Buying oil off eBay

[puellarum]

I have now bought oil several times off of eBay. It's quite a lot cheaper than Walmart or whatever. The usual prices are. Usually a 5 quart jug is probably $8 to $10 cheaper than you would pay at Walmart.

It supposedly is from Vietnam. When the oil arrived, it was fine. There are many brands, but I chose Mobil1 Extended Protection in 5w30. The jugs were factory sealed and looked totally normal. I put one of them side by side with another one I bought at Walmart. Totally identical. I couldn't find any dates indicating when they were manufactured or expired, etc.

Now this is where it gets weird. The jugs arrived in a Walmart box with Walmart packing tape on it shipped from a Walmart location. Some strange name was listed on the label as the sender. This eBay seller is not Walmart and has nothing to do with Walmart. The package was from the Walmart location in Indiana or somewhere. Definitely not Vietnam. Also, the package took like 2 days or maybe three to be shipped from Indiana to California.

So my conclusion is that someone out there obtained many jugs of oil and decided to sell it on eBay. They list themselves as a seller in Vietnam, presumably to avoid some sort of detection. I have no idea if it's stolen or some sort of a legitimate reselling operation. At any rate, I saved a few dollars and have to say that I'm happy with it.

Let me know if you have any similar experiences? Many of these sellers also sell the 12-qt cardboard box that contains a heavy plastic bag inside of it with a tap.

 

[Vercingetorix]

Legit from Walmart is my bet. Have you gone to Walmarts site and looked at price for the oil you bought? My bet is the person from Vietnam Nam sells oil on eBay, that is directly sourced from Walmart. Makes a few bucks on the difference between the eBay price and the cheaper price at Walmart and Walmart ships for free. The eBay seller simply inputs your details for shipping.

 

[earlyre]

yep.. few years back i bought a clip on umbrella for one of those fold up bag chairs on fleabay.... shows up shipped direct from amazon.

 

[cptbarkey]

arbitrage of some sort. good luck figuring it out, its playing with fire imo.

 

[eljefino]

I got some Super Tech 0w20, a 12 qt box, for $40 from ebay. The date code printing format is the same as a "real" one from a B&M store. I had plans last winter to make my own DIY viscometer from a cup with a precision hole drilled in it to test both boxes for genuine-ness but it never got cold enough to gain enough viscosity to matter.

 

[Zee09]

It's @atikovi

 

[atikovi]

It wasn't me, honest.

 

[puellarum]

Legit from Walmart is my bet. Have you gone to Walmarts site and looked at price for the oil you bought? My bet is the person from Vietnam Nam sells oil on eBay, that is directly sourced from Walmart. Makes a few bucks on the difference between the eBay price and the cheaper price at Walmart and Walmart ships for free. The eBay seller simply inputs your details for shipping.

Yes. The eBay seller is significantly cheaper than Walmart. By at least five bucks a jug.

 

[RooflessVW]

Mobil 1 EP 5W-30 was one of the "glitched " WM oils from a few years back.

Someone is reselling jugs they got for ~10¢ each. I'd be surprised if it's not a current or former member here.

 

[RazorsEdge]

I've bought oil from eBay yes with no issues. Check the sellers feedback to get an idea on how good of seller they are and go from there.

 

[puellarum]

I sort of suspected that someone stole it from Walmart or broke into a Walmart truck or something. But this thing looks like it's shipped from an actual Walmart. It's all very strange because Walmart has the same jugs of oil on the shelf for at least $6 or $7 more per jug. Maybe more.

 

[tiger862]

It's probably coming from Walmart clearance warehouse.

 

[Patman]

It's probably coming from Walmart clearance warehouse.

That doesn’t seem likely because the OP bought M1 EP and that is a good seller that Walmart isn’t discontinuing so it’s not going to be on clearance

 

[football]

I was an eBay power seller of oils years ago.

How did I do it?

I found a dealership that had good prices and free shipping.

If they sold me a quart of oil for $4, I marked it up to $6 and sold it on eBay. eBay took their cut and I still made a profit. I made thousands of dollars.

You know who wasn’t making a profit? The dealership. They lost their shorts on the “free shipping”. They payed tens of thousands of dollars in shipping fees shipping my orders for free for me and they were losing money. They eventually called me and told me the gig was up. They did a in depth analysis of their finances and realized that free shipping ate all their profits. So they began charging shipping and I had to find another income stream.

 

[drtyler]

I have now bought oil several times off of eBay. It's quite a lot cheaper than Walmart or whatever. The usual prices are. Usually a 5 quart jug is probably $8 to $10 cheaper than you would pay at Walmart.

It supposedly is from Vietnam. When the oil arrived, it was fine. There are many brands, but I chose Mobil1 Extended Protection in 5w30. The jugs were factory sealed and looked totally normal. I put one of them side by side with another one I bought at Walmart. Totally identical. I couldn't find any dates indicating when they were manufactured or expired, etc.

Now this is where it gets weird. The jugs arrived in a Walmart box with Walmart packing tape on it shipped from a Walmart location. Some strange name was listed on the label as the sender. This eBay seller is not Walmart and has nothing to do with Walmart. The package was from the Walmart location in Indiana or somewhere. Definitely not Vietnam. Also, the package took like 2 days or maybe three to be shipped from Indiana to California.

So my conclusion is that someone out there obtained many jugs of oil and decided to sell it on eBay. They list themselves as a seller in Vietnam, presumably to avoid some sort of detection. I have no idea if it's stolen or some sort of a legitimate reselling operation. At any rate, I saved a few dollars and have to say that I'm happy with it.

Let me know if you have any similar experiences? Many of these sellers also sell the 12-qt cardboard box that contains a heavy plastic bag inside of it with a tap.

May be hard to see, but there should be a code on the back label of the jugs.

 

[puellarum]

On reflection. There are a ton of people selling these identical jugs on eBay. Many of them claim to be from Vietnam, but they clearly are not. So somehow these people are getting large volumes of these jugs of quality oil and selling them at a good discount on eBay.

 

[dubber09]

Older stock would make sense, fresh stock not so much; not a fan of eBay, bought two things from them in my life, both were very hard to get elsewhere.

 

[puellarum]

I just bought cat litter from the same seller. Same deal. I mean they must be stealing it considering what their selling price is with free shipping. Shipping 70 lb of cat litter for free? I mean that costs them something....

 

[twouvakind]

Selling motor oil and cat litter, 5 stars.

 

[SubieRubyRoo]

The only way I’ve ever seen this work is “damaged” freight trucks. The boxes themselves may or may not be damaged, but the truck was damaged/salvaged, and the salvagor sells by truckload/lot to somebody willing to break the stuff out onto eBay and sell. I know because my brother did this with car parts; brake pads, PowerStroke OEM filter housings, etc.

My brother would buy ~400 sets worth of various brand new, Wearever Gold or Silver brake pads for $1/box, sell with free priority shipping for $1 less than whatever the cheapest seller for that pn was, regardless of the overall price. Usually averaged about $8-11/set profit and was moving about 80 sets per week.

Got one of those big commercial mailboxes on the post and would spend about an hour a night after work pasting labels and making trips to the street… that ended after UPS got greedy on flat-rate boxes and IRS wanted to know every dime you made.

Oil people probably doing something similar.