In this guide i'll try to educate you a little on how to find items that are actually physically in the UK (the ebay search function cannot root out liars) aswell as catch out those fraudelent companies who use false data so you think they're a real company.

You've probably seen many on top of many ebay sellers using various UK cities in the Item location, they even come up in the search as UK sellers. They may even be registered as a business in the UK but the item still comes from the Far East. They waste everybodies time and take away business from legitimate UK sellers.

I am by no means trying to discourage you to buy from far east based sellers. I'm trying to teach you ways you can verify who and where they really are.

1. You can sometimes spot thier poor english in item descriptions and other terms.
2. They will use 'Other Courier' or 'Sellers standard rate' as postage methods. Real UK sellers usually have Royal Mail as the main option, if not they'll at least expand on who thier courier is. ie City Link, Parcelforce.
3. They'll charge excessive postage fees and list an item at 99p. Some UK sellers do this to save on fees, it is against ebay rules. However distant sellers can offer cheaper products but the high postage fees pretty much even things out but also give an indication, the Seller is either not in the UK or is trying to dodge fees. Avoid.
4. This is a clever one, many sellers like this host thier own images, on thier own websites.
If you look at some of thier image properties they will bring up a website

eg. http://images01.*****.com

You can then visit a lookup website like www.whois-search.com enter thier website name in full eg www.*****.com

The result may show you the true location. Of course that's assuming they're hosting images on thier own website, If not their email address may contain teh url to thier website

6. Not only on ebay but all over the internet, conmen build decent websites, offer high end products and even use real Company names. You could simply search to see if said company exists but if it does don't assume it's legit. Visit www.ukdata.com enter the company details to find the real company under that name, you might find a completely different address, contact number etc.
If everything matches then there's much less risk.
As a seller, we have enough experience buying from legitimate UK companies and have been stung in the past but hey, you live and learn.