Distance is not a red flag. Plenty of good sellers ship from another country. What matters is whether you can get your money back when the parcel does not arrive — and that is decided by how you pay, not by where they are.
If this item never arrives, who returns my money?
If the answer is "the platform, through its protected checkout", distance is a logistics problem. If the answer is "the seller, if they feel like it", distance is the scam.
Notice that the "save the fee" framing only ever moves you down this list. The fee is what the protection costs.
"Ships from our overseas warehouse, 3–5 weeks." The long window exists to push you past the platform's dispute deadline. By the time you can report it, you cannot.
Military deployment, an oil rig, a hospital stay, a sudden relocation. A sympathetic reason you cannot meet and must pay first. The story is doing one job.
They "accidentally" send too much and ask you to refund the difference by bank transfer. The original payment is later reversed or was never real; your refund was genuine. You are out the difference.
An invoice by email, a payment link, an off-platform "confirmation" page. Same mechanism as the fake escrow scam — if you did not start the payment yourself from inside the platform, it is not the platform's payment.
Platform checkout, a tracking number within a few days, a realistic delivery window, and a seller who answers questions about customs without getting impatient. Zero feedback is not disqualifying if the payment is protected.