Do USPS, Ebay and China Post really have a trilateral agreement?

[Generic Other]

I have been buying and selling items on Ebay and Etsy lately and happened to buy several Chinese items that offered free postage. Now, I figured that meant the seller was covering the cost to entice me to buy. And people bid so low I couldn't believe the seller could make any profit. Dumb me!

When the envelope arrived 10 days later it said "Air Mail Postage Paid China Post" with no indication of how much was paid or anything which seemed odd. The post office always marks weight and price paid on packages, right? So I googled and discovered that the Chinese government pays the postage. The average cost of shipping a small item can range from 20-50 bucks if you ship internationally from the US, so we are not talking about just a little money saved. In order to get a refund on my item, I would have to pay $20.00 return postage.

Another way the Chinese can undercut any business in the world that must charge for shipping.

Also, I mailed a package myself using international post the week before I bought the Chinese item. The package I mailed took 10 days to leave the west coast of the US. It has still not arrived at its destination. And USPS stopped tracking it once it left LA because I did not pay substantially more to track it. This really discourages American entrepeneurs from trying to sell anything abroad.

Anyway, this post is not to complain just to observe that we get treated like this all the time. Like our government not thinking we should get prescription drugs at the cheaper prices other countries pay.

[Autumn Colors]

1. I can only speak about one part of this

You wrote:

The post office always marks weight and price paid on packages, right?

I've sold on ebay for a long time and when I print out a label with postage through my paypal account, there is the option NOT to display the postage paid on the label -- and that's using the USPS.

No idea about the rest of that. It may be possible that China Post has some kind of a bulk rate system like here in the US. I think the US does (or used to) have a bulk rate system if someone is shipping a lot of the same item to many people in one destination country. It would just have a type of bulk rate stamp on the the envelope or parcel the recipient receives, but the postage for the entire shipment is paid when the whole shipment and forms are presented at the shipping point (post office).