Ebay allow fake items to be listed and sold on the platform

[auctiongabble]

While scrolling through ebay listings i came across 2025 1oz silver britannia coins listed at £16.75

Now anyone in the trade of bullion such as myself instantly know that this will be fake at the price listed for as these coins scrap around £32 and to buy are between £40 to £45.

Reported this listing to ebay and not to my surprise it was looked in to and found nothing wrong with it.

The response

What happened:
We looked into your report and didn’t find the listing to be in violation of our policy.  This determination was made by a customer service agent.

So you have customer service agents that don't actually understand what they are looking at and can identify fake items.  Allowing the sale of fake items is against the law

Would someone care to comment on this?

dave@ebay  kat@ebay  marco@ebay 

[plpmr]

Item and seller located in China.

eBay never see the item and the fact that it's dirt cheap cannot prove its fake.

[auctiongabble]

The coins have a market value of £33 to scrap so who in their right mind would sell these at half price as a business?

[jonatjonatjonat]

ebay would need to know the commodity price of precious metals, which they won't investigate in that much depth. Better off reporting them to Royal Mint who might be able to action a take down.

Or report them for duplicate listings - which it appears they are doing.

[kat@ebay]

Hi @auctiongabble ,

Thank you for your post.

As items are never in eBay’s possession making decisions on counterfeit reports can be challenging.

While I understand not being happy with the outcome of your report we cannot advise on action taken by another team. There is an appeals process outlined in the reply email and that would need to go through customer support.

Thank you,

Kat

[krafty-kreations]

As items are never in eBay’s possession making decisions on counterfeit reports can be challenging.

I understand it can be difficult to make decisions on fake products, but I do feel that eBay could sometimes make more of an effort, especially when it comes to trending fads and potentially dangerous items, such as Labubus, which are currently making the news.

[4_bathrooms]

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@krafty-kreations wrote:

I understand it can be difficult to make decisions on fake products, but I do feel that eBay could sometimes make more of an effort, especially when it comes to trending fads and potentially dangerous items, such as Labubus, which are currently making the news.

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VeRO allows rights owners to enforce their rights; counterfeit items should therefore always be reported to the rights owner with a link to the VeRO page.

eBay has pretty much left policing of dangerous items to the Office for Product Safety and Standards; dangerous items are probably best reported to them. The OPSS doesn't have a dedicated report form as such but their contact details are available from GOV.UK.  

[style_wise]

You've been around the eBay block in the last 12 years, and some things have changed. @4_bathrooms is correct that the VeRO team take counterfeits very seriously. What has changed in recent years, is that reporting counterfeits to them should come from the rights holder.

In future, if you still want to use IP Infringement reason to bring this to the attention of VeRO directly, I would plan to do as kat@ebay suggests, and be prepared to appeal . When I appeal and AI rejection of a report, I use brief facts and logical reasons (estimate these appeals are successful about 50% of the time).

Otherwise if you can find a reason under Product or Listing > Problem with the Listing, these reports seem to work better for individuals. For example Search Manipulation or Unauthorized Use of a Trademark. Thank you for trying to help make eBay safer. eBay puts these systems in place because the don't allow counterfeits.

[4_bathrooms]

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@style_wise wrote:

Otherwise if you can find a reason under Product or Listing > Problem with the Listing, these reports seem to work better for individuals. For example Search Manipulation or Unauthorized Use of a Trademark. 

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I wouldn't bother reporting anything to eBay that doesn't relate to an issue with a transaction; this post explains why.