Counterfeit Item Received

[donnamegan1]

I received a counterfeit item. I am due to get my money back from the seller, however eBay dismissed my initial report and said no policy violations. I appealed and they upheld their original decision. Even though they said it didn’t violate policies they removed the original listing due to policy violations! Because of this I am now unable to leave feedback for the seller which would obviously be negative. Why is eBay protecting sellers selling illegal products and making it hard for buyers to get their money back? Not sure why I’m posting this but just wanted to inform people that ebay is no longer a good selling site and don’t care about buyers rights.

The only reason I have been able to get a refund was the size of the product showed it didn’t match description.

Does anyone know how I can talk to an actual person to report the seller as the reporting system uses AI? 

[red_magpie]

When a case is correctly opened under eBay's money back guarantee eBay usually takes the buyer's word that an item is not authentic, without requiring any evidence. Indeed, day after day we hear from sellers who claim that eBay has taken the buyer's word and unfairly enforced a refund even though the item supplied was authentic.

What went wrong in your case is impossible to say with so little information, except that it appears to be unusual.

Did the case give you the opportunity to appeal? One of the problems for both buyers and sellers on eBay is that as the money back guarantee is unregulated any right of appeal is only to eBay itself. There is no right to any independent authority against their decisions.

[donnamegan1]

The issue for me is they dismissed my report but removed the listing due to policy violations. This shows that eBay flag the listing but I don’t know what policy it violated. I have proof that the item is counterfeit. I have sent pictures. It just angers me this seller is still allowed to have a shop and sell on eBay and I am unable to warn other buyers that items may not be genuine. 

[john1297576]

You refer to “report”!!

The correct procedure is to open a not as described case, which will always get your money back, and seller has to pay the return postage.

Unless you use correct procedure you will just get decisions made by robots.

There is no way that an item can easily be identified as fake from picture and description, which is why a “report” would be dismissed.

[red_magpie]

they dismissed my report but removed the listing due to policy violations.

What probably happened in this case is that both you and the registered rights owner reported the listing. 

Your report as an ordinary user will have been automatically dismissed by eBay's "AI". eBay will only remove alleged counterfeits from sale when reported by the registered owner of the brand name. Quote: "Only intellectual property rights owners can report eBay listings that infringe on their copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights".

If the rights owner reported the listing eBay will automatically have removed it from sale.