Here comes another rant about buying on ebay: 

We try our best to support sellers here in the UK by checking to see if the goods we buy that are marked as being UK stock are being sold by UK sellers. 
I looked through the listings for a pump bottle dispenser, and found one from a UK based seller, or so I thought, and despite them only having a feedback score of 1, we thought that as everyone has to start with no feedback we would give them the benefit of the doubt and placed the order. 

To my intense annoyance the PayPal transaction lists the seller to be Chinese and not from the UK.! 

Needless to say, I have asked for the order to be cancelled and am awaiting the outcome. 

UPDATE:

I've just had a message to say that my request has been declined, as they had allegedly already posted it.! 
Now how they could have done that in the five minutes between my placing the order and asking for it to be cancelled is beyond me.! 

Was the item location entered as UK or China in the item description? If it was incorrectly was entered as UK, it is possible to get the money back through Paypal. A friend of mine did this experience once: he ordered some item which where the location was listed as Germany because he needed it fast, but some time was apparent that it was coming, slowly, from China. Paypal refunded the money after complaining about it be incorrectly described.

I have no doubt that the item itself is in the UK, it's just that the seller is listed as being UK based, but the money has gone straight to China.

Reminds me of a seller I bought from two years ago, needed a new multimeter, bought one from a seller who claimed to be in Phoenix Arizona (USA), only to find that once I got the tracking number, that the item was coming from Shenzhen China.

The problem is, eBay don't care. We've complained before, but they do nothing. All they care about is the money

Yeah the misleading location is pretty annoying since I opt for Canadian sellers if I need it in a week compared to the 3-4 for overseas. I know I can always order on Amazon but I've been avoiding using them unless if I absolutely need it next day and the local shops don't have it.

Ever since we saw a BBC documentary on Amazon's intensive data mining operations, we've avoided them like the plague. You think Google or Microsoft know all about you..? They don't hold a candle to Amazon 

Yeah, they also have a few of their main warehouses in my area and their labour practices leave much to be desired. It was always a problem but as of recently I believe one of their warehouses had been shut down for two weeks due to labour practices leading to a outbreak of you know what that wasn't reported.

In my case, the seller was kind of a d--k about it, as after pointing out to the seller that they did not ship the item from where they said it would, they went and edited the listing to say shipping from China, and told me that I should have taken a closer look at the listing, because it never said it was shipping from the USA. However, I could see that the seller updated the listing, but I could go back and see the older version before the seller edited it to tell me that I was wrong, and showed them that they edited the listing.

To date, this is the worst seller I've had the displeasure of dealing with.

In my case, the seller was kind of a d--k about it, as after pointing out to the seller that they did not ship the item from where they said it would, they went and edited the listing to say shipping from China, and told me that I should have taken a closer look at the listing, because it never said it was shipping from the USA. However, I could see that the seller updated the listing, but I could go back and see the older version before the seller edited it to tell me that I was wrong, and showed them that they edited the listing.

To date, this is the worst seller I've had the displeasure of dealing with.

That's pretty dishonest and apparently misrepresenting the location like that is against eBay policy. Now whether or not eBay will do something about it is a different story unfortunately. 

It is not, apparently, against eBay policy though for a seller to be in a different country from where the items are. The Chinese in particular are notorious for shipping container-loads of poor quality goods into the UK, the US and probably everywhere else. They then say "UK stock" on the listings, and put a big Union flag on to confirm it, and when you check, the items are indeed in the UK, and sometimes the seller is shown as being here as well, but the money goes to China.

That is what annoys me. If people want to buy direct from China or anywhere else for that matter, I don't care. But if I choose to support businesses based in my own country, I do not expect my money to end up in a bank account elsewhere, be it China or anywhere else.

I just had the same thing happen. We needed a new butter dish, I found one from a UK seller, with a UK address listed. However when the Paypal receipt arrived, the seller's name was shown as a string of Chinese characters.

I am not happy 

It is not, apparently, against eBay policy though for a seller to be in a different country from where the items are. The Chinese in particular are notorious for shipping container-loads of poor quality goods into the UK, the US and probably everywhere else. They then say "UK stock" on the listings, and put a big Union flag on to confirm it, and when you check, the items are indeed in the UK, and sometimes the seller is shown as being here as well, but the money goes to China.

That is what annoys me. If people want to buy direct from China or anywhere else for that matter, I don't care. But if I choose to support businesses based in my own country, I do not expect my money to end up in a bank account elsewhere, be it China or anywhere else.

Seller being elsewhere than the item is send from is not against policy, but lying about the seller or goods (where it is shipped from) definitely is violating the policies.
And it will become more important once taxes would become enforced even for small packages (EU had postponed it, I don't know how the UK, but my guess it would be very similar). That itself won't be that big deal, but the post offices asking extra $10 "tax processing fee" will hurt. Being shipped from within EU (or UK for you) would mean the taxes are already paid, but when coming from overseas, the processing fee and taxes will fall on you... So it becomes a real difference, not just the patriotism thing... 

Seller being elsewhere than the item is send from is not against policy, but lying about the seller or goods (where it is shipped from) definitely is violating the policies.
And it will become more important once taxes would become enforced even for small packages (EU had postponed it, I don't know how the UK, but my guess it would be very similar). That itself won't be that big deal, but the post offices asking extra $10 "tax processing fee" will hurt. Being shipped from within EU (or UK for you) would mean the taxes are already paid, but when coming from overseas, the processing fee and taxes will fall on you... So it becomes a real difference, not just the patriotism thing... 

I remember something a while back about either eBay or PayPal being partially or fully prohibited in China. If so, then it would make sense for them to ship huge quantities of their goods to distributor-warehouses elsewhere on the planet whereby as eBay members there, they could sell them from. And with a system of the proceeds relayed back to the manufacturer or primary distributor in China.