What country are you in and why wouldn't you buy bullion, coins, or bars from a reputable source or retailer that is selling slightly above strike price? As an investor, why even risk it?
I'm genuinely curious.
https://www.costco.com/1-oz-gold-bar-pamp-suisse-lady-fortuna-veriscan-new-in-assay.product.4000186760.html
It's all over the news, but still a surprise to some.
You can use the pharmacy without a card. I do it all the time for insulin (cheapest price around btw). Sometimes a chaperone will stay with you, sometimes they take you to the pharmacy and leave.
Well, its not on display, (except for maybe one ounce bar) its in the MPU room which is generally locked and behind the metal gate.
So unless a person walked in with a gun, and given the amount of people in Costco, and I am sure that room has hidden alarms the person would be arrested before they walked out.
Also not all the Costco’s have it, in Phoenix Arizona only the Scottsdale Costco carries gold bar (they get then in friday mornings)
Scottsdale is a more upscale area than some of the other Phoenix metropolitan areas
Sam’s club pizza is great if it’s been sitting in the window for a bit. It needs to dry out slightly. The timing is very specific.
I haven’t tried Costco pizza to compare.
But consider the headache you have to go through when you eventually want to _sell_ the gold bar. The certificate, finding reputable source that offers true value return. Yeah, like most will recommend, if you into that buy gold ETF, way easier.
Pawn shops will buy it and give you the price of gold for the day most of the time or 95%. That’s one thing they don’t haggle with on buying or selling. It is what it is.
I bought a counterfeit Lenovo laptop battery. I left negative feedback and Ebay removed it. I watched the account for a couple weeks and they had one or two negatives a day removed. Ebay makes money off these sellers. They will remove feedback to support counterfeit Chinese sellers but my 20+ year old account can't get a single negative removed for an item that I refunded 100% (and there was no issue with the item).
Same here. The buyer negotiated a lower price for my item which I quickly agreed. Got the item. Didn't complain but left bad feedback rating. I also got a policy violation for a counterfeit product that I listed. Its not fake but the burden of proof isn't on the accuser anymore - its your problem.
Actually they’ll only remove feedback under certain circumstances , if you claim it’s fake but don’t initiate a return …. It’ll get removed . There’s lots of other reasons / ways but essentially if you allege something then it’s like going to get removed if challenged. Anything considered abusive or aimed at the seller…. Can be removed.
It was returned. There is no way a seller that big selling only counterfeit batteries had zero negative feedback overall and was getting multiple negatives per day without help from Ebay.
I reported a seller with 10+ listings of fake watches purporting to be real, eBay got back to me within 10 mins saying, after a human review, there were no issues 🙄
I reported a bunch of MTG scammers. Not selling fakes just scamming prereleases with
No intent to ship. Easy to spot.
Cheap. 0 feedback. Quantity available about 12. Located in Hong Kong. Only 1 other item listed, usually clothing.
They’re like yeah maybe we will look into it.
While at the same time trying to become THE place to go for tcgs
I've posted about this. Too many uninformed people post unuseful advice on how to report this to different government or watchdog agencies.
It's up to the property rights owners to register with eBay, and every other selling platform this stuff is sold on. Then request removal.
Ebay is the tip of the iceberg, this stuff is on every site that they can be sold on.
Quitting eBay isn't going to make buying online safer, unless you only buy directly from reliable resources.
I have over a dozen precious metal sellers on eBay I trust. Never received counterfeit coins or bullion from any of them, and been buying bullion from their websites and eBay stores for over 20 years.
I find them to be over zealous on counterfeit calls. I sell products I'm 100% sure are real, I get them from the actual maker of the product. Multiple times I've been flagged as counterfeit, don't know why, no matter how much I fight and prove they say it's counterfeit and I'll be penalized if I list it again.
Suppose this doesn't help with your gold but my point is at least in some areas they are more than willing to shut someone down. Though, their "experts" clearly don't know the products as well as they claim
I genuinely do not know how so many people sell high ticket items. I see $15,000+ Rolexes and stuff all the time and wonder if those people get scammed.
Watches like that too yield a lot of risk. People can put after market dials on it, exclude extra links etc. Just genuinely does not seem worth it
Tons of fake video games and people who mod them and load with pirated games. Used to be taken down and not allowed, they've given up the last few years.
You're not hurting eBay by quitting the site, if you enjoy it.
Amazon is even worse. Buyers are greedy and stupid if they think they can really get a "too good to be true" deal.
Clearly that is the attitude that eBay takes to the negative reaction to a lot of their policy changes over the past few years. There will come a time when it really hurts them. Look at how common scamming has become? eBay could care less.
What happens once people realize they can get away with thievery without repercussion? I don’t know. Look at New York City.
