May of been drop shipping ie sent directly from the wholesaler/manufacturer rather than the eBay seller. That way the eBay seller doesn't have to keep any stock. They probably just send the "free gift" as a sweetener hoping to smooth things over.

I've bought stuff from asian sellers on eBay and other asian websites and I've had only one issue with part not arriving (filed a complaint with PP and got my money back withing a few weeks, was <$10 so I wasn't overly worried).

However I did get scammed by 2 different American eBay sellers on bike frames. First one, before the auction ended I contacted him and asked if he would ship it to Australia and how much this would cost. $50 was the answer so I bid and won it, then paid the money including $50 shipping. Then I get a message from him saying the courier company now wants $500 to ship the frame, they made an error with the original quote. The seller apologised and offered me a refund if I wanted but I had my heart set on the frame so sucked it up and paid the extra freight. I thought $50 sounded cheap but I thought maybe the seller had connections in the freight industry and so was getting a good deal and was passing on the cheap price to me.

Number 2 rip-off was another guy selling a different frame. He said he was coming to Australia for some triathlon event in a couple of months and he could bring it with him then if I wanted to wait. Except he was coming to a city in another state, 350km away. I agreed to wait and exchanged a few emails regarding when and where we were going to meet. Meetup was going to be at the hotel he was allegedly staying at. I got there at the agreed time and dcouldn't see him anywhere so asked at the reception desk what room he was staying in (he might have slept in #jetlag). They had no listing of anyone with that name staying there. I was devastated. Didn't know what to do so I hug around for a while in the faint hope he might turn up. After about 15-20 mins he did and had the bike frame with him. I didn't ask why the hotel had no record of him, I just wanted the frame and to go. I quickly checked the frame and it looked to be match the description from eBay so I took it and left (can't recall if I had pre-paid or not, I think I did). Anyway got home and at that stage I was still a few components short to build the bike so it wasn't until a couple of months later when I finally had all the bits and took them all around to my mechanic to get it built when he noticed a crack in frame, where the seatpost clamp is (it was a proprietary one, part of the frame). Looks like someone had overtightened the clamp. I took the frame to several carbon repair places but none of them could fix it and because of the time factor between buying it and finding the crack I could no longer file a dispute with eBay or PP. I emailed the guy seller about it but never heard a response from him (no surprise after the original hotel fiasco) so I was stuck with an expensive and large CF paperweight. It wasn't a huge crack, barely bigger than a hairline so the seller may not of known about it...

I ended up reselling it to a mate for $100 (I paid $550 from memory) after full disclosure and showing him the frame and he built it up and rode it. The frame wan't going to suddenly catastrophically snap in half, worst that would happen is the seatpost would slide down because it couldn't be tightened enough.