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Originally Posted by mcwhorter-enforcer
No I have not received it and I talked to them again on Wednesday. I asked the guy how they can advertise 2-3 days processing yet its been 3 weeks and has not shipped. When asked how they can advertise its in stock but they keep saying the are still waiting on the shipper the guy got pretty nasty and defensive.
He then went on to tell me that there are people that have been waiting 90 plus days! How is that possible if they are "in stock"?
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I suspect that it depends on what the definition of 'in stock' happens to be. It seems to me that most of the people selling these Chinese bikes are buying them from a wholesaler who imports them in huge containers and then they are drop-shipped from various warehouses around the country to the purchasers address.
So let's say I am dealer A. I make a retail distribution deal with wholesaler/importer X, who gives me a list of the bikes he has in containers either on hand or on the way from China on a ship. I list them as 'in stock' on my website, based on what the wholesaler has told me.
Customer Z buys a bike from me, and I place the drop-ship order to my wholesaler/importer. They send the order to the warehouse, which attempts to fulfill it. If the bike ordered is indeed in stock, then they make a deal with a carrier to pick up and deliver. Because they deal with price points, they shop for the best deal possible. It may take awhile for a carrier to become available. Or, the bike might not be in stock after all or it might have been in stock at the time the dealer put the bike on his website, but then it was sold and he didn't get the word, or if he did, he didn't update his website quickly.
Or it could be that the dealer is a guy making a quick buck on a low-margin item, and that he has little or no concern for what happens after he gets paid. He is not planning to be around for decades. He has no retail showroom, no inventory, probably not many employees, if any at all. He's literally a one-man show with a website and a sketchy business plan.
I'm sure there are lots of other reasons. However, in my opinion, if you go into one of these transactions without doing your due diligence and understanding what you're getting into, you're likely to get burned.
Some other person posting that they bought from XYZ dealer and their bike arrived in 3 days and in perfect condition and they got the MSO or other paperwork a couple days after that, and they mistake *anecdotal evidence* for actual proof that this is the typical way the dealer responds. It might be - it might not be. The purchaser has to do their homework.
"Do you have the item in stock" is a valid question, and you'd think it has an easy answer. However, a better question might be "Do you stock the item yourself and is it physically in your possession?" The seller might still lie - can't stop bad people from telling tales - but it pins them down; the can't hedge their words, it's either yes or no.
Best of luck, I hope everything works out well for you.