Seller selling clearly fake products - reporting them gets me a warning for unfounded reports

[lucamedicci]

I recently found a seller selling around 20 fake Pokemon cards, a blatantly fake booster box (usually worth several hundred pounds). Even though they are all visually obvious fakes eBay refused to remove any of them and then send me an email saying that if I continue to make “unfounded reports” my ability to report will be removed. 

I am reporting these items because I don’t want this user to scam people. Fraud is illegal in the UK. They are either not being reviewed by humans (as they claim), or the people reviewing them don’t know what they’re looking at, and I’m not sure which is worse. 

There is no recourse for me in the emails they send, they cannot be replied to, even the one threatening the removal of me reporting privileges.   

 

just a few minutes of googling would have shown the “customer service agent” would show the below has lots of red flags. Non-matching wrapping, non-matching packaging, and the same kind you buy from AliExpress for £20 despite being worth £1200.

Do eBay just not care anymore?

[ett1954]

In these instances it is more effective to send your suspicions to the manufacturer with a link to the listing. 

[rainbowtrax]

Ebay have never cared. You may have the knowledge of a certain type of items - as sellers, most of us will have specific areas of knowledge. The problem with ebay is that they have no areas of knowledge and nor do their humans or AI responding to reports. Their default is to deny all reports made by ebay users. They only act on VeRO reports and only then because they're scared of being sued if they don't. Their argument would be that you could be a competitor maliciously reporting your rivals (I'm sure you're not and are perfectly knowledgeable in your area but they don't know that). 

It was suggested to ebay years ago and has been raised multiple times over the years, with people even volunteering to do the job for no pay, that what ebay need is trusted users who volunteer to help clear fakes in their category of expertise as ebay don't know which way's up in any category and never will. Just from regular posters on the boards alone, they could have had the majority of high fake categories covered. But they're not interested and never have been. Reporting anything is a pointless waste of your time, while, at the other extreme, any VeRO reports will be instantly actioned even if they're malicious or fraudulent.

TLDR: ebay don't care so don't waste your time.

[fotherbale]

Ebay don't want fakes and counterfeits removed - they make money from them being sold. 

As already suggested, report the listings to the legitimate supplier/manufacturer, or in the case of something with a registered trademark (like Pokemon) report it to the trademark holder (in the case of Pokemon, this is Nintendo).

For trademarks registered in the UK you can find the trademark owner using www.gov.uk/search-for-trademark