eBay User Feedback, Fact or Fiction?
Consumers mislead by deceptive practices and altered feedback
October 20, 2016 - Los Angeles, CA – eBay® (EBAY) User Feedback should provide accurate and valuable insight to the Buyers and Sellers involved in a transaction, allowing each to build reputations that are based on ratings and comments left by their trading partners, and the users overall integrity – but it doesn’t.
The Counterfeit Report®, a popular anti-counterfeiting advocate and website, identified over 2-million counterfeit items listed on eBay.
The Counterfeit Report submitted trademark complaints to remove 1.3 million counterfeit items listed on eBay. While the listings were removed, the sellers remain, some with eBay's "Top Rated Seller" or "Top Rated Plus" designation. Sellers often relist the counterfeit items in what is best described by some trademark holders as a "whack-a-mole" removal process.
The eBay sellers below retain a "Top Rated Plus" rating despite "hobbycopter" having 86 fake item listings removed, and "walkera1usa" having 181 fake item listings removed. eBay records show both sellers are the same person.
The Counterfeit Report purchased and received over 2,000 manufacturer confirmed counterfeit products from eBay sellers -- just a sample of over 560,000 counterfeits identified as sold to eBay consumers. Inexplicably, eBay removed the negative feedback left for the sellers of confirmed fakes to warn prospective or actual purchasers that the product received was a counterfeit item. Without accurate feedback, eBay buyers can't determine buyer or seller integrity, or that they received a fake. eBay won't tell buyers they received a fake and are entitled to a refund.
The information available in each member's Feedback Profile should boost consumer confidence and indicate the honesty of both buyer and seller by providing a Positive, Negative, or Neutral rating, along with a short comment, but;
eBay is no stranger to allegations of selling counterfeit goods and faces a “credibility crisis” for failing to adhere to its own policies, crack down on counterfeit goods listed on its website, altering feedback, and making it easy for counterfeiters, the world’s largest criminal enterprise, to peddle $1.7 trillion in counterfeit goods to unsuspecting consumers4.
Some introspection by eBay is in order to address the obvious failures in its feedback and counterfeit practices, policies, and procedures. Companies that facilitate criminal activity and profit from the proceeds of dishonest actions which impact jobs, consumer safety and public trust create a public perception of deception and impunity. However, reputation damage is only a small part of the problem: counterfeiting costs US manufacturers over $250 billion, US workers over 750,000 jobs4, and funds organized crime and terrorism5.
Footnotes:
1 eBay Feedback Policy;
http://pages.ebay.com/services/forum/feedback.html
http://pages.ebay.com/services/forum/feedback-foundersnote.html
2 Business Insider Article;
http://www.businessinsider.com/ebay-admits-it-banned-a-whistleblower-2014-11
3 Press Release: eBay FBI and Police Badge Sales Endanger the Public;
https://TheCounterfeitReport.com/press_release_details.php?date=2016-05-09&id=524
4 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC);
https://www.unodc.org/toc/en/crimes/counterfeit-goods.html
5 International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) 2016;
http://www.iccwbo.org/News/Articles/2016/ICC-s-BASCAP-highlights-link-between-counterfeiting-and-terrorism-at-the-United-Nations/
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