Why does eBay allow foreign sellers to sell obvious counterfeit items?
I have been selling (and buying) on eBay since the beginning. It is becoming increasingly difficult to do either! There are SO MANY scams on eBay, that it makes it impossible to sell honest items (silver coins and bullion has been my most recent challenge) There are so many knock-off items that it makes it impossible to weed them all out! If you click on an item to check out, you can't even get to a full description of the item without scrolling and having 300 other items thrown in your face. This is frustrating for both buyers and sellers! If I am paying to advertise my item, why are my customers forced to view all my competitors' items before they can see the description I have written?? How about an ad that say's "US Seller" But the item location is written in Chinese?? Why can't something be done?? Can we please have an eBay USA? A separate partition of eBay that allows ONLY US buyers and sellers.? How about kicking off sellers who have all negative feedback, which clearly states items are fake?? One would have to believe that you (eBay) are more concerned about your profit shares, than the integrity of the platform! How about cracking down on the criminals, lest you become one of them!
buzzapparel
·6 months agoMany sellers have realized they can buy good quality counterfeits for penny’s on the dollar on DHGate and Aliexpress then resell those items as genuine without most buyers knowing the difference. It’s become an absolute epidemic here and e-commerce in general.
eburtonlab
·6 months agoMany sellers have realized they can buy good quality counterfeits for penny’s on the dollar on DHGate and Aliexpress then resell those items as genuine without most buyers knowing the difference.
The sort of sellers that do that probably cannot get away with doing that for very long before a buyer notices and leaves feedback, though. Some buyers might be inclined to buy from new sellers with good feedback, but very few buyers will buy from new sellers that also have negatives for selling counterfeit items. Once a scammer gets negative feedback for selling counterfeits, the scammer typically has to open a new account to sell the remaining counterfeit stock. Rinse and repeat.
Which further reinforces the usefulness of the strategy of buying from experienced sellers with excellent feedback rather than from new sellers with little or no feedback. Not every new seller is a scammer, but scammers are vastly over-represented among new accounts, and scammers are vastly under-represented among experienced accounts with excellent feedback.
soh.maryl
·6 months agoYes, there ARE counterfeit items being listed, but it's not restricted to foreign sellers.
And, as you know, no one employed by eBay sees and evaluates items listed here. So how do you suggest that eBay pre-emptively stop any seller from listing counterfeits?
The best buyers can do is protect themselves by being knowledgeable about what they are searching for and vetting their sellers very carefully. No one should ever buy on impulse. If a buyer is very careful, but still receives an item that is not as described, the buyer has the protection of the Money Back Guarantee, which all buyers need to read, preferably BEFORE they begin selling here.
stuff4divas
·6 months ago@tonymingia if u want to be part of the solution, start reporting any listings, sellers, buyers, etc u deem to be in violation of eBay policy
loose_goose_garage
·6 months agoI get eBay advertisements on Instagram for counterfeit coins often. I've checked the listings here and there and none say reproduction/ copy/ etc. anywhere in the listing. Just a mint 1909 S VDB for $23 shipped.
soh.maryl
·6 months agoNo smart seller who sells counterfeits, fakes, knockoffs etc is going to state that in his listings because eBay does not allow those items to be sold here.
inhawaii
·6 months agoWhy does eBay allow foreign sellers to sell obvious counterfeit items?
Because what may be obvious to you may not be obvious to others or to ebay.
There are actually people out there who believe that just because a item is listed too cheap, that means it's counterfeit.
annadryl
·6 months agoThey tried that specifically with Bonanza. It failed spectacularly.
stainlessenginecovers
·8 months ago@tonymingia Obvious? What's obvious about an item that in the listing a buyer can tell (or ebay) ??
300 items?? There are 4 last I saw (unless you are talking about scrolling all the way to the bottom which NOBODY does; heck, can't even get buyers to scroll down 1 full page the read the description!
caldreamer
·8 months agoEBAY already has option to specify "view USA location only" after you search for an item. I always do that because I don't want to wait forever to receive my item or pay custom charges.
eburtonlab
·8 months agoEBAY already has option to specify "view USA location only" after you search for an item. I always do that because I don't want to wait forever to receive my item or pay custom charges.
Not every seller that claims to ship from the US actually does so, though.
eburtonlab
·8 months ago@tonymingia
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 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.
azmtbiker
·6 months agoebay is clearly complicit with the sales of counterfeit merchandise as they profit from it. its quite shameful actually. hopefully someone will create a better platform and we can all move there