Dealing with Faked Errors After the Fact

I'm annoyed with eBay because they don't seem to care at all when their sellers are auctioning off items that are sketchy or obviously fake. They make it difficult to contact them if you're not the seller or buyer (it took me ages to figure it out), and then all you get is a form letter saying that they'll look into it, which they obviously don't do, since the auctions are never pulled.

Even before contacting eBay, I'd already tried to contact the sellers. This proved futile, tho, because they invariably make excuses ("These bills just showed up in my shop"). I'm sure that most of them were lying to me, but I thought I'd give them the benefit of the doubt. Here is one message I got back from 'pickle4424' about a fake error he had up for auction: "no such a thing! it doesn't lose its color from the sun. never mind i sold it already!"

So I tried Plan C: I'd contact the buyers after the fact. Initially I wasn't sure how these notes would be received, but to my happy surprise, auction winners are happy to hear that what they've got is fake because eBay is pretty good about giving them recourse to fix things. They can get a refund from the seller or, if that fails, contact eBay and get results that way (eventually). I've received two notes back from cheated buyers, and both were highly complimentary and thankful.

My hope is that eventually the cheaters will get tired of having their goods returned to them and will give up selling fake items. In the meantime, I'll continue to pester them by alerting their unsuspecting buyers.

In case anyone else feels like joining the good Samaritan fun, all you have to do is to click on the seller's feedback number and scroll down to one of their completed auctions. Clicking on the auction takes you to another page where you can click on the member id of the winner. Then you simply send the winner a note explaining about the fakery.

Let's hope more people decide to go after these scoundrels.