@ehBeth,
Wow.
You'd have to be pretty oblivious not to notice it says for instance Sleckye instead of Sharpie.
Not saying I don't believe you, but what I'm looking at is absolutely identical to a product that's selling well on ebay. It's listed as a Trade Assurance vendor, is a Gold supplier, the supply type is listed as OBM (original brand manufacturer) and offers a free sample of its product. I'd order a sample first to see if it's the real product.
Would alibaba have grown so big, and been in business so long, if all the vendors were only selling knock offs that would basically be ripping buyers off?
I am looking right now at what is supposed to pass at a Sharpie marker, but you'd have to be asleep at the wheel to not see it says Shariuce.
Sure, it's definately caveat emptor. That's why I'm focusing in on U.S. sellers. Plus I'm not even sure I want to make any purchases at all. I'll wait to see if this vendor responds to me.
Yeah, 99% of the work involved in selling on ebay is finding a product people will want to repeatedly buy, and finding a good supply source.
Not ready to discount alibabab just yet.
I'm curious as to how well communications went with you and the vendor. When you mentioned before multiple emails back and forth about 4 wedding dresses, frankly that would have been a red flag. I get occassional questions, and most of the time it's answered with one email exchange. Without exception, when a potential buyer took multiple emails to figure something out, it always ended badly for me. I've literally had maybe 3 or 4 returns in 4 or 5 years, and they were always for some assinine reason. I'd never agrue, or even ask a question. It was like "here, take your money back, keep the product, God bless." I'm sure the opposite is true for trying to deal with shady vendors.
You are right in that you get what you pay for. I have in mind a fair amount of what I'd be willing to pay to get this particular product. If it much less I'd think something was wrong. I'd never expect to find a cheap wedding dress, anywhere.
Heh, off topic kinda, but a mini rant. This is about the Only negative review I ever received. I always have it very clear in a listing to please contact me directly with any issues or questions, and I'll make it right. I've actually met some really nice people that way. One day I looked, and I got a bad review from someone complaining the material of the products wasn't, I don't know some particular metal, when it said clear as day what the material was in my listing. Even worse, this wasn't even the main product I was selling. I was selling piecemeal some parts I realized I didn't need, and was just selling them to recoup my initial investment. It was like a $2 item. I immediately refunded her money, just asking she delete the negative review. She never did. Ebay really doesn't or can't enforce having someone delete a review. So annoyingly, I had to look at a really annoying review for 6 month, because a person bought something for $2 and didn't like it that it wasn't made out of $20 material.
I was on another forum the other day, and someone mentioned how they bought something on ebay, and a few days later a box arrived from Amazon (I've had this happen to me also) The ebay seller apparantly dropped shipped via Amazon. Another person on the forum said "Well, I certainly hope you gave them a bad review!"
Why? The person got the product he wanted, at a fair price, and quickly. There wasn't anything unethical about the transaction. But in her mind, this woman though it was terrible that whoever the ebay seller was, wasn't telling the world they could go to xyz company and get the same price.