As a buyer you should be covered by the eBay refund policy within the 1st 30 days.
Saying that I think there should be 2 time categories.
Because the eBay refund policy is very much buyer-focused (e.g., Sellers need a CoA from a credible service provider to claim authenticity, whilst sellers can claim that an autograph looks like a forgery or use a $5-$10 online service provider which we all know are both incredibly unreliable and often inaccurate.
Even when sellers fully refund buyers under the ebay refund guarantee policy, sellers can still leave extremely damaging negative reviews and they are allowed to reference shady online reviews as evidence as it's not against ebay feedback policies.
Even the opinion of well known authenticity service providers should be taken with a pinch of salt. Because of the reputational risk of providing a positive opinion online pre-purchase, just to discover that the same autograph is actually a forgery during an in-person assessment after a purchase - unless an autograph is in their database, they are much more biased towards negative than positive online opinions.
In contrast, the lesser-known names with less or no reputational risk rely on volume and effectively tell you what you want hear.
As such I agree that for general refund without at least some credible evidence, 30 days is a sufficient amount of time for buyers to request refunds under the eBay guaranteed refund policy and buyers have to honor it - no questions asked.
However, the second category with a longer refund period that I think should be added is when buyers can present credible evidence of something being a forgery. (For example, buyers go through the process of getting a certificate of authenticity for autographs. The reason for this is that from experience these things can take anything from a few days up to almost a month).
With regards to how the cost of getting a CoA should be addressed, the answer is a bit more tricky.
On the one hand, the buyer knowingly purchased an item without a CoA (most likely at a price well below a similar item with a CoA) and it was the buyer's decision to spend the money on a CoA and not the sellers decision.
My personal opinion is that:
a) There are a large number of forgeries on eBay
b) Although there are a decent number of sellers knowingly selling forgeries, more often than not this is not the case. More likely is that an item was acquired at some point in time by the seller thinking that it's the real thing and subsequently selling listing it on eBay with no reason to doubt its authenticity...
So my personal opinion is that the seller should not be held responsible for any CoA related costs used as evidence by buyers to prove forgeries because:
a) The buyer knew the authenticity risks at the time of purchase along with the eBay refund policy timeframe rules.
b) If the CoA comes back as being authentic, the seller gets all the upside of being able to make a nice little profit - so it feels unreasonable to me that sellers should only be exposed to the downside in the event of a negative CoA but not share in any upside in the event of a positive CoA (especially since sellers have zero say in the additional cost being incurred).
c) This provides Buyers with a longer window in the event that they only start any authenticity processes mi-way through the 30-day refund period and seller will have to hold fund for longer to cover possible refunds if they sell autographed items that has not undergone any authentity process.
So in conclusion I believe that:
- 30 day money back guarantee (no questions asked)
- 60 day money back guarantee (max 90 days) if buyers can provide credible evidence like a CoA or something similar and sellers should remain responsible for the cost of any costs incurred post sale including costs related to evidence used to prove the lack of authenticity.
klhmdg • Volunteer Community Mentor
