Posted on 08/23/2016 6:17:40 PM PDT by Paul R.
...All of this is little comfort to McGrath, who chafes at the thought of the Postal Service helping Chinese merchants poach his customers. “All of us sellers are selling a lot of Chinese goods in America but at least we’re creating jobs, making money, and adding to the economy,” he said. “But when people buy direct from China that’s adding nothing to the American economy.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Also from the article, we find that US based USPS' customers are funding this outrage. Ie., if I try to sell something to someone in Germany or China, I get whacked with higher postal fees than I otherwise would. (See Note 3 in the article). US jobs get killed in both directions...
Now, granted, this has not yet reached the level of tens of billions of dollars involved in other trade areas. But this is part of it, and would make for great attack ads, IMO, because this kind of crap is everywhere. This just happens to be an easily understood example that Trump could speak authoritatively about, after some research by his staff.
A two year old article that you felt you needed to change the title to?
I once bought a card of 6 lithium batteries from Hong Kong for $1.20 including postage. They arrived after only a week or so.
I remember wondering how in the world they could do that. BTW the batteries were fine.
Yes, because the “new” issue is, will Trump take advantage of this opportunity to make hay?
FR rule: don’t change the article title.
BTW, I’ve also read on eBay forums that China subsidizes the shipping, as well. Can anyone go into detail or provide authoritative links regarding that?
I have a $600/mo trade imbalance with my grocery store. Where do I protest?
Then how does one address (headline) the present issue in what is seen on the posts (list of posts / forum main page) page, if it can’t be done in the headline? It’s certainly not an excerpt. Write a vanity?
Yes, but I’m not helping fund it (unless you are on food stamps.)
You took a two year old article, before Trump even announced his candidacy, that says nothing about Trump and try to twist the headline so it does?
FR rule: do not change the original headline.
In the interest of honesty, I admit I’ve bought items off eBay from Chinese sellers too. Some such items cannot even be found, or at least readily from US sources, eBay or not. (I’d guess that either the Chinese sellers “got there first”, or drove out any US competition some time back.)
One still has to survive on the very “unlevel” playing field. In business, one has to find the quality that makes sense for the $$ and the market, or you die. But that doesn’t make the playing field “right”.
I prefer to buy American and will pay a small premium to do so, but not a huge one. A month ago, I bought a 2000 lumen flashlight from China for $3.88 including shipping.
Well the flashlight is closer to 200 lumen so they lied but it is still a bright well made flashlight for almost nothing.
I in fact just ordered another one a few days ago. 200 lumens is more than enough for most use and still much brighter than the old Ray-O-Vac 2D cell flashlights.
This is a problem that a pretty fair number of people hope Trump will notice & address. Whether he does or not is the issue. How should I post this to get any notice? You tell me. Write a vanity and then refer to the old title? Who reads vanities? Most normal people are heavily time crunched and just skim headlines, selecting ones that look interesting for further reading...
You say no US jobs created or money made in the US. That is totally incorrect.
Ebay makes money off them as does Amazon. Both of those companies actively recruit these sellers, and jobs at both of these companies have been created due to the increased sales. Even state sales taxes are collected in some states.
Any job that can be done overseas, will end up there in the digital world.
Free trade kills jobs and incomes in the more developed countries, the wealth transfers to the less developed countries. Ain’t globalization wonderful?
Reduced or non-existent listing fees.
Reduced or non-existent end of sale fees.
Top rated discount for item price, but of course, not on shipping.
Paypal’s transaction discount for China (10 cents a transaction vs 40 cents for most domestic customers)
Postage cost in China is only to USPS depot, all packages from there are free.
So, if I sell an item for 99 cents plus $3.00 shipping, my eBay fees are 15 cents to list (per month), 34 cents in end of auction fees, 45 cents in paypal fees, the label is 3 cents and the packaging is 22 cents, and I pay DHL Global Mail $1.55 to ship the package. $2.74 in costs, I make a buck and a quarter per item.
Now, if I was in China, I'd have free shipping, and price the item at $1.55. My costs: 0 cents for a BIN listing (GTC), 11 cents if I cancel the item. End of auction fees are a flat five cents for items under $5. Paypal charges a transaction fee of 8 cents plus 2 cents per $2, the labels are a half cent each, and the bags are 7 cents if I buy the premium ones. Postage from Hong Kong to the depot is $5 per pickup up per bin (think watermelon bin) plus 18 cents a mile.
So .05 + .10 + .005 + .07 + effectively free shipping = .225 per package (call it a total of 30 cents total for a moderate volume seller.)
I still make my buck and a quarter, though very likely I'm getting MUCH higher sales as I'm undercutting a US based seller by no less than $2.44 each sale. European delivery the seller pays 17 cents per hundred miles from Berlin, Africa is a flat $4.50 for packages under 10 ounces, Asia & Pacific is $2.50, and Australia & Russia are $3.75 - for most countries, full tracking is included.
As for authoritative links, there are none. You open your business in China on eBay, you sell 20 items to someone (say your girlfriend), you get the feedback, and then you make an appointment for an eBay representative to set you up with preferred pricing for both eBay and Paypal.
The ‘fees’ are ‘high’ to some people's visions, $800 per month for an anchor store on eBay with an inventory of up to 100,000 items, $400 per additional 100,000 items. The five cents fee goes against your monthly fee, so if you sell 40,000 items a month, you're paying that $800 fee plus a nickle for each item beyond it. But really, meeting that item number goal is easy.
Once you get above 1/2 kilo, prices for shipping go up dramatically (and you'll see this reflected in the pricing from sellers in China.)
I had an offer from a person in China to manage my entire inventory; I fill up a few sea containers full of product, it arrives there, they photograph it and list it using my name, and deduct the costs and deposit payment right into my US paypal account. Fee per item listed was 27 cents, per item sold was 47 cents, if I put forward $100,000 in seed money, I could expect to pocket $273,600 in the first year.
Trust me when I say I really should have done it. Oh, and the best parts... Negative feedback has to reach 10 percent before it becomes an issue, with every negative feedback removed for a package delivered within 21 days to the US, 30 days to Europe, 45 days to Africa or 75 days to South America & Mexico.
Amazon charges about twice what eBay does to those in China (but they get $3.00 in shipping) with A-Z resolution covered so long as the item is available for online tracking within 72 hours of purchase.
Articles posted without the original headline have an adverse affect on searches here on FR. Thus the rule about not changing headlines.
If you can find a recent article about the topic (Trump, the Chinese and trade) feel free to post it.
Well, heck, I’d pay at least 50% more to buy from a US seller an item at least made by a solid US ally. But, try to find, for example, a 4 bay AA battery charger with individual control for each battery, that charges reasonably quickly, and switches to trickle (maintenance) charge after charging is done (again individually for each bay), for under $14, made by a said ally. Can’t be done. Ebay, Chinese seller, $6.88 (last time I looked), free shipping. And they work great. Darn scary...
wow lots of detail on that. Personally I got 100% pos feedback with 62 transactions since 1999 on ebay. Purty sure I don’t want to send 100k seed money to china for better fees.
I did not say that. A quote in the article did.
In my own opinion, it’s not that the playing field has tilted to vertical, or that there are no benefits (such as to US buyers). However, a 45 degree tilt is not right...!
I’m not so good on that, 99.8% positive feedback for 9860 feedbacks over the past 12 months. You get up in volume, you find the people who can’t be happy with what they got.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.