Chinese eBay Sellers In Tax Evasion Scam

Chinese sellers such as RisingMed are heavily involved in illegal importing into the UK

eBay is absolutely packed full of Chinese medical companies pushing generic, own-branded ultrasound machines for both human and veterinary use. There are a number of well-known reasons to avoid them wherever possible, including:

They know nothing about what they are selling

Hardly any – if any – are the real manufacturer. Therefore, their knowledge and ability to support you in the future is likely to be very poor. Many Chinese medical companies employ people on very low wage, or even commission-only. They are only incentivised for making that sale, and they will say or do anything to achieve that (even break the law – discussed below!).

Unfortunately, most people looking on eBay for ultrasound machines are first-time buyers, and so they, too, have very little knowledge about what they are looking for. If the seller tells them “I have best machine for you sir, it come with microconvex probe with full 9-12MHz frequency, is perfect for your St Bernard,” does that buyer know they are being sold an almost completely useless transducer? Probably not.

Meaningless warranties

Even if they are the manufacturer, and with the best will in the world, the fact remains that they are located in China, with no UK base. If something goes wrong with your system, and assuming they say they will honour your warranty, it will cost you a lot of money to ship it back to them. What’s more, you could find yourself without a machine for a minimum of two weeks, and sometimes up to eight; or, to put it another way, almost the entire duration of your bitch’s pregnancy. If you’re running your own mobile scanning business, this could be disastrous. The optimal scanning window is so small for dogs (between 25 – 45 days at a push), your customers will have no choice but to go elsewhere for their scan.

Perhaps the most frightening thing of all is that, because you have made yourself complicit in illegally importing medical equipment, you will have absolutely no recourse should they decide to just keep your returned machine and not send it back to you. Or should it go mysteriously missing en route.

What is all this talk of illegality and breaking the law?

Almost all Chinese eBay sellers will, as standard and without even asking your permission, under-declare their products on customs documentation. They will mark the machine as “sample” and not sale, and declare the value at around $20.

They do this because this enables them to dodge import VAT on your behalf, meaning that if you buy from a law-abiding UK seller, you’ll be paying £1500 from them but only £1250 from a Chinese company for the exact same product. Sounds good, right?

Unfortunately, this is called tax evasion, and it is illegal. As well as the ethical issues surrounding this (the fact that you are buying from criminals, filling their pockets and fueling their economy whilst legitimate British sellers struggle to compete because they have to charge you VAT), you have to also ask yourself: if a seller is willing to break the law to sell you a product, what else are they willing to do?

• Is that CE mark they claim their product holds legitimate?
• Have all necessary electrical safety tests been performed to EU standards? Or are you risking a law suit every time you use that machine on somebody’s pet?
• Will they help to answer all of your questions and coach you on how to use your new ultrasound machine once the money is in their account?
• How likely are they to honour any warranty they have given you on a product?
• How likely are you to receive your item back if you do send it off for repair, knowing that it was sent to you illegally and thus leaving you no recourse for action?
• Is a saving of a couple of hundred pounds really worth the longer term risk?