It is important to ask serious questions about authentication—a case of pivotal importance.
It could be the pivotal case that makes eBay come up with these terrible ideas to change course.
In general, I sell higher-value items from our items infrequently. A few sales a year. In advertisements, am I the target demographic for using this platform to sell items? Isn't that the pitch? Sell your used items. However, they are high-end items. I take great photos, write informative descriptions, and I'm generally reasonable in how I interact with buyers. According to all accounts, I am a perfect seller—an eBay member for maybe 15 years.
eBay self-inflicted this wound. As a result, they sabotaged a deal between two established and credible ebayers, lost revenue, and lost additional money in partially correcting their mistake. All the external liabilities passed on to sellers make this authentication concept a guaranteed losing proposition for eBay. They cover all bases on a purely legal pretext in their terms and conditions, but the optics and principle value are awful. In a sense, it makes their terms and conditions moot. It's probably bad if it looks and sounds bad.
I owe eBay a deep apology. It is both the people who implemented this idea and the "authenticator" who is underqualunderqualifiedied (more on this below). The loss of sale funds and the loss of items are also covered.
