Amazon package coming from China.

[Scott Shepherd]

I ordered some aluminum knobs I found on Amazon. No big deal. Amazon had a note, "Sold by such and such", which you see if it's not coming directly from Amazon's distribution system. $26 total, shipping was free, and for some reason, I got a $1.50 discount. Okay....whatever. About 1 hour later (and this was ordered late at night), I get an order update that my items have shipped. Wow, cool. I don't know where they are, but that's impressive, shipping in less than 1 hour (well, filling out the paper work anyway).

So I thought I'd check it today to see if the tracking number showed where it could be coming from so I'd know about when it would be here. I log in, look at the estimated delivery date and it tells me Monday-Wednesday of next week. Okay, I'd expect that with the free shipping option.

The kicker- no tracking number, but the carrier is China Post.

Had I known that in advance, I probably would have ordered them from someone else. I thought I was buying it from someone in the USA and I'd be helping them. Turns out, not so much. I've gone back and looked at the Amazon add for the items and no where does it say that it comes directly from China.

Interesting twist on Amazon products now. I think I'll be a little more careful on future orders. Not sure how I'd know, but I'm going to pay a little more attention.

[Matt Meiser]

I won't buy from 3rd party sellers on Amazon unless Amazon is shipping it. This is yet another reason in my mind.

[Wes Mitchell]

I've had a few Amazon items come from China, usually little things, and you're right it's hard to tell when products will come from China. I ordered a vessel sink, vessel sink mount, and faucet on Amazon. The sink and faucet came from China and the mount came from FL. The items from China showed up 2-3 days before the mount from Florida. Go figure.

[Brian Elfert]

Items shipped from China or Hong Kong are commonplace on Ebay, but they let you know before you buy. I buy from Amazon marketplace sellers pretty often without issues so far. I buy some pretty obscure stuff at times that Amazon would never sell due to limited demand.

I have bought a few times on Ebay from Hong Kong or China and the stuff usually shows up within two weeks.

[Steve Peterson]

So many items sold on Amazon are actually coming from China anyway. I don't really see much difference (other than the shipping delay) if it ships directly from China, or if Amazon buys it from China and then ships it to you.

It surprises me how cheap some of the items are that get direct shipped from China. I ordered a small stereo connector from China for $1.29 with free shipping.

Steve

[Royce Meritt]

I ordered some items from China (not through Amazon, but another outlet) that were sent "China Post". My package arrived MUCH quicker than I anticipated.

[Harry Hagan]

So many items sold on Amazon are actually coming from China anyway. I don't really see much difference (other than the shipping delay) if it ships directly from China, or if Amazon buys it from China and then ships it to you.

It surprises me how cheap some of the items are that get direct shipped from China. I ordered a small stereo connector from China for $1.29 with free shipping.

Steve

My thoughts exactly.

The last item I purchased from Amazon with free shipping was made in China and took ten days to arrive—eight days of getting around to contact UPS to come and pick it up, and two days to actually ship it to me.

Several years ago I purchased some antennas for a cell phone. It came from China via UPS and arrived in Kentucky three days later with no shipping charge.

There’s no reasonable reason why Amazon should take eight days before processing an order.

[Scott Shepherd]

I'm not an "Anti-China" person. I've bought things directly from China as well. But when it comes to some things, I try and keep it here if I can, as if I had something I sold, I'd rather you give me your business than someone else overseas too. Some times you don't have much choice. In this case, I did have a choice, had I known. I'd rather support someone working at a distribution center in the midwest than not support them at all and have China post delivering it via U.S.Mail.

If it hadn't already shipped, I'd have cancelled the order and ordered it from a stateside vendor. Even if they are selling China make products, the profit still goes into our economy instead of theirs.

[David Weaver]

I haven't had great experience with large packages coming from china, but experience with small packages has been fine. Large packages often come slowly, at high cost, and in my case sometimes get lost.

I suppose amazon's response would be that you should join prime and only order things that are prime eligible, but we'll see how this plays out.

[Brian Elfert]

There’s no reasonable reason why Amazon should take eight days before processing an order.

