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eBay To Combat Counterfeiters With Professional Authenticators That Inspect High-End Goods
To many, eBay serves as a convenient conduit for shifting unwanted goods and buying items at a fraction of their MSRP. But the online shopping emporium has long been a popular platform for fake products, with luxury goods such as fashion accessories and jewelry high on eBay counterfeiters' agenda. eBay is attempting to fix that. From a report: To counter this, eBay has revealed plans to introduce a new authentication program later this year, with a broad focus on "high-end" goods and launching initially as a trial with fashion items such as handbags. Dubbed eBay Authenticate, the new service will be powered by a "network of professional authenticators," and is ultimately designed to encourage buyers to part with cash on expensive items, safe in the knowledge that the merchandise is legitimate.
cool, now there are guaranteed buyers for fake prada purses
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If you look up pretty much any old videogame from a cartridge-based system on eBay, you're more likely than not to find at least one seller selling reproduction cartridges at full price, with no warning that they are reproductions. Often, there's no easy way to tell the difference short of opening up the cartridge and comparing it to a known real one. This is especially bad for games that go for a high price, such as Conker's Bad Fur Day on the N64 or Earthbound on the SNES.
There's nothing I despise and hate more, than a company spamming its customers with political garbage. Note this spam received from ebay, below:
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Join eBay Canada in calling for fewer duties and taxes on ecommerce purchases. Support shopping fairness!
Happy New Year!
If you’re like me, you love that eBay connects you with amazing finds in nearly every country around the world.
Unfortunately, Canada’s customs laws make it difficult for eBay users to buy and sell across borders. Our “de minimis threshold” is set at $20, which means we’re responsible for paying duties and taxes on international purchases worth more than $20. Our threshold -- set in the 1980’s -- is out of step internationally: the US threshold is US$800!
Canada’s low de minimis threshold makes shopping more expensive and creates red tape for entrepreneurs. It also costs taxpayers money because the government spends more to enforce the law than it actually collects at the border. Learn more.
eBay Canada believes that our laws should reduce burdens on consumers, entrepreneurs, and taxpayers. If you agree, please sign our letter to Finance Minister Bill Morneau.
Participation is easy. Together, we can make a difference.
Sincerely,
Andrea Stairs
Managing Director
eBay Canada
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You can't unsubscribe from these emails, as ebay has a 'site changes and enhancements' category of emails that you can NOT opt out of.
And of course, Andrea thought her little political message is somehow about that. Why?
Because "I'm the managing director of ebay Canada, I'm special, and I get to spout my politically motivated emails to all ebay members".
I emailed back, of course, assuring ebay that'd I'd look everywhere else first, now. That I'll try etsy, aliexpress, alibaba and others BEFORE ebay.
Of course, no one actually read my email, because why would they? And even if they did, well, who wants to tell Queen Bee that she's acting like an idiot.
I left 'smashwords' for the same reason. The CEO kept sending out political emails, ones you can't unsubscribe from, because hey -- why can't he use SPAM to tell his customers how to vote. What to think?
I no longer have a smashwords account. And I very much am close to canceling my ebay account.
Morons.
For sale on ebay - shroud of Turin, lightly used, with some light discoloration and staining. Natural twill. Organic.
I double-dare you to Authenticate it.
Is product less than x % of average retail price?
Does seller communicated in broken english?
If yes and yes, it is counterfeit.
But whatever their actual solution is I just hope there is a basic rule of common sense and priority being applied: it makes absolutely zero difference if someone is selling counterfeit handbags or jewelry. These are purely luxury items with little to no actual value.
It DOES make a difference if someone is selling, say, counterfeit brake parts or electronics preloaded with malware.
ebay recently sent span to me about how they are upset with the canadian government. They say the government has the nerve to charge import duty and taxes on some select items (very few, actually). The spam is a lie because I buy a lot of stuff from us and china and have only ever been charged duty twice.
Funny thing is, ebay charges import fees on items that have no duties or taxes. ebay makes it sound like those import fees are paid to the government when they are actually pure profit to ebay and/or the seller. I don't use ebay much after I found out they are ripping canadians off and I never, ever, purchase things on ebay that have the import fee. ebay sucks.
Amazon needs this more than anyone.
I understand the best counterfeits are often so good they pass 'expert' monitors. Does that mean if you're sufficiently good at it, your stuff is now ok?
Once the very last person in the world who can still tell an original from the very best of the fakes suddenly kicks the bucket (the real thing), then what?
When a tree falls in the forest, does anyone here it?
s/here/hear
Caffeine apparently lost in flight somewhere over the Pacific.
Dubbed eBay Authenticate, the new service will be powered by a "network of professional authenticators," and is ultimately designed to encourage buyers to part with cash on expensive items, safe in the knowledge that the merchandise is legitimate.
