International auctions

[fluteone1999]

I purchased 4 items from 2 different suppliers in Hong Kong.  In reality there are one and the same as their auction pages are the same from top to bottom.  Within their shipping they state winner will receive 5% discount if more than one item is purchase and discount has higher levels with more auction wins.  I've written seller twice...actually 3 times because I asked if I could purchase wholesale lot for my business using ebay.....they never answered that email.  Wrote them before bidding to inform of more than one auction, wrote after winning auctions, and now have received an email back from them with hundreds of ????????????????????????????????????????? question marks all over the email and not a word from them.  Those these are small dollar amount auctions the rules still need to apply.  Checked some of their feedback and people have stated they never emailed them back.  Don't think they can read or write English.  So what do I do now?  I won't pay full shipping on these items which would cost peanuts to ship.

I checked Paypal before typing this and they still have not given discount.  Auctions are:

160415632953 , 320505199366, 320505175940, 160415629734

Input?

Thanks,

flutelovers

[BigKahuna97]

The reality is there are good sellers and bad sellers and the term "you often get what you pay for" comes into play.  Many of the Asian retailers are small mom and pop stores that continually handle high volume which is why the price is low.  The questions I have for you is if you have taken the e-mail you wrote them initially and tried using Google translate to send it in their native tongue.  On top of that the only other thing I would do, if I were in your shoes and they still refused to honor the listing, would be to use the live help chat on eBay and explain the entire situation.  Most answers are canned and "bot-like" but the live help is an easy way to navigate through the help page maze and find forms to request a mutual withdraw from winning the auctions.  I know the cheapest price is often the eye catcher but I have found the best luck in going with the second or third lowest price.  It's just enough of a price increase to pay for customer service should it be needed.

Good luck!

[robertswww]

Even though their auction pages may be all the same, if they have different seller account user names (you mentioned 2 different suppliers), then they have the right to charge you separate shipping for those 2 different groups of products you bought, and you are legally bound to complete the transactions you won the bid on.

The questions marks in your email typically  mean it could not translate their characters (possibly Chinese characters).  Here are some sites to help you send and receive Chinese emails:

http://www.white-clouds.com/iclc/cliej/cl16eng-email.htm
http://www.chinesecomputing.com/internet/email.html
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006032200093
http://newton.uor.edu/Departments&Programs/AsianStudiesDept/Language/email.html

For future reference, try to communicate with a seller further ahead of the auction end date/time. If you do not receive communication, or get a bad feeling, then do not proceed to bid. Also, keep a close eye on the seller's feedback and what other customers are saying.