Ugh, the foreign retailers have ruined Poshmark too

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a seller on Posh, and other sites, but do about 80% of my sales on Posh. Roughly $1k/month so not huge, but not chump change. They have new owners, some Korean company, and they have been running the site into the ground recently. The search is complete garbage and I can’t find my stuff even when I type in my exact title. They also don’t shut down closets that have been inactive for months and don’t do a good job patrolling those that are dropshipping crap through their “boutiques”. Frustrating to those of us who have nice little closets and care about posting decent stuff.

Thanks for this context. I started shopping on Poshmark because my friend raved about it but most of my items are refunded because the seller never bothered to ship and seemed MIA or claimed it was lost in the mail....yeah right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“Foreign”

You’re gross, OP.

Agree. Merry Merry!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Inevitable.

Just look at Etsy.

Yep.

The foreign chinese and middle eastern resellers and drop shippers did it to Etsy too.

There are still true artisans on Etsy though. You just need to know how to shop there, such as sorting by most expensive first, then filtering by location, followed by reverse image search. Then check out the store or artist's social media to confirm they are legit.

If the seller uses the term "dear" or "dearie"
Run fast. They are almost certainly based in a problematic country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Inevitable.

Just look at Etsy.

+1

Private equity combined with cheap Chinese sellers taking over online marketplaces has destroyed small businesses. And it’s not because we the people are demanding these items. We are just victims of capitalism that allows this sort of market exploitation.

On the rare occasion I do go on Etsy or Poshmark, I scroll to find someone based out of the U.S. that looks like a real human, not a bot or large company. If it looks like a generic sales photo or I see 10 of the same exact item (e.g. I saw a ton of the same things while searching for a personalized ornament on Etsy recently), I look for something original. It shouldn’t be this hard to shop from smaller vendors.

“We” are, though. Americans are absolutely insatiable for these cheap goods.

American wages have been kept low so that affordability is a necessary driving factor for most people and we are marketed to so constantly that we don’t even realize it anymore. I saw a TikTok recently where a foreigner was shocked at how much corporations have infiltrated billboards, subway ads, news materials, etc. We don’t even recognize it consciously anymore.

So I don’t think we are actually choosing this so much as the system (and the wealthy who run it) are engineering us into accepting our options. Just like most people wouldn’t choose to live in car-dependent areas with ugly strip malls and awful traffic. But this is what is available and what people can afford. See also our junk food supply chain. Even our political system is just corporations making large donations to the 2 candidates we will eventually be allowed to vote from.

If you’re not wealthy in America then you don’t really have much power to change these systems. So here we are with a variety of Temu-quality options to choose from.

You must have a very small circle.

Most of us love the freedom, flexibility, independence, convenience, cleanliness and safety of owning our own cars and living in places where everything is spacious, clean, safe, accessible and driveable.

No one wants your public transit dystopia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For all the bashing of Temu, AliExpress etc, for some items they have the same quality as what I find in brick and mortar stores. If you are interested in crafting, their paints, brushes, paper, general art supplies are as good as anything I've bought in a store but at a much better price.

Many of the cheap chinese supplies contain toxic elements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“Foreign”

You’re gross, OP.

The problematic resellers on these sites are primarily from china and in the case of Etsy, India and Turkey too. So yes, they are indeed foreign resellers and drop shippers who use stolen photos and sell shoddy mass produced items that usually violate intellectual property laws and are poorly made, from substandard materials

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Over the summer, there was a Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard boutique that was selling $15-30 Amazon dresses for $200+.

They were probably getting the stuff from Alibaba or whatever, but it's a sad comment that lots of people can't tell the difference between quality items and junk. Because some of the designer brands are putting out garbage, too.

Here is the TikTok about that.

https://www.tiktok.com/@sarahfitcom/video/7538589187893775671

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree, and you can't tell if the higher end stuff is authentic or not, even if its supposedly authenticated. I've seen clearly fake designer clothes, bags, etc. on all of those sites. The ones with few photos and a seller who doesn't respond to questions. Also the last time I bought something on etsy hoping for a homemade item from a small business, it shipped from China, and so probably wasn't.

Gotta find the article but read somewhere that an "authenticator" aren't the experts the way people think they are. They were taught to look for certain things elements and that's it and they are usually based on modern clothing and bags. I knew a few people who inherited vintage designer bags. One tried to sell a couple of them on ebay and they were flagged as fake because they did not have the same identifiers as a modern bag. Some of these bags were older than the people judging them. They even had the 40 year old receipt and box but the expert authenticators declared it as fake.
Buyers can also be difficult. They are fine buying pre-loved but if the identifiers are outside the window of what they know (or think they know) they will swear it is fake.