10-31-2014 02:01 PM
Hi. I sell mainly used Lego products. I've noticed something very annoying.....other international seller sell what they call "minifigures" that are not authentic Lego products but when someone searches "Lego minifigures" their items appear. In my opinion, this is very deceiving to the buyers who may not recognize that they are imitations. The buyers think they are getting a great price and the minifigures are new, but lesser quality and less value.
Does anyone else agree with me? Do you think Ebay is aware of this?
Does anyone know how to complain to Ebay about this?
Thanks,
Jane
10-31-2014 03:52 PM
Hi Jane,
I'm sure they're aware of it and wouldn't do any good to complain to about it. They're not doing anything wrong since they technically are "minifigures" unless of course they're misrepresenting the items as real Lego's. I understand your frustration though. Buyer's needs to use some common sense, although that seems to be in short supply at times, lol. I don't buy anything from China, but if I did, I wouldn't expect it to be authentic or of very good quality.
11-01-2014 12:03 AM
11-01-2014 12:04 AM
11-01-2014 12:31 AM
I agree if they're making them to look like authentic Legos, then yeah that's wrong. I assumed they where just similar looking minifigurines. You would think Ebay would care since they're so worried about having unhappy buyers, but nope don't seem too. Since they don't have to worry about shipping cost, the buyers are pretty much stuck with it since it usually cost more to send something back than it's worth. Buyers still need to apply some common sense when ordering anything overseas like that.
01-26-2015 09:08 AM
03-23-2015 05:11 PM
@mcposty, I hate to say this but you're wrong here, for now. These Chinese figs are made legally, and licenced for the Asian market. I hate this too because my authentic LEGO figs don't sell like they used to, but LEGO might even allow this. The Asian factory may use molds to make a cheaper product, than LEGOcan manufacture, and they probably keep the LEGO brand name off because it's a **bleep**py version of a LEGO mold. This happens with minimates, and other little toys, which are a huge seller in Asia. I hope you get what I mean? Brand loyalty doesn't mean LEGO isn't going to cut corners to make more money.
03-25-2015 09:21 PM
Lego set the standard and everyone wants to be like them ... there are many imitators ... there needs to be a Lego compatible option ... that way all those knock offs would stop calling themselves Lego's.
05-08-2015 02:50 PM
I agree with you 100%. When I look for Lego then I only want to see Lego, not this fake **bleep** from China. I agree with another poster, they should have a Lego compatable catagory for this fake **bleep** to be put in.
07-08-2015 09:45 AM
The problem is that they're all miscategorized and noone from eBay seems to care about enforcement of the 'miscategorization policy'. They expect the sellers to report the offenders. There are thousands of sellers selling fake LEGO's in the LEGO minifigure category.
07-08-2015 10:28 AM
@2011allthingsold wrote:The problem is that they're all miscategorized and noone from eBay seems to care about enforcement of the 'miscategorization policy'. They expect the sellers to report the offenders. There are thousands of sellers selling fake LEGO's in the LEGO minifigure category.
I think the best bet is to contact LEGO about this issue. I'm sure LEGO has a huge issue with not only the people counterfeiting the LEGO's profiting off sales, but with Ebay profiting off counterfeits as well. I highly doubt LEGO allows their molds to be used to sell a cheap product.
The counterfeit toy issue is out of hand in my opinion. There's knock offs from China of Barbie, Disney toys, Star Wars toys, Ninja Turtle toys, etc. I think if the companies that own the rights to these toys knew that ebay is allowing this there would be huge ramifications for ebay. If Walmart decided to start selling bootleg LEGOS in all of their stores and advertised them as LEGOS, don't you think Walmart would be getting a call from a LEGO lawyer?
I don't want to post the link for fear of it getting removed, but there is also governement sites to contact to report counterfeit goods.
12-27-2017 06:17 PM
08-16-2018 05:10 AM
I completely agree with you on this. Lego is a brand, a MAJOR brand, and in my opinion if you are listing something as LEGO and clearly know that it is not, then that is copyrighting and/or Bait and switch? People buy them though because they don't know how to spot the differences. I bought some minifigs off of Goodwill once and my 9yo took one look and said, 'mom these are fake'. [face palm]. I never buy anything overseas, and like another person said, it is probably **bleep** junk if it is from China. jmo.
08-16-2018 05:15 AM
08-16-2018 12:56 PM
@mcposty wrote:
Actually ebay doesnt care what china does. China clearly sells fake legos, and fake everything..ebay loves them..but you sell one fake item and you are toast
The problem is that Chinese sellers create several alternate / proxy accounts from which to distribute the same goods. When one account gets closed due to policy violations, the seller just continues to operate from a different account. They have plenty of cheap and easily accessible human labor to help them create and organize alternate accounts.
Until eBay can more effectively crackdown on this practice, the best you can do is filter international results from your searches. (Although some international shippers do lie about their location to manipulate search results.)