Counterfeits

This seller advertised a Sony USB drive on eBay which turned out to be counterfeit. When I pointed this out, they changed their ad so that the word "Sony" was not visible.

This is what I received (click on any photo to enlarge):

  

This is how their auction photo looked before and after:

I sent the following notice to eBay:

Item number: 300019239879
Payment Method: PayPal
Date of Payment: 08/19/06
Dispute Resolution: Yes - Other (specify below)
Seller Contact: No-I have not attempted to call


Customer concern: I purchased the drive shown at http://voxluna.org/colordrives-usb.jpg
on eBay.  The seller has since changed his photos to remove the Sony trademark infringement;
you can see the difference by comparing your stored gallery photo with his.  Having apprised
you of this situation once before, I am at a loss why you have still not taken action.  The
seller continues to offer more of these counterfeit drives, the only difference being a
Photoshop'ed image of the exact same part.  Not only is he committing trademark infringement,
he is now selling items that are significantly not as described.  Failing to act on these
notices makes you a party to this crime -- this is a Federal offense under mail and wire
fraud statutes, as well as a misdemeanor under California law.  Could you please explain
why this seller continues to be allowed to foist counterfeit drives on your service?  I
will be happy to provide additional details of this transaction, including the verification
of its inauthenticity; you may also contact your seller, "memory-r-us", who is familiar
with this case.  Please understand that I have received a refund, albeit partial, and am
not looking for redress in that manner.  I want to ensure that eBay ceases to assist this
seller in committing a crime and causing hundreds if not thousands of your customers to
become victims to this fraud.

What was eBay's answer? "At this time the member you reported doesn't meet our internal guidelines for suspension." Sometimes it's eBay themselves acting as the deadbeat.

 

---

Questions? Comments!

N.B. Even though all personal information (e.g. real name, e-mail address, etc) was collected OUTSIDE of eBay's system — and was freely provided by the users themselves in the course of a transaction with this buyer — eBay has threatened suspension of this buyer's account for listing it. These fields have been censored for the time being, but will be reinstated (indeed, expounded upon) should the account suffer any punishment. All content herein is otherwise exactly as received or sent, except that 1) my address has been obscured for the purpose of avoiding spambots, 2) extraneous HTML has been removed, and 3) slight formatting changes have been made (namely, line length). These images and page archives are taken directly from the websites in question, and have not been modified except as to allow inclusion in this webpage.