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How to Report fake items easier
Is there an easier way to report a counterfeit item because I don’t even know what some of those questions on there report page are asking for
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eburtonlab
Mentor2 weeks agoBuyers that receive counterfeit items can file "not as described" returns to get their money back if they act quickly enough.
Rights owners that spot items that infringe on their intellectual property can issue formal take-down notices through the VeRO program that eBay will act on.
Counterfeit items are not allowed to be listed on eBay at all. No one is authorized to sell counterfeit items. That fact alone does not stop some people from trying to sell them, however.
The problem is that unscrupulous or uninformed sellers can list genuine items and then deliver counterfeit items.
It is not always possible to look at a listing and know in advance exactly what, if anything, the seller intends to deliver. For one thing, a scammer can simply copy a listing from a genuine seller, using a genuine photo of a genuine item.
Except for a few specific categories of items that go through authentication, eBay never sees what the seller ships or what the buyer receives, so there is nothing for eBay to check unless someone complains about what was received by invoking eBay's money back guarantee.
Sellers are responsible for the descriptions they provide, and buyers should not assume that eBay screens the listings in advance.
As long as counterfeits exist and there are folks trying to sell them, buyers will still have to be on the lookout for them, and avoid deals that are obviously too-good-to-be-true, whether they are being sold by accounts registered overseas or by domestic sellers wittingly or unwittingly buying counterfeits from overseas to sell here.
Buyers that doubt their ability to distinguish a genuine article from a counterfeit one should only consider purchasing from trustworthy sellers that have an established reputation for delivering exactly what was described, and should avoid deals that are too-good-to-be-true, or deals that are offered by inexperienced sellers that might disappear soon after the transaction is made, or else be prepared to get items authenticated by trusted sources within the time eBay allows to take advantage of eBay's money back guarantee.
Of course eBay could remove a listing that shows obvious signs of being counterfeit. But not every counterfeit or suspicious listing may be obvious to someone that does not have expertise in a particular area. And the sort of scammers that list counterfeit items do not simply give up and go away when eBay removes a listing or suspends an account; scammers are constantly creating new accounts or hijacking existing accounts, and posting scam items over and over again faster than eBay can possibly find them and take them all down. No matter how quick or how thorough eBay is, there is always a chance that some listings will get through or that some seller will advertise one thing but ship another, so buyers always have to be prepared for that no matter what eBay does.