Thank you for your post!! eBay and Paypal are making millions of dollars a year off of the sales of replicas and they have no intention of removing such items from their site, nor does Paypal have any intention of stopping processing these sales because their profits are to large... they are a major part of the problem.
Take the HERMES HANDBAGS for example that are selling on eBay...90% of them are fake, they are being made in China and being sold to people in the US for about $200.00 and then being sold on eBay for thousands of dollars and eBay has been contacted by Hermes, but they don't seem to care because they are enjoying the big profits.
As a small boutique owner I called Hermes of Paris to inquire about setting up an with them and their requirements are as follows:
A One Million Dollar Opening Order
Your store must dedicate One Thousand Square Feet to display their latest collection.
A 5 Year Contract
I've contacted eBay about this problem and they did not seemed to be to concerned...after speaking with them I took it a step futher...I went to alibaba.com and within one day found a seller of the Hermes bags & purchased one for $150.00 and paypal processed the transaction...it was then listed on ebay without a problem...my aution was up to $3,500.00 before I stopped it and contacted eBay and still...they didn't seem concerned!!!
What about the buyers that are being mislead...were are their rights??
It's sad, but it's the world we live in now and it just seems to be getting worse. eBay & Paypal does not seem to have a soul!!
Best of luck,
Kathy
quote:Originally posted by anacyclus:
Despite a couple of bad transactions, I happily trade with a couple of great companies in China, originally sourced through Ali Baba. To protect myself, I have paid through Paypal and on one occasion, they got my money back with no problem at all. I should point out though, that this was a couple of years ago and Paypal have now changed their user agreement covering companies in China and elsewhere, so if the same thing happened now, I would NOT have been covered...
(AliExpress is slightly different as it uses the Alipay escrow service, but I suggest you take a look at some of the offers on there. AB encourage companies to offer free shipping, so to get round this, sellers increase their unit cost to cover the shipping. As we all know - shipping is NOT free!)
However, I am also concerned about the counterfeit business. Several points come to mind: firstly, Ali Baba is choc-full of companies openly selling fake designer goods. Why don't they crack down on this? Secondly, eBay don't allow the sale of fakes (supposedly) so how will they feel about Ali Baba's acquisition of Auctiva, bearing in mind this will open the floodgates for more sellers to easily source fake goods? Let's hope they don't end their agreement with Auctiva because of it - where would that leave us all?
Thirdly - and this is a constant mystery to me: if you and I can easily find fake stuff on eBay, why don't eBay ban the sellers? Whenever I have reported such things to them, the listings have remained in place and the sellers continue to sell. I can only believe (being a cynic) that eBay make too much money from these sellers to care all that much... On the other hand, if the designer companies are so concerned, a simple daily search for their own goods would bring up lots of fakes. If they spent a few weeks reporting all these to eBay (and getting them removed) it would improve the situation considerably. I realise that unscrupulous companies will just set up new IDs and continue selling (something else eBay does nothing about...) but if they were continually removed it would surely discourage a lot of them.
None of this would be difficult to do, and considering the ease with which eBay have removed a couple of my listings in the past, (for reasons they later admitted were mistaken!) it makes me wonder what their VERO department staff do all day...
Fakes abound on eBay. Fakes are easily sourced through Ali Baba. Maybe we should all start selling dodgy Uggs, Ed Hardy, Prada bags, Pandora bracelets, Nike trainers, etc etc etc. Until Ali Baba start removing the companies selling counterfeit goods from their site, I will continue to believe that they really don't give a *%#* about it. (After all, they make a lot of money from these companies.)
And now Auctiva has become part of this company - sheesh.
Jane
Silk Dreams Lingerie
