Authenticity Guarantee programme - good idea?

[paul*tribesandvibes*]

I'm not a seller of watches, sneakers or handbags, but when I read the ebay blurb about this new programme, my first thought was, 'will the Buyers be patient enough to wait for the proceess' ? I mean, will ebay add more delivery time on to a listing knowing that it's going to be sent to who-knows-where for who-knows-how-long? Buyers get pretty antsy when items dont arrive on time. Was wondering if anyone had been through this. Thoughts?

[rsm1309]

People are clearly put off by this. I've had items at a decent price with a high number of watchers sitting unsold for months. I know from 20+ years experience on EBay that these items would have sold in the past.  I don't know why EBay feel it necessary for long term sellers with good feedback and no previous authenticity issues.  They could be far more selective who this policy applies to.

[mrskptuk]

I'm not sure it is a positive, actually no its not! Recently I purchased two bracelets and they failed authentication as they had French hallmarks, not surprising given they are from a French designer and none of their items is going to have a UK hallmark. I ended up purchasing these outside Ebay as they were coming unworn with original box, ribbons, bag and receipts - far from ideal but I had no doubt these were authentic given the niche brand.

[ojewellery]

@mrskptuk  I know your post was a couple of months ago but something else came up today that reminded me of it.

France, although the originators of hallmarks some 800+ years ago have chosen not to sign up to the reciprocal hallmarking convention to respect the hallmarks of other countries within the agreement.

Until Brexit we had a different bit of legislation which existed in addition to the hallmarking convention, the Houtwipper agreement, basically those countries within the EU agreed to acknowledge each others hallmarks.  Post brexit there is no such agreement and so French hallmarked gold can't be sold as gold in the UK - UK hallmarked gold can't be sold into France.  How we feel about that is something else.  Its very men in suits posturing.  We both know deep down we've happily traded gold for hundreds of years.  We're still in the bitter post divorce phase and not behaving like grown ups.

The countries within the hallmarking convention are: Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland and UK.

Denmark means all the lovely hallmarked current and historic Georg Jensen pieces should pass through authenticity. 

Italy joining (late to the party in December 23) means the very high percentage of fine metal chains in circulation can legitimately be sold.  People like to knock online trade in jewellery as being somehow less legitimate but the biggest UK high street chains use Italian chain makers and I'm confident haven't post Brexit changed to getting UK hallmarks on all their chains (bulk of world manufacture is Italian).