I'm wondering if these "professional authenticators" will be independent of the companies that made the products and have the ability to overrule them. As it stands if you want to sell a Louis Vuitton purse on eBay, LVMH (the company that owns the brand) can have the auction pulled just by claiming to eBay that it is fake regardless of the truth of that claim. I used to make my living selling stuff on eBay. I've had auctions pulled for luxury goods which I know for a fact were 100% authentic and had the documentation to prove it. (stuff like a handbag with one owner purchased from Neiman Marcus and still had the receipt) I don't deny that there is a lot of fake merchandise on eBay but eBay has had 15+ years to sort the problem out and hasn't bothered yet.
I don't have any confidence that this is anything more than marketing fluff rather than a serious attempt to deal with the problem.
QED
If it sounds too good to be true, it's probably fake. How many 100+ GB thumb drives have been sold, so many 1TB HDD's that were fake, but sold because of an insane CHEAP price?
I've bought them on Amazon too. I was hoping for a used copy but got a knock-off instead - worked great, the cases are a bit brittle and don't last in a backpack like the real ones do.
I never intentionally bought them counterfeit. I approve of this "certified real" program, but I'm guessing the certified as real guys are still going to be a little higher priced in the end. It's worth it to me.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
One of the biggest probelms eBay, Amazon, et al have is that the counterfeit goods in many cases are authentic.
"Huh?" you might ask.
The answer is that the very same Chinese factories making many of these goods are often the ones making the counterfeits. They have the tooling all ready to go, and as soon as the paid-for shift ends, they do a "night run" of the exact same item (or the same item but with lower quality raw materials but otherwise indistinguishable), but sell them through black and grey market channels to non-official distributors, who in turn either sell them themselves or farm them out to smaller unauthorized merchants on eBay, Amazon, Alibaba, etc.
Good luck detecting a counterfeit when it is exactly the same as the real deal.
Wow, that's great. There will be absolutely no way for the experienced fraudsters at the electronic bay of thieves to scam the system or make educated guesses about if they should send out the real or counterfeit items. I can now trust eBay completely. Not that there were ever problems before and we all know that any problem this elaborate effort is designed to correct was just an innocent mistake. I'll even be able to buy 5000 mah 18650 batteries from the eBay vendors now. And puppy dogs will go to heaven and all will be wonderful. It is a shame that Obama couldn't have given us this eight years ago and we had to wait for Trump to be about to take office to get this great change.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The authenticators are to be paid by the Sellers, not by ebay or the buyers. It's offering the service to someone who already owns the piece and wants to sell it, and presumably is willing to take the risk that what they are selling isn't faked, in order to give buyers more confidence. This "certification model" paid for by the businesses in the hopes that enough will adapt it and it will become mandatory "professional licensing". Ebay is already in that business, via "Powerseller" status.
It appears too general. If I pay to ask ebay to "certify" that a photo I took of a duck was really taken by me, does ebay turn down the money, or admit that they have no expert qualified to determine it was my duck photo.
Gently reply
I couldn't give 2 rats if your Gucci handbag was real. In fact I wouldn't even know; to me it shows shallow consumerism with probably a matching personality.
What I do care about is mains connected devices manufactured with poor creepages and insufficient protection that can catch fire and electrocute people. I would guess this would apply to the majority of plug packs, power supplies and battery packs.
Thus they should be concentrating on devices that have mandatory safety and legislative standards requirements first.
46137
I am less concered about some high end rollex watch and more concerned about the millions of little electronic chips that are counterfit.
I've been an eBay user since 1999, but I sort of gave up after getting burned on counterfeit SD cards recently. It's my own fault, of course, but my solution was to stop buying that stuff on eBay and just use Amazon Prime.
I once bought a counterfeit Pokemon Emerald off of Ebay and it did *not* work great.
Pokemon Emerald uses flash memory for its save file which is a pain for counterfeiters to make, so they hack the game to use battery backup instead. When the game is hacked to use battery backup, you can't trade Pokemon to generation 4 or the Gamecube games (since those are external programs which don't know that the save file is stored in a different way so they look for it in the nonexistent flash memory) and in fact using those can destroy your save.
Also, of course the battery can run out.
I had to throw it out and buy a real one locally from Gamestop.
I once bought a counterfeit Pokemon Emerald off of Ebay and it did *not* work great.
Pokemon Emerald uses flash memory for its save file which is a pain for counterfeiters to make, so they hack the game to use battery backup instead.
Why would counterfeiters have trouble with flash memory? They don't have to make it themselves, it's a traded commodity now.
The fake ones are nasty, unlike fake designer handbags that are just as good as the overpriced ones.
There are always lots of crude fakes on eBay "signed" Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, etc. This fraud has been going on for years, with no visible efforts by eBay to prevent it. It's amusing if you look at is as a satire on the quality of many authentic works by these artists, but honest people do get burned by these scammers.
I have reported fake Game Boy Advance games and they went nowhere. I then started using eBay's complaint system to report sellers who were selling nothing but fakes and got a generic response back. Still they sell fake crap and so I gave up as it just was a waste of time.
Now I'm starting to see fake Nintendo DS cartridges appear on eBay.
Don't even get started on fake Pokemon cards...
They need some kind of rewards system (fee reductions, free listings) for reporting fakes for people to bother.