I can well attest to this, I used to participate with others selling on Ebay, and I think it's purely a per-capita thing, in that by sheer population volume, buyers from the States were the most problematic for us anyway. We dealt with a massive amount of people who felt if they could rig it so they got something for nothing, that was their entitlement. We daily dealt with people who flat refused they received anything, even though we (went to making signed articles compulsory) had return cards with signatures, they would claim chargeback at any point, lodge Paypal claims that the goods were "damaged", but photos never supported it, except one case I remember the box was in perfect nick but the goods suffered amazing damage, as in a hit with a hammer! The forums were regularly full of reports from different sellers matching up identical repeat customer issues, as in the same person would do this sort of thing routinely as they seemd to think it was their right or maybe they were "stickin it to the man"?.
Again, i'm not alt all inferring anyone from the States were any worse or better than from anywhere else, over the years I've had the pleasure of dealing with many, many exceptionally nice people from the States, but the volume was high enough we just stopped dealing with the US. And yes, I have met a lot of sellers who were very dubious, so it certainly wasn't just customers that were the occasional problem.
With the Chinese, their profit margins are very, very low in a lot of cases, so it takes little to end up losing money. And for any number of good buyers, you will have at least one that will be a problem, often for no valid reason. That plus their very pragmatic way of seeing things and doing business can often create issues, as if you ordered red but got orange, to them there's no problem as the function is the same! If the model you saw had a lever, but what you got didn't, so long as it performs the same they don't see the problem. I've dealt with them enough to know it's not general deceit or malicousness, they just happen to view things differently and place different priorities on them.
cheers, Ian
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