I ordered a spindle that came from 'Portsmouth' and I to was suspicious. But it did. I had it too quick to come from China. I think that they are initially shipped to a warehouse and then they do not go through customs again so no vat check. As for the high postage they probably are recovering their initial cost to bring them in to this country. I suspect that they may claim a very low value on initial import, pay a token tax and this too will have to be recovered. So technically ebay will not be interested and we get cheap goods.