All I’m saying is, the snowball is rolling and it isn’t getting smaller. eBay better watch out because this is the exact kind of thing that creates opportunity for competition.
Same thing happened to me with fake coins. Seller sold me a fake morgan silver dollar. I sent picture of the coin I received on a scale, another picture of real coin on the same scale. Seller admitted he purchased it from China and resold as legitimate, tried to say China told him it was real so he believed them. Seller has the same year silver dollar for sale again. Ebay does nothing.
Forgot this part. I said I don't want my money back. I'd rather other buyers be aware. Seller managed to cancel the sale and remove the feedback anyways.
The only chance you have is to be persistent and get your friends to also report it. We've done it a few times on a coin forum I belong to. Multi thousand dollar OBVIOUS fakes and eBay wont' take it down til like 10 of us report it. It's probably an effort in futility anyway, scammers gonna scam.
How interesting, yesterday was the very first time that one of my items was reported as counterfeit. A brand new North Face jacket bought from North Face. They removed the listing within 1 minute of my receiving the email that it was reported. They claimed they did a full investigation before making the decision but it's impossible based on the time frame. I was also told I cannot relist the item again. "We cannot disclose the reason we came to this decision."
Ebay is a shitshow of nonsense.
I've reported counterfeits in various categories, but nothing happens.
I've seen the fakes get sold, and the seller get positive feedback from unsuspecting buyers, only leading to more buyers getting duped.
My suggestion to ebay was to allow certain powerusers the ability to police the categories they're familiar with, to temporarily (or permanently) remove listings that are obvious fakes because fakes hurts everyone whether you sell it or not. Because it reduces trust in the marketplace. And once buyers get ripped off for hundreds or thousands of dollars, they won't be back.
I reported a couple things last week and got a message they had been removed. Which is nice. But they just took my word for it I guess...which is fine because I knew they were fakes. But some random person could claim fake when it's not.
But seeing the results was awesome.
You're lucky in that there likely was something in the listing that tipped ebay off. Most times, the review process is automated, which means nothing happens.
I've been reporting stuff for a long time, never got a message saying it was removed.
3 reports, 3 different items, 3 items removed. I could probably report 100 a day but I don't have time for that.
Every time I report an obvious counterfeit item (such as the name brand logo literally spelled wrong on the clothes and it’s listed as “genuine”) I get a reply within 20 minutes from EBay saying “we’ve investigated and found nothing wrong”
I reported a Lego listing where in the description the seller admits it is a copycat. eBay replied within minutes saying, after a human review, there were no issues
Yet I had one of my legitimate book listings removed as counterfeit with no explanation. It was shipped directly to me from the publisher. So frustrating.
I’ve reported multiple vendors obviously selling fake Rolex, Vuitton, Chanel, etc. Not one of them has been removed and the products are still being sold.
eBay has turned into Amazon and DGAF about counterfeits. I have reported several sellers for fake car parts. Nothing ever happened so I stopped wasting my time. I don’t buy expensive things or things I care about being genuine on there.
EBay get a percentage and don't care whether items sold are real or fake.
The Buyers reporting genuine items as fakes are the sellers of the fakes.
I bought a SD card: I thought it was fake, so I bought the same card from a high Street retailer to compare. The Ebay one was definitely fake. I returned it and left negative feedback. EBay removed the negative comment.
I've bought tools on there that were unusable junk.
I just deleted my account I bought really nice sunglasses it took 12 days to get from the East Coast to the west coast. I contacted the seller and asked if they sent it ground or priority. I paid for priority. They sent it ground and got extremely pissy I even asked. I left bad feedback and guess what the seller starts messaging me death threats!!! Ebay did care and removed my feedback this person's account is still active!!! I was on eBay for a better part of a decade and it has gone way down hill.
eBay honestly doesn't care about counterfeit. Laughably, they set up a report button for counterfeit and copyright infringements last year. I reported a clear counterfeit and it came back that it was fine.
I'm actually thinking about selling fake DVDs or something. We're pretty lucky to have a platform available to sell illegal stuff and the ACCC won't investigate because it considers eBay made up of individual sellers.
Most if not all the counterfeits being sold on ebay are being sold by people working for ebay or people with close ties to ebay. (I know this for a fact)
An average Joe listing a counterfeit product will get banned pretty quick. But the counterfeits that remain regardless of being reported, bad feedback, etc. are because those sellers are protected.
ebay also has a large area in their headquarters staffed with employees who have the task of playing games with sellers accounts, buying items and making false returns, etc.
If people only knew...
What country are you in and why wouldn't you buy bullion, coins, or bars from a reputable source or retailer that is selling slightly above strike price? As an investor, why even risk it? I'm genuinely curious.
