Results tagged “counterfeit” from Birmingham Mail - Technobabble

I see online auction site eBay has come a cropper in France for allowing the sale of fake goods.

Readers will know that I have a slight bee in my bonnet over this well known internet giant, and in the past have railed at their indifference to all fraud and other illegal activities taking place there.

A simple search of well known fashion names shows hundreds upon hundreds of items - all allegedly 'bought new with tags'.

Of course only a very small proportion is real - an absolute scandal which eBay has been unwilling to tackle - after all every sale means money in the bank to them.

The sheer scale of the counterfeit goods operation on eBay means that they would see a massive hit in their profits, so they pay lip service to combating it, but in my opinion, in reality do little.

Now they've been fined, will anything change? Well, eBay's line has always been 'it's not our problem' saying they are simply a conduit for a sale and can't be held responsible.

Try reporting something dodgy and see where that gets you - a lot of automatically generated customer service emails - that's where!

So will anything change? Probably not, but it'll be interesting watching to see what happens. I'm also monitoring the situation with regards to the decision to ban negative seller feedback while raising their cut from auctions (not to mention insisting on people signing up to Paypal - in the interests of security you understand, not so eBay gets a cut from the auction selling price, and then from the payment too, oh no, perish the thought!).

We can only hope the profiteering, poor customer service and arrogance of eBay comes back to haunt it!

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