Was it actually sold by Amazon, or by a third party selling on Amazon? Amazon has been purposely delaying shipping of "free" shipping items that they sell, but not usually for eight days. I think they are trying to encourage folks to pay for prime.

[William Adams]

Usually delays for Amazon free shipping are caused by consolidation of items in a warehouse so that they can all go out in a single box --- I wish they had a system which would show which warehouse a given item was in.

[Brian Elfert]

They don't do the consolidation process for Prime orders. I've had orders of one item with free shipping not leave the warehouse for three or four business days, and not just once. Others have reported the same thing with Amazon free shipping. I don't really blame Amazon for doing it, but it also means they are usually my vendor of last resort because they it.

I've had various trials of Prime over the years and I think only once did an item show up on the third business day. Heck, they have shipped items on a Saturday and I would get them on Monday. The items were marked with next day air even though I only paid for two day delivery and by rights they had until Wednesday to get it to me.

[Steve Milito]

I have on rare occasions bought overseas items on ebay, mostly because there was no domestic vendor selling the product. I haven't had a problem.
I am an Amazon Prime member. It's worth every penny. I sometimes get items from a regional warehouse the next day and they never hold items to bundle them. I can buy just single CD or book and not have to pay more for shipping than the item is worth, and therefore don't feel compelled to buy several items to keep the shipping cost to a reasonable percentage. I've also been pleasantly surprised that some fairly substantially bulky/heavy items are part of the prime program.
I think Prime is a bargain.

[David Weaver]

I'm a prime person also, but I'm out next year. There's no great reason for me to have it, it doesn't pencil out and what used to be (amazon had fantastic prices) is no longer the case - especially when you start ordering small items just because you're on prime. For the small stuff, walmart or target or whatever is local is often cheaper (because the prime prices have to be jacked up to cover the shipping) and for the big stuff, you're already over amazon's free shipping limit, anyway.

five years ago, amazon would often have better prices than anyone else, but I'm pretty sure they realize they don't have to any longer, and the fact that they think they need 20 bucks more for prime tips me over to not having any interest in it.

The videos are probably the best part of the whole prime setup, but I can't think of anything that I've watched that I can't live without - certainly not $100 worth of stuff.

Ebay and amazon are both making their way off my list of places to use as a default if there are any other options available at all. There are too many mature retailers (B&M and internet) and I'm ready for the next wave.

[David G Baker]

I purchase an audio adapter cord on Amazon thinking I was going to get soon. I did everything to order the item and on the last step of the transaction I found out I would be getting it between the 15th and 17th of April. I placed the order on March 15th. I guess it is coming from China or some far away place like Florida. It was cheap so I went to Radio Shack and bought one locally.

[Matt Meiser]

I prefer to buy my cheap Chinese junk from a seller that I can pressure to take it back at their expense if it doesn't even work as advertised out of the box. And I will--surprised I haven't been kicked out of Prime I've sent so much stuff back.

[Mac McQuinn]

You can sometimes determine the country of origin by looking through the feedback on an item or at the questions/answers which have been asked about the product. I've contacted Amazon and requested a country of origin be listed in the product's description. I also don't do the third party thing. I'm happy with my Amazon experiences and would rather deal directly with them on all purchases.
Mac

[John McClanahan]

ebay is even worse. I have bought stuff from ebay that boasted "USA seller" only to have it show up with China Post on the package.

John

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Another Prime user here. I love having Amazon at my disposal. They are not perfect though. My wife buys stuff from third party sellers on it, I never do. She has had problems with a couple things, I haven't. One of the things for her were some cheap birthday party junk props. They came directly from China, for super cheap and fast. They sent the wrong amount though, and with one email, they shipped the replacements. Plus a bunch more, I will never run out of fake beards, ala the Robertsons... They also did it in the ten day window she had.

I'm guessing they were sitting in a warehouse here somewhere for distribution. I doubt they fly everything over the pond.

[Moses Yoder]

I can remember looking at a map and seeing lines at county divisions, state divisions, and country divisions. We were driving one time we went past a sign that said "Welcome to Michigan!" I looked for the line and there was none. I think the lines are just something we made up. They don't really exist. That being said, I don't think it is fair that one man in one area needs $100 a day just to survive and another man can get by on $2 a day; that doesn't seem like a fair market. However I believe that is being adjusted as we speak.