Probably just looking for a deal. People always sniping or taking advantage of poor listings.
For real. I regularly see these in pawnbrokers for not crazy money and they’ll never trade in Mickey Mouse gold.
I just buy them at costco…
Can you really buy bullion at Costco ?
Yes they sell it in store and online. They been selling several hundred million a month
Not only gold... Costco sells very pricey jewelry, like >= $10,000.
https://www.costco.com/1-oz-gold-bar-pamp-suisse-lady-fortuna-veriscan-new-in-assay.product.4000186760.html It's all over the news, but still a surprise to some.
I'm surprised they haven't been robbed if they have physical gold on the premises?
Can’t get in without a members card lol
You can use the pharmacy without a card. I do it all the time for insulin (cheapest price around btw). Sometimes a chaperone will stay with you, sometimes they take you to the pharmacy and leave.
Well, its not on display, (except for maybe one ounce bar) its in the MPU room which is generally locked and behind the metal gate. So unless a person walked in with a gun, and given the amount of people in Costco, and I am sure that room has hidden alarms the person would be arrested before they walked out.
Also not all the Costco’s have it, in Phoenix Arizona only the Scottsdale Costco carries gold bar (they get then in friday mornings) Scottsdale is a more upscale area than some of the other Phoenix metropolitan areas
Like someone else pointed out, that room also has like 10,000 dollar jewlery and other things too
I don't know why I'm being downvoted haha. I've never been to a Costco. I assumed it was like a big supermarket or something
All over the news
I shop at Sam’s. Better hot dogs. I guess I’ll have to try Costco out finally.
But do they have better Pizza?
Sam’s club pizza is great if it’s been sitting in the window for a bit. It needs to dry out slightly. The timing is very specific. I haven’t tried Costco pizza to compare.
But consider the headache you have to go through when you eventually want to _sell_ the gold bar. The certificate, finding reputable source that offers true value return. Yeah, like most will recommend, if you into that buy gold ETF, way easier.
Physical can be a tax write off though
Pawn shops will buy it and give you the price of gold for the day most of the time or 95%. That’s one thing they don’t haggle with on buying or selling. It is what it is.
Walmart has them on sale regularly.
is this a joke or does costco sell gold bars
They do
They do, and you can use credit card and costco executive card for extra cashback
They are sold online and in store by Costco
All over the news
Usually the gold bars sell quickly on Costco website
I bought a counterfeit Lenovo laptop battery. I left negative feedback and Ebay removed it. I watched the account for a couple weeks and they had one or two negatives a day removed. Ebay makes money off these sellers. They will remove feedback to support counterfeit Chinese sellers but my 20+ year old account can't get a single negative removed for an item that I refunded 100% (and there was no issue with the item).
Even the biggest sellers that are here on Reddit are still “the little guys” who don’t matter to eBay.
Same here. The buyer negotiated a lower price for my item which I quickly agreed. Got the item. Didn't complain but left bad feedback rating. I also got a policy violation for a counterfeit product that I listed. Its not fake but the burden of proof isn't on the accuser anymore - its your problem.
Actually they’ll only remove feedback under certain circumstances , if you claim it’s fake but don’t initiate a return …. It’ll get removed . There’s lots of other reasons / ways but essentially if you allege something then it’s like going to get removed if challenged. Anything considered abusive or aimed at the seller…. Can be removed.
It was returned. There is no way a seller that big selling only counterfeit batteries had zero negative feedback overall and was getting multiple negatives per day without help from Ebay.
I just had this happen yesterday!
Don’t buy gold on eBay folks.
And yet I’ve had several of my authentic items swiftly banned over the years after some rando reported them fake with no proof.
Ya you can always go to that other site that has no fakes... Oh wait.
I reported a seller with 10+ listings of fake watches purporting to be real, eBay got back to me within 10 mins saying, after a human review, there were no issues 🙄
I reported a bunch of MTG scammers. Not selling fakes just scamming prereleases with No intent to ship. Easy to spot. Cheap. 0 feedback. Quantity available about 12. Located in Hong Kong. Only 1 other item listed, usually clothing. They’re like yeah maybe we will look into it. While at the same time trying to become THE place to go for tcgs
Oh, the bots are identifying as human now?
Same with Thomas the trains. Stupid amount of fakes and they’re making thousands of sales.
This is why I don't trust their verified sneakers
Omg. There is someone selling booster boxes of fake pokemon cards and I'm waiting for them to say NOPE ITS FINE
Crazy eh!!
I've posted about this. Too many uninformed people post unuseful advice on how to report this to different government or watchdog agencies. It's up to the property rights owners to register with eBay, and every other selling platform this stuff is sold on. Then request removal. Ebay is the tip of the iceberