"Due to the unbalanced pricing policies of the United Postal Union and subsidies from the U.S. Postal Service, it costs people in China virtually nothing to ship small packages to the U.S. That, combined with the super cheap price they pay for the junk they ship, makes brushing a quick and cost effective way to move up the sales rankings -- which means everything for e-commerce merchants."
I simply can't fathom why Western companies aren't freaking out abut this.
Everyone US seller is, sort of, and Amazon is as well. Customers still expect their stuff in 2 days, expect easy returns, and expect QC at the warehouse, and that's something China cannot replicate.
Fake reviews have been an easy exploit for sellers for a long time, and sellers will often buy from competitors just to leave verified bad reviews. It's an ugly game I don't have an answer to.
I expect things in 2-3 days but realistically it never happens without paying a hefty premium.
Amazon's shipping schedule is really bad because they hold your items hostage unless you pay for Prime. It's essentially blackmail to get your item in a reasonable time frame.
As a non-Prime subscriber it usually takes 7-10 days to get an item if you use their free shipping or 5-7 days if you use the cheapest paid shipping option.
The funny thing is, in those non-Prime free shipping cases, the item is usually processed / shipped after 7-8 days and then arrives in 2-3 days.
It's also 99USD/year in Argentina, but we don't get the fast shipping US/India gets.
We're also a "poorer" country, I'm not sure what they base their prices on.
The post I answered was about Chinese sellers. A good US-based 3rd party seller will ship ASAP and use USPS flat rate. Amazon is much more than Amazon warehouses and Prime.
While it's a good program, there are millions of items, unlikely to have them all covered by Vine users. They would have to extend the program greatly for this to be an effective counter.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/27/american...