Building Buyers Beware
Caveat emptor – Let buyer beware, even in regards to souvenir buildings. I want to put out a warning due to some recent online auctions I’ve noticed. In the recent photo example above: A September auction sold a Vanadium building clock & inkwell for $480 after 8 bids. About two months later, another Valadium was listed as a buy-it-now for only $28.30 (another was listed later buy-it-now for $17.54) To me, these listings seemed suspect. The photos were the same (and only one image with the buy-it-now listings). The titles and descriptions of the listing all were the same or very similar. I checked into the sellers and both were from China and had 0 feedback. So, be careful when something seems too good to be true. Have you seen other suspicious listing of souvenir buildings? Have you gotten scammed while building a buildings? Please share your stories so others can learn from them.
In the last month or so, I've bought several of these "too good to be true" buildings -- two 8" Shanghai Towers, a 6" Burj al Arab, and an 11" Canton Tower. All came with free shipping, and were dirt cheap -- some as little as $5. All came from China, but since they weren't made of steel or aluminum, they managed to escape the Trump tariff.
ReplyDeleteShipping was very slow, but the vendors made that clear going in. Several different vendors were involved, and all had positive track records. I'm very happy with my purchases, and plan to order another 3 or 4 buildings soon.
My advice would be to be conservative and order the cheapest items, a few at a time, from established vendors.
One thing puzzles me, however -- how could the sellers make any money on a $5 order that includes shipping? Are they somehow hacking into my credit card account?