Thread: Ebay
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Old 09-01-2017, 08:04 PM   #3
Rich Z
Yeah, that's another thing that USA "manufacturer's" and retailers have shot themselves in the head over. You can't get me to believe that a Chinese made product that YOU import and resell with your label on it is going to be any better than the same item I buy directly from Chinese outlets. Take tools for instance. I used to buy Craftsman tools almost exclusively. But once I started seeing "Made in China" on them, well heck why should I pay a premium price on something that is going to be pretty much identical to what Harbor Freight is selling? And no, the excuse "they are using an American made design", made to USA specs", or "inspected by USA inspectors" really doesn't mean a hill of beans to me. All they are doing is buying the same exact thing, slapping their own label or engraving their business name on the product, and pocketing the larger profits they are making by laying off their own workforce and just importing the stuff to flip to consumers. And a dollar to a donut says I am just being lied to anyway by some salesman trying to convince me that a Craftsman hammer made in China is going to be any better than one I buy at Harbor Freight. You want my money? Well EARN it!

If they want to charge "Made in America" prices, well dammit, MAKE them in America!

I completely stopped buying motorized Craftsman products after having too many of them just burn up or otherwise fail on me. And then K-mart bought them, and well, that pretty much told the rest of the story for me.

Honestly, I am EXTREMELY surprised that China hasn't created a manufacturing facility that is an entire town, province, state, or whatever, that they simply name "America". Then they really could market their products as "Made in America", and it would be our problem that we couldn't tell the difference.

But to give you another perspective, or maybe the same, a while back I was looking at a rather expensive electric buffer to work on my vehicles with. It was something like $500, if I remember correctly. But I'll be honest, can it REALLY be that much better than a $40 buffer from Harbor Freight? I could buy 12 of them for what the expensive one would have cost me and still be ahead of the game, so even if the Harbor Freight one only lasted a year, what was the smart choice there?

So it appears that China is poised to just knock out the middle men in their dealings with the American buying public. On Ebay, that is already happening pretty bluntly. Heck I once ordered something I wanted that cost $2.50 from China with shipping included in that price. I wound up buying 5 of them because I felt bad that they couldn't be making any profit on that sale.

Is it a bad thing to be buying from China? Well, I guess it depends. If you are expecting quality merchandise, then I suspect you might be disappointed more times than not. But if it would be items that are being made in China anyway, just the USA retailers are tacking on their own profit by being middle men, then why should I buy from them instead of going to China direct? I would LIKE to buy American, but it's getting tougher and tougher to not only come up with a good reason for doing so, but to even FIND something that is really and truly MADE IN AMERICA.