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reporting sellers of counterfeit coins on ebay
I received counterfeit Peace dollars and I believe the seller is aware that they are selling counterfeits on eBay. This is a federal offense and I was told I should turn the fake coins over to local law enforcement. However, the seller says I need to return them in order to get a refund. Am I giving back the "evidence" and doing something illegal by returning ?
2 comments
rock.star
·1 year agoYou need to file an item, not as described case with eBay.
If the seller wants them back he will need pay for the shipping.
eburtonlab
Mentor1 year agoIf you want to force the seller to refund you through eBay, you must be prepared to return the item; possibly the seller will not want to pay to ship the item back, though.
Counterfeit items are not allowed to be listed on eBay at all. No one is authorized to sell counterfeit coins. 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.