[Brian Ashton]

At Scott Shepherd

Shipped direct from China is not at all uncommon in this day of online shopping. Many companies are simply order forwarders probably run out of a house. To be honest what does it matter, it was coming from china anyways.

[Robert LaPlaca]

Had I known that in advance, I probably would have ordered them from someone else. I thought I was buying it from someone in the USA and I'd be helping them. Turns out, not so much. I've gone back and looked at the Amazon add for the items and no where does it say that it comes directly from China.

Interesting twist on Amazon products now. I think I'll be a little more careful on future orders. Not sure how I'd know, but I'm going to pay a little more attention.

You know it's funny you brought this up, as I though I purchased a 1/4-32 (I know a very unusual size) tap from a normal amazon reseller, turns out the item has been shipped from China and should be in my hands by 4/28!! One month or so after the original order

[Orion Henderson]

This is a fascinating comment and I would like to thank you for making it. I am not sure what direction you are headed with it, but bravo regardless. We are all humans-and our commonalities are far greater than our differences.

Very few of us did anything to be from a specific country. First generation immigrants are the only people who actually made the effort to choose their nation of residence.

[Steve Peterson]

I'm not an "Anti-China" person. I've bought things directly from China as well. But when it comes to some things, I try and keep it here if I can, as if I had something I sold, I'd rather you give me your business than someone else overseas too. Some times you don't have much choice. In this case, I did have a choice, had I known. I'd rather support someone working at a distribution center in the midwest than not support them at all and have China post delivering it via U.S.Mail.

That's a good point. Some items are produced at such a low cost, that there is more effort distributing it than the actual manufacturing. Keeping the distribution in the US means that a large portion of the money stays here.

Steve

[Scott Shepherd]

Well, it's been slightly interesting on this order. The items were aluminum anodized knobs. My desire was to find red anodized knobs. You can find black and other colors online, but I couldn't find the red. Then I found the red on Amazon and ordered 3 sets of them. Total for the order was $24 or something like that.

They arrived and they are somewhere between purple and pink. I contacted the seller and they told me they were very sorry, but there are "color shifts" in the process. Really? So it's not possible to get consistent "red" anodized parts? I guess all the parts I've seen for decades now were just my imagination. They offered to give me $3. Huh? $3? For what? So I said I didn't want the $3, I wanted the items as shown in the photo, which were dark, rich red, not pink/purple. Again, $3, please take it. They repeatedly said "they work though, so you can go ahead and use them, we're very sorry for the color shift". Then they tell me I can send them back, but I'll have to pay for that myself and they won't refund my money until they get the package back. My concern is I ship them back, they can easily just say "We never got the package back" and then I'm out $24, or best case, I take 1/2 hour off work, go mail them, and then wait 3 weeks for them to get them and refund my money.

Doesn't seem right to me. You shipped me something that wasn't as described and now I have to pay out of my pocket to send back something that you shouldn't have sent me in the first place? And I have to wait 3 weeks to get a refund?

They begged me not to leave negative feedback on Amazon. I repeatedly told them I wouldn't if they'd make it right. In the end, they told me to "Sell them to a family member".

Nice. Your return policy is to tell people to sell the misrepresented items to a family member.

Lesson learned. I'll pay REALLY close attention to Amazon from this point forward to make sure it's not coming from China. Not because I think China is bad, but because their return policies aren't very favorable to the buyer.

[Myk Rian]

I hope you leave the negative review.

[David Weaver]

Me, too. Leave the negative review. Amazon has no other way to know that it didn't turn out well.

that is another issue that I have with things coming from china. China post is terrible with packages (they seem to be OK with small things that fit in envelopes), and getting things back to them is no better than getting things from them. Not only terrible in terms of timing, but china post is also expensive.

That's just another reason why I'd rather buy something like Scott is talking about from someone in the US who would be distributing the stuff and say "ghee, these aren't red, I guess I won't sell them as red". The problem never would've occurred, and if it did, it would've been resolved within a week of purchase rather than a month or two.

