eBay User Feedback, Fact or Fiction?
Consumers mislead by deceptive practices and altered feedback.
January 24, 2017 - Los Angeles, CA – eBay (EBAY) User Feedback should provide accurate and valuable insight to the Buyers and Sellers involved in eBay transactions, allowing each to build reputations that are based on performance, honesty and comments left by their trading partners – but it doesn’t.
The Counterfeit Report®, a popular anti-counterfeiting advocate and website, identified over 2 million counterfeit items listed on eBay and submitted trademark complaints to eBay to remove 1.3 million of the counterfeit items. While the listings were removed, the sellers usually remained, with some retaining eBay's "Top Rated" designation. Sellers often relisted the counterfeit items in what is best described by some trademark holders as an ineffective "whack-a-mole" removal process.
For example, eBay seller "walkera1usa" below retains a "Top Rated" designation despite having 181 fake item listings removed. eBay records show "walkera1usa" is the same person as eBay seller "hobbycopter" who had 86 fake item listings removed, yet the seller remains on eBay.
Additionally, The Counterfeit Report purchased over 2,300 manufacturer confirmed counterfeit products from eBay sellers -- just a sample of over 560,000 counterfeits that eBay reported sold to consumers. The negative feedback left for sellers to warn prospective or actual purchasers of the counterfeit items was removed by eBay. eBay’s Leadership Team had no explanation why the “in policy” feedback was removed, while eBay Senior Director and Counsel, Amber Leavitt, acknowledged but never responded to The Counterfeit Report’s inquiry.
Without accurate feedback, eBay buyers can't determine seller integrity or that they received a fake item. Inexplicably, eBay won't tell buyers they may have 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 U.S. manufacturers over $250 billion, U.S. 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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