My daughter and her friend bought a print of a painting on Esty. Price seemed reasonable for the size and it had free shipping. ETA is August 13-23rd.
When they checked the tracking on it today they realized it’s being shipped from the Ukraine.
Can that be right? Are products actually being sent from Ukraine to the USA? Order was made on the 5th. There are 8 entries on the tracking, the most recent was today at 12:15am that says “KIEV PI-3, UKRAINE Processed Through Facility”.
Do scammers go through all that to make it seem legit? They already have her $160. I’m thinking suddenly they’ll be no more entries on the tracking.
The site said nothing about the origin of the print when when they ordered.
It’s not as if everyday life has come to a complete standstill in all of Ukraine, so yes, mail and parcels are being delivered between Ukraine and other countries.
True…but it does seem surprising for a package to get through from Ukraine to the US so quickly and easily.
That said, that there is tracking that is moving seems a good sign so I guess wait and see. At this point I doubt there is a way to get the money back (reverse charges?) so, fingers crossed.
I vote probably not a scam. I’m in a country next to UKR (though in EU), I order stuff internationally from all sort of places (Amazon, ebay, US comic book shops) and all kind of countries quite often. Setting up a fake tracking seems like entirely too much effort for the scammer.
ETA…the first date seems entirely too optimistic, the second maybe viable (for comparison, the above mentioned US comic books usually take like 3 weeks to get to me from Texas through non-priority mail)
Only thing that would give me a pause is free shipping. It’s expensive to ship stuff around half the world, often it’s like 50%+ of the price. On the other hand it might already be calculated into the price and the seller is making money through the purchasing power difference between Ukraine and the West.
Except she really wanted that picture (at this point I’m not sure if it was a painting or an enlarged photograph having not seen it) for her new condo living room and was quite enthused about it. She’s more worried about not getting the print than she is about losing money.
Fair enough. But Etsy’s policies make it an unattractive/unprofitable market for scammers to operate in - point being that because she has purchased through Etsy, a scam is very unlikely.
I was on a zoom call with a client in Ukraine just last week. He was in his office in Kiev. He’s looking to expand his tech business globally. So life does go on!
I purchased a rice steamer (hand made woven material) from a seller in Vietnam. It took weeks to get here, but it did, carefully wrapped and secured with kite string.
I’ve ordered a number of things from Europe and overly optimistic shipping dates are the norm. Multiple times I’d get a guess that delivering an item from Heathrow through customs in NYC and onward to Chicago takes only a day. Uh, it does not. But I do get my stuff eventually.
My wife bought me a poster from Ukraine for my birthday almost exactly one year ago. Conditions may have changed since then, but the war was going on at that time. The poster arrived with no problem.
Ukraine is collectively the world’s largest supplier of automotive wiring harnesses. Earlier in the invasion there was a production shutdown that impacted European and American auto manufacturing but it now seems to be back up to normal capacity. Most facilities are in western Ukraine where, except for the occasional long range rocket attack, the Russian invasion is more news than noise, borders are open, and the Ukrainian government is trying to keep its industry running as much as possible (despite attacks, fuel shortages, and electric power grid disruptions) because fighting the war and rehousing refugees from the east cost money.
I bought a garment last year from UKR (and I knew it was from there) … I prepared mentally to take a long time b/c economy shipping … and it did take like 2-3 months (to LatAm) - but it did arrive.
As Ellecram mentions, there is a non-trivial portion of people in the UKR living from international e-commerce … so the mere fact that it is from UKR should not be an indication of fraud or sound any alarms.
People there seem very eager to build themselves a serious reputation on internat. platforms - more often than not to support their family.