American ones?"
No, it's the dishonest Chinese sellers, not the honest ones.
(I'm not exemplifying anyone's statements, it's just a generalising analogy, I'm not saying anyone here in claiming "so you dislike..." etc.)
The emphasis here is on dishonesty, and the fact that all these sellers are Chinese. As Chinese myself, screw Chinese sellers who are dishonest. The post is targeted at Chinese sellers who are dishonest, not Chinese in general. To be fair, these people being Chinese doesn't matter, but then 100% of these ebay relisters are Chinese, many of which have utterly horrible ratings -- mostly because they sell items they don't have and they just cancel the order.
We are amateurs and hobbyists with lots of time, placing an order on an out of stock item just to get refunded the next day won't really matter. Think about this though, imagine yourself as a project manager and some high end equipment decided it's a great time to fail. Instead of going to the repairs department, claiming insurance, or getting the manufacturer to solve the issue, you see a replacement board on ebay for a decent price. The alternative options will cost a lot and you as the manager with a tight budget does not want to increase the overhead cost of the project. You proceed to place an order with the fastest next day shipping option. After one day, the seller cancels the order because it's "out of stock". You wasted an entire day dealing with a malfunctioning item. The loss in terms of labour and trouble stemming from frustration during the one workday is irreversible, and moreover, at the end of the day, you have to take those alternative options which are more expensive. The losses went from one day of frustration to that, and in addition the cost to fix that silly equipment. One can argue it's just bad decision making, but usually we as humans do not assume the worst of others, and not everyone is aware of such practices. These sellers aren't just selling optics people in our community like to sniff and rub on, there are ones relisting salvages boards, parts from high end equipment, and etc. I have photos of the two "electronic trash mass grave" locations in China. One is in Shenzhen, the other in Hong Kong. I was told to not post them, so I won't. China consumes about 90% of the world's ewaste, literally the world's electronic dumpster. So the ones yammering on China being the biggest polluters can really just shove it. Per capita China is also about as polluting as an average European country. To measure pollution by totality instead of per capita is just dishonest.
It's like this but on a far larger scale:
This kind of practice as stated is uniquely Chinese, it's a consequence of the somewhat inaccessible market in China and the ramifications of purchasing from China whilst not being able to speak the language, thereby unable to adequately defend oneself. There's plenty of these actions in real life actually, in terms of tourism, there are tourist traps targeted at people who do not speak the language. It's obviously not just China, I've heard stuff from all over the world, but the practice is mostly from countries that are considered "developing", the practice is also criminal, at least in China. My point is that, not being a native speaker and not being able get items first hand greatly increases the chances of getting screwed. Some dishonest people will exploit this fact. For example, my dad's company got played by a factory in Israel, they refused to solve the problem so he just had to eat up the losses. Having the item forwarded also increases the chances of it breaking by at least twice, since the shipment is performed twice.
I stand by my position that it's worth it as long as one isn't paying more than 20% extra. Ebay and Paypal's protection adequately handles the downside of directly purchasing from China, it serves as an equaliser. One can even abuse this system by dramatising minute problems. This is called "yan shi guan" and it's largely frowned upon in China. I personally won't do that.
The libel stuff won't work. This statement is factually correct. The practice isn't unethical, just dishonest.
1. These sellers lie about their inventory. They don't own the items, this is against ebay's ToS, they are technically not allowed to do this kind of stuff.
2. These sellers lie about the condition. They simply do not know the condition of the item.
3. What these sellers are doing can be considered exploitative. They are exploiting people with limited access to the market.
4. Relisting, creating multiple listings, and listing duplicate items elsewhere is also against the ToS.
If eBay takes their ToS seriously, all these sellers should be banned. Multiple violations here.
An example is this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Used-Good-LINO ... 3776360266
It's still listed, and it's claimed to be in stock. This is simply untrue, because guess who has it...
Just look at this mess. I rarely take embarrassment on behalf of others... But if people talk about how deceptive Chinese sellers are and use this as an example, I'll have a hard time trying to take the opposite side. Everything in anecdotal, such as five of my bad businesses came from Melbourne and I live in Sydney... but c'mon, this?!
Look at the feedback, it seems like the seller doesn't go out of their way to inform the buyers about the availability. If it's not available, who cares! Not gonna tell the buyer, they can wait or go to paypal to get their money back. This is far,
far worse than I initially thought. I thought these sellers despite being dishonest about their listings, would at least have the decency to inform the buyer about unavailable items and cancel the order straight away. These people are literal scum.
I don't take any offence to this title, I've also been the person talking about these things for a long time, before any of this was made aware to others. I've warned people about the practices and the jacked up prices in an attempt to discourage others from giving these people money.
The convenience made me so lazy. 
