Sadly, the customer service people at companies like eBay and Amazon will permit ridiculous seller tricks like this, but when consumers try to call them out their reviews are labeled as "racist".

It's a reflection of how ridiculous sensitivities in the United States has become. It's one thing to say, "don't buy from so-and-so because I don't like their race" and it's another thing to say "don't buy from so-and-so because they support a government that floods the US with drugs, suppresses religion, surveils their people, bullies free nations like Taiwan, steals intellectual property, and has awful human rights and animal protection practices". But believe it or not, most people don't know the difference.

As Paul said, thanks for sharing this Carsten. Especially now that AI is crawling everything we say (and yes, they're stealing my content ) it's important for us to use our voices to speak out. Heaven knows that the CCP is still flooding everywhere they can with "China is the poor victim" messaging everywhere on social media, so it's independent sites like this that have to speak up.

Thanks for sharing this info. It's just scum!

Hello,
first I wanted to write "new trick" but since I never shopped for new things on ebay before, maybe some of you already know the empty page trick. It goes like this: After the big product description they add a big description of the company and saying it's located in e.g. in the Netherlands, Then, there is an empty page which will keep most people from scrolling down any further. And ofcouse, there will be a "sending from the Netherlands" near the postal fee.
So, I ordered this tool and wasn't aware where the product comes from until the first tracking information which read like: "Package shipped to parcel service in Shenzen"! I looked at the offer again and I noticed after the empty page there were 3 pages more. In the last lines, t said they're from Shenzen in China, so they can claim "we told you".

Needless to say, the product never arrived although they had 99% ultra-positive ratings (down to 97% now since there are 13 new negative ratings - excluding mine which has magically vanished). The seller wasn't up to ask the postal service why the product was lying dormer since 4 weeks in the warehouse of an unnamed postal service. After some discussion and some pressure from ebay, they decided they'd rather give the money back than to ask the postal service to deliver it, claiming the tool is still on it's way to me and still asking for a positive rating! WTF! Well, if that's true I'll get a free Chinese tool! They said I'll get the money within 48 ours, but I think because of the weekend it will arrive next week. I'll check if it's really there.