Do we make or stock nothing in this country anymore?

I've almost fallen foul of that myself on Amazon, and only realised before I placed the order where the stuff is actually being shipped from. I got caught out once with something I bought my dad for his birthday, needless to say it arrived too late for his actual birthday...

 

Agree FC. I got stung by this, though I don't buy from Amazon anymore for other reasons (not paying tax). Bought something and after the transaction the delivery date was shown as 5 weeks and yes it was coming directly from China. Nowhere or nowehre obvious during the purchase indicated a China origin and wouldn't have bought had I known beforehand. Was very angry indeed. Was something for about £6 so baffling how they can do this at a profit. However, makes sense why so many of our traditional High Street companies are going under, today Barretts ...

Angry old fart rant over.
GG

 

In recent years, some there's been a few good manufacturing contracts come to our shores, including a few up here in the north east. We do still make some stuff in the country but in general, you're right. Far too much of our stuff comes from China and with no offence to the Chinese, most of it is utter dog poo.

Its not the 'country', its the bean counters. If you can save 1p per unit off something that sells 10 million units per year, that's £100k extra profit, and if the failure rate of those products is twice what it would be if it was better quality, then that pushes profits up further.

We can whinge about it, or we can do something about it but it would take time and effort. If everything what we bought that failed before a reasonable time was returned to the shop, along with quotes of the Sale of Goods act and 'not of serviceable quality' etc, the retailers would be forced to recoup the costs from the wholesalers, the wholesalers would lose money and so stop buying from the same source, and UK companies would stand a chance of competing.

As for the costs of shipping and stuff, here's an interesting fact. Just near me is one of Europe's biggest petrochemicals plants. One of their main products is plastic. The raw material is crude oil, which arrives in Teesport on great big tankers from the middle east. From there it goes into the chemical works where it is turned into plastic plastic (and other things, including some nasties). The plastic pellets are then bagged and then carried by road to Teesport, where it is loaded onto a ships bound for China (and a few other places but mostly China). It then travels to the other side of the world where it is made into cheap rubbish before being loaded into more ships and shipped back to end up in our shops. If it wasn't true it would be unbelievable.

 

I keep seeing stuff from Amazon themselves being out of stock and other suppliers offering "In stock. Is usually dispatched within 3 - 4 working days" but their low ratings of only around 85 - 90% +ve normally immediately alert me to it's probably from China and although it may be dispatched within 3 - 4 days it will then take 3 -4 weeks to arrive, if at all according to -ve feedback and possibly with the wrong plug and either no instructions or they're in Chinese.

I have however found Hong Kong based ebay traders to be very reliable. One the one occasion when an item arrived with a faulty, leaking battery contained within it's separate wrapper, the seller immediately agreed to a refund for the cost of a replacement which was probably many times what it would have cost for them to send another one.

Another thing I've heard is that some Chinese postal tracking services get flagged up by Anti-Virus software as dangerous websites.

How some Hong Kong ebay sellers can sell stuff for around a quid or so with free P&P amazes me.

But I suppose those light bulbs are probably made in China and if bought here would have large mark ups made at several stages + RM delivery charges added.

 

And Chinese sellers sometimes get the decimal point 2 places out



And will it or wont it have the correct plug supplied despite being over £4,000 more than being asked by UK sellers?