[Scott Shepherd]

This is the last message I got from them about it, and I have cut and pasted this, so it's the complete, exact response I got :

"that if you do that we have do not have any idea"

I have no idea what that means, but it all cost them a 1 star rating on their product and a 1 star rating on their company. Honestly, people don't seem to get it. If you don't want me to post a negative review about your product, then give me my money back or send me product that looks like what you advertise. It's really that simple. I paid $8 a set for 3 sets. So you know they paid $2 or less a set, more than likely. So for $6, you could have hand picked a set that the color was correct on and that would have gotten you a 5 star rating on the customer service and the product. Instead, you decided to not do it, and now everyone that looks at that product will see 1 rating, and that 1 rating is a 1 star. I hope it was worth it.

[Michael Arruda]

I was once asked to build a kitchen. The buyer had a multi-million dollar home and drove a Ferrari. I make barely enough to get by, live in a 1,000 sq ft house and drive a 20 year old truck. The client told me that he had priced out a kitchen at a home center, and found the cheapest he could get one locally was going to cost $20,000. Since I was a small one man operation, with little overhead compared to him, he figured he would buy from me instead, because I should be able to make the kitchen for no more than $4,000. He also wanted me to include delivery costs in that. And it had to be at least as good as the cheap one he could get at the home center. I really needed the work, so I told him I'd take the job. I ended up using the least expensive materials I could, and got the stain and finish from the ReStore pretty cheap.

So, I built it, finished it and delivered it. Thankfully the bid didn't include installation. As I was unloading onto the back patio by the pool so he could get his finish carpenters to install it, he came out and started screaming at me to take it all back because he specifically ordered golden pecan stain and I gave him golden oak. The hue was similar to my eye, so I just told him to stuff it and walked away.

Now, as you all have probably figured out, this is a farce to make a point. We live in an immediate gratification world were we seek the lowest possible price for all things. This has lead to the opening of wider and wider supply chains all around the world to take advantage of lower operating costs in order to cut prices while still retaining margin. As more product is available at a lower price, consumers come to expect the product to not change yet be available at a lower and lower price.

We cannot continue to purchase product at the lowest possible price and expect the service we once received from the small retailer on main street. Cheers is no more- there is no place where everybody knows your name. It's no more because we made it that way. We all purchase product from China. I have a Chinese laser I purchased second hand. Most of the rest of my shop is at least 60 year old American Iron, but the point is, in a global economy, you cannot expect to "buy American" in all cases. We let it get to this point, as a nation and as a global community expecting ever lower prices and willingly purchase on price alone. The 99 cent store exists solely for this purpose. People go in to by a couple things and end up walking out $100 lighter and a cart full of "amazingly priced" product that will be broken and in the dump less than a month later, to make room for the next time they go to the 99 cent store.

We cannot expect to purchase items at a lower price than it would cost to even produce in the USA and expect the service and quality of a higher priced item. To keep the product cost low enough to sell at such a price, the anodizing line is probably running full throttle 24 hours a day. When there is an error, it is cheaper to lose customers based on lacking quality than to stop the line for an hour and lose a half million units of product to fix the mix. When you produce a product that makes profit on significant volume and little on margin, losing a thousand customers is more profitable than losing that half million units to sell.

Customer service is dead. Long live low prices.

We need to vote with our wallets. We need to change this and turn it around. I don't mean just purchase USA, as there is a significant number of products no longer made here, period. We need to band together and stop buying on cost, to begin again to purchase on quality. This will encourage a shift to slightly higher prices in the interest of customer service.

-Michael

[Michael Arruda]

Another note, specific to China. From what I've read, it seems there's a disconnect in the concept of "customer service" in that country. It's starting to turn around as the country becomes more capitalist, but culturally, "service" is something that is done for the greater good, the betterment of all; the communist ideal. As such, service to the happiness of an individual does not compute. In the above example, I personally would never tell a client to "stuff it" as I know that if I take a job I will complete it to the best of my abilities, sometimes at a loss as I did not foresee an issue that crops up. For someone with a communist mindset, the person with more should not be catered to, but rather provided with a minimum of care and given a utilitarian product in the aim of bringing their better status in life more in line with everyone else. One does not provide "service" to the "customer" unless it is a benefit to everyone else, as well.

-Michael