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Removal of illegal replica watches
Until recently, eBay had been pretty good about removing replica watches; I’ve been with eBay for 27 years and I’ve reported a lot of watches over the years.
The current reporting system is hopeless as the AI logarithm automatically rejects every report, but if you know what you’re doing you can reach a human being and he/she/they will remove the auction promptly.
Now, however, they seem to be allowing auctions for fakes posted by sellers with high feedback ratings to continue.
I find this practice disturbing and unethical.
7 comments
eburtonlab
Mentor1 year ago@sellmeyourwatch!
Counterfeit items are not allowed to be listed on eBay at all. No one is authorized to sell counterfeit watches. 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 the 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 thirty days to be able to take advantage of eBay's money back guarantee.
sellmeyourwatch!
OP1 year agoI focus on the watches I can clearly identify as fakes, or the auctions that don’t make sense.
When I see a Heuer Kawaguchi chronograph, number 1996 of 200, when only 500 genuine ones were produced, it’s pretty simple.
Likewise, when a zero transaction newbie lists a $9,000 Rolex for $250 after he’d inherited it from his grandfather who “only bought the bestâ€, I become suspicious. eBay will stop an auction like that if there is no photographic proof of possession and authenticity.
My problem, solved this morning, was unresponsiveness by eBay on fakes offered by established sellers. Some of these sellers believe they know it all, and cannot even imagine having been fooled. I don’t believe these long-time sellers intentionally list fakes, but they’re resistant to the idea that someone knows more than they do.
As I saw on a bumper sticker long ago, people who think they know it all really annoy those of us who actually do know it all.
eburtonlab
Mentor1 year agoI focus on the watches I can clearly identify as fakes, or the auctions that don’t make sense.
There is no rule that auctions have to "make sense".
If you see a listing from someone whose business model makes no sense, that is a very good reason not to purchase from them, but it does not necessarily mean that the listing by itself violates policy or that eBay will remove the listing.
Just because you can identify something as a fake does not mean that others without your personal expertise can do so as well. And "others" includes the folks at eBay.
eBay is not going to simply take your word about how many Heuer Kawaguchi chronographs were produced unless you are the rights owner. If you are the rights owner, file a VeRO claim and eBay will remove the listing.
Think of it this way: if the seller delivered exactly what was advertised -- a genuine watch that matched the description exactly -- would that listing violate policy?
Never mind that the seller has a zero feedback account set up yesterday in a third-world country and is claiming to sell several identical unique priceless antiques for less than the cost of shipping them; unless the listing says the watch contains hazardous parts or is made from endangered animals or contains ozone depleting chemicals or has a swastika on it or claims to cure cancer or there is something else you can point to that obviously violates a specific eBay policy, eBay is probably not going to remove the listing until someone actually buys it and fails to receive what was described in the listing and actually complains about that.
sellmeyourwatch!
OP1 year agoWhile the AI program rejects every report, those on the human side are not so dismissive, relying on human intelligence and experience.
I have gotten fakes in the thousands, if not the tens of thousands, removed from eBay over the years but it can get a little frustrating at times when they cannot keep up . . .
I see this a lot:
The content you reported was removed
eburtonlab
Mentor1 year agoMy intention is not to discourage you from reporting scam listings -- I have reported many of those myself, and I continue to do so. I believe that the more independent reports eBay receives, the more likely action is to be taken regarding a listing.
The fact that the AI replies you get all seem to be rejections does not mean that AI always rejects your reports; some of your reports may have been forwarded by the AI to a human for further review. On its face, the form letter you receive just says that the AI did not find any listing violation, not that the listing is not a scam.
The fact of the matter is that you and I have no way of knowing how many scam listings are removed by eBay before we ever see them; we can only see the ones that have not been removed yet.
And if a listing we report is removed, we have no way of knowing if our reports have contributed to the removal, much less have been the deciding factor; for all we know, those listings were in the process of removal before we submitted our reports and would have been removed anyway.
Perhaps one day AI (or humans) can be trained to reliably spot fake listings even if there is no policy violation present in the listing. That does not seem to be the case yet, though.
But no matter how many scam listings eBay removes, as long as it is possible for a scammer to create a false listing, buyers should still be on the lookout for deals that are too good to be true and do what they can to avoid buying them, rather than relying entirely on fallible AI or fallible humans at eBay to shield them from such listings.
sellmeyourwatch!
OP11 months agoIt is my understanding that on certain subjects such as purses and watches eBay has select individuals whose reports are taken as gospel and are acted upon immediately.
Even when those reports are acted upon immediately, the numbers of fakes, especially from China, have proliferated and gotten out of control.
I think they need to start deleting user IDs the first time a zero transaction user posts eight or ten or twenty obvious fakes at once . . .
eburtonlab
Mentor11 months agoIt is my understanding that on certain subjects such as purses and watches eBay has select individuals whose reports are taken as gospel and are acted upon immediately.
Even if that is true, that is not much help for potential buyers that come across those listings before the listings are actually removed, though. And that is no help at all if the seller is showing a picture of a genuine item but then delivering a counterfeit.
Even when those reports are acted upon immediately, the numbers of fakes, especially from China, have proliferated and gotten out of control.
Agreed. Which is why buyers need to choose experienced sellers they trust to do business with or else get items authenticated quickly so they can use eBay's money back guarantee in the time allowed.
That remains true whether eBay removes 99.99% of the fake listings or none of them. I would prefer that eBay move closer to the former rather than the latter, but whatever eBay is doing now is clearly not enough to get anywhere close to that.
Until eBay makes it literally impossible for any seller to describe one thing and then ship another, buyers will still have to protect themselves from counterfeits and scams, rather than relying on eBay to keep all the scam listings off the site.