OT: Multinational supplies

[Bill]

My cheap, but good, side cutters were damaged by trying to cut the extremely hard stems of some artificial flowers for SWMBO. After struggling on for a year or so I finally decided to invest ?1.60 in a new pair from Ebay.

They were listed as being from Shanghai.

They arrived this morning and are absolutely excellent in every way.

What I found fascinating is that they were posted (free of course) from an address in Kyrgyzstan, which I thought was more aligned to Russia and miles away from Shanghai. Google street view shows the street they came from as being not terribly upmarket, but much cleaner than some similar urban areas in England. I particularly liked the knot in one of the overhead power distribution cables.

What look like the identical cutters, even down to the logo and safety warnings on the handles, appear to be almost exactly ten times the price from Farnell, with what looks like an enormous postage cost.

It just seemed interesting to me. I do wonder how the west will compete in future.

PS. My recent ebay sale to Russia that I posted about a while ago turned out to be covered by the ebay international postage, because the purchaser had another address in the US. It took a support call to ebay to understand what was going on, though.

[harry]

This is the penalty of globalisation. The poor suffer the most. Everything seems hunky dory at first. 'Til all t he first world jobs are lost to overseas cheap labour and no-one can afford goods, cheap or otherwise. Then everyone is in the shit. Except the importer who has made his pile.

[Graham.]

[Theo]

My theory is they're exploiting a loophole in the postal treaties.

AIUI, international post works on the basis that little money is transferred internationally - the sending country keeps the income from letters being sent, and uses it to deliver letters received from abroad. That way there's no need for a big settlement process of who owes whom. In the days of correspondence everything balanced out - letters sent roughly equal letters received.

Today, the flow of traffic is massively imbalanced based on stuff shipping out of China. However, China Post is starting to get a bit expensive, so what I think they're doing is shipping containers of stuff to wherever has cheap international postage. Then somebody is drop-shipping orders from there, paying the local post office to send to the UK - and Royal Mail gets paid nothing to deliver the packages.

That might explain the increasingly strange addresses turning up on packages

- I've had a few from the Solomon Islands recently.

The alternative is they're still shipping out of China, but putting strange return addresses. Not sure why - tax purposes?

Theo

[Andy Burns]

I'm surprised there isn't even a crude charging scheme such as per tonne handed-over.

[checks wonkypedia]

yes since 1969, that's what they do.

[Bill]

The sending address I looked up on "Street View" came from the combined stamp and customs declaration on the package, which pointed to the cutters actually being posted in Kyrgyzstan.

The street itself leads to what looks like a well-maintained very large wooded picnic area via an underpass beneath a main road with pretty heavy truck traffic.

I just find it interesting, as someone who has never had much interest or success with geography.

[Jethro_uk]

JOOI was this after personal experience of trying to find anything decent in a "shop" ?

Over the years, I've discovered that the best way to get something which is (now !) out of the ordinary is Amazon/eBay and job done.

Last item: a milk frothing thermometer (just try buying one in a shop anywhere).

Before that, it was some glass pipettes (I wouldn't even know where to start looking in shops for that).

Both orders came from China - within 10 days.