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IT'S GETTING CRAZY!
Hundreds of new sellers with no feed back are suddenly selling $500 to $1000 coins for $47.00 a piece to $59.00 a piece! Some have quantities of 50 each of these. How did this happen???? We all know these are fakes... Ebay just sits and allows buyers to be scammed. Why? Is there anyone in the Ebay community that does not have their nose up Ebay's a$$ who has an answer, and isn't afraid to speak up when they see a crime?
10 comments
eburtonlab
Mentor4 months ago@texashumvee
What would you suggest that eBay do about such listings?
Anyone can find and point to a specific listing and say it should be removed because it is an obvious scam, but that approach does not scale very well when there are a million new listings every day.
Beyond removing a specific listing or a set of listings, what general principle should eBay apply to all listings, that would make it impossible for scams to exist?
texashumvee
OP4 months agoThis is not a small scale operation...there are 100's of new sellers selling 1000's of fake coins. Forgeries of US coins made by the US mint. When speaking of rare coins, no coin is alike. So when a seller shows a photo of a coin (example: 1893-S Morgan Dollar AU 50) which is a $5000 coin, and he has 50 to sell @ $59.00, you know these coins will be fake. Ebay does not employee anyone with any knowledge of rare coins or other collectables, so they do not know how to set the algorithm to recognize scams in the rarity market.
lady_madonna
Mentor4 months agoEbay is just a venue that sellers can use to sell items & buyers can choose to buy items from sellers.
Ebay has no way of preventing sellers from listing items that may be inauthentic nor can they prevent unsuspecting uninformed buyers from falling for these scams. Buyers need to take responsibility for their purchases and not be gullible to fall for the scams and Ebay cannot prevent them from making the purchases.
Ebay offers a 30 day Money Back Guarantee so the buyers that receive the items can have them inspected for authenticity within the 30 days from delivery.
Caveat emptor.
texashumvee
OP4 months agoBy the way, if I can spot fakes so easily, why can't Ebay?
eburtonlab
Mentor4 months agoBy the way, if I can spot fakes so easily, why can't Ebay?
I have no idea how many fakes eBay spots and removes before you or I ever see them. Pretty much by definition, we can only see the ones that eBay has not caught yet.
How long would it take you to find all of the fakes that are currently listed?
Without a policy that can be applied across the board systematically, you are left with spotting individual listings one at a time and removing each one. Even then, what objective criteria do you use to decide to remove a suspicious listing?
lady_madonna
Mentor4 months agoDo you propose that Ebay hire hundreds of new employees that are trained to spot fake coin listings among the thousands of new listings every day?
texashumvee
OP4 months agoIn my genre (Morgan dollars) I spotted between 150 to 200 in around 2 to 3 hours of searching (I was looking for coins to buy - not just looking for fakes). The sellers say the coins are authentic, they have "0" feedback, and in many of them there location say Australia, but the photo says shipped here in the USA. Ebay is not looking. If they were, they would have already put two and two together and would implement a better security screening system, and also be able to detect strange listings a child would notice. I have not been taken by scammers before on Ebay, but as Ebay becomes less observant of new sellers, it can only get worse. As people lose trust in Ebay, sales will slow. In 1996 (30 years ago) I opened my first Ebay account, so I know a few things about how it used to be, and how much they have changed for the worse. I think back then I was paying 2 to 3% final value and .50 to 1.00 insertion fees. I was platinum for four years, and then things started going down hill. Ebay started sucking up to big business, and us mom & pop stores like mine got pushed to the side. It's all about the money, and Ebay does not want to pay for a more secure buying/selling platform. I have a few more items still up for sale and when they are gone, so will I. Does anyone even know how exciting the idea of Ebay was back then? Anyone with a little panache, a few items to sell, and zero selling experience good make a living. That was me 30 years ago. Today I see obvious fraud (not by Ebay) by sellers who have found a way to scam people without Ebay doing anything about it.
texashumvee
OP4 months agoYou do not understand. A lot of buyers trust Ebay, and not everyone knows what they just bought is fake. So they have an item they believe is worth $1000. Six months to a year from now (maybe 10 years from now ...it doesn't matter) they go to sell it and find out it was a fake. So...what do they do then?
lady_madonna
Mentor4 months agoI Do understand.
This is up to the individual buyers that need to be aware of potential scams...i.e. "if it's too good to be true.." Buyers need to be aware of Ebay's 30 day Money Back Guarantee and also aware of ways to avoid a scam.
If I find a item worth $5,000 selling for $99.99, it is on me to do my research into the seller/item and have enough sense to not purchase it.
If they find out much later that the item is not authentic, there is nothing they can do. That is why buyers need to be savvy about their purchases.
lady_madonna
Mentor4 months agoEbay does not allow buyers to be scammed. Ebay has a Money Back Guarantee so that if a buyer receives an item that is fake/not authentic they can file a Refund Request. If enough buyers file claims against a seller, Ebay will restrict or suspend the seller.