Ebay Counterfeit Reporting Forum (Closed)

It has been closed since Feb. 8th.
Don't know why or for how long.
Contacted bobby but he never got back to me.

Helps with their revenue until a lawsuit?

Jimmy, on 2/8 you sent me a message, and I replied
Hi Karl,
I noticed the counterfeit sites are closed, is this temporary or permanent?

Jimmy,
I am not sure. Our contact has been talking about quitting for some time, and last night he told me that he did.
Personally, I give it about 80% chance that it is permanent.

I will definitely let you know if anything changes.

I feel sorry for all the victims there will now be due to ebay's failure to remove these listings. If we can find them, so could they.

Karl

Wow! impressive statistics! Great job!
Thanks for the heads up!

I have never nor would ever purchase gold anything from ebay, but this is great info... thanks for sharing!

Only one other member participated daily, and my estimate is that he identified at least $5,000,000 in counterfeits over the years that got removed.

I am unaware of anyway to directly contact ebay in the manner were able to using our contact. So it is buyer beware more than ever on ebay now.

If you know what you are doing, ebay is a great place to shop for coins. If you receive a counterfeit, ebay's buyer protection plan is great.

I trade on ebay (all legit of course) and recently was recommended by ebay a couple of Chinese coin listings that are obviously fake.

Here is one of them:

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/387993682542



I've never reported a counterfeit before, so decided to give ebay's system a go. My points on the coin were:

1. The certificate number does not exist
2. The photo is manipulated. Bar code partially wiped out. QR code added to some photos
3. Holder is fake. The paper is crooked and wrong.
4. The coin is very cheap for what it claims to be

To anyone who knows about PCGS graded coins, this is a slam dunk fake.

I waited two weeks and just received an official ebay determination: The listing has NOT been removed.

I mean, really? Then I read further: the determination was made by an automated system. Oh great, we now have an AI bot trying to determine whether a listing has a counterfeit coin. I wonder how many fakes it misses, and more importantly, how many genuine coins it flags as fake?

The seller ended the listing on 10 March anyway. Maybe they got cold feet if ebay notified them the listing is being investigated.

It would be really helpful if ebay could have humans review listings. Things about whether a gold bar looks right or not may be subjective, but to clearly have a PCGS coin with manipulated photos and a certificate number that doesn't exist... that should be removed within seconds by anyone competent. It's disappointing to read their counterfeit reporting forum has now been closed.

I reported an item with the subject "***SEARCHING FOR*** NOT SELLING!..." as a "no items" listing violation and promptly got the "Not a violation" response. It's one thing to analyze images and compare certification numbers and falsely conclude something is genuine. It's another thing entirely to look at the words "not selling" and somehow determine it's not a violation of "not selling".

AI may be artificial, but it's clearly not intelligent. The listing is still up. https://www.ebay.com/itm/167371326075

It's in all our interests to keep as many counterfeits as possible off ebay. Some people will buy counterfeits instead of the real thing, costing us money. The customer will be upset they've been cheated and maybe walk away from the hobby completely. And most importantly for me as a seller on ebay, if ebay gets a reputation that 'everything there is counterfeit', that will directly cost me money through lost sales.

We can come together as a community to police the site and point out the obvious fakes, but what good are our efforts if no one at ebay listens? They just use a useless AI bot that does nothing.

Also, why should we spend our time and effort doing a job for free for the benefit of ebay? ebay should be paying people for the work done in keeping their product safe. It's like the problem of flagging fake dating profiles. When I was using a site years ago, I logged and flagged 64 fake accounts. Sure, they were taken down, but replaced with new fakes within days. I then realized I was being a complete sucker. I spent hours looking through these accounts and giving my work to the app for free. I simply gave up and left.

It really would help if ebay cared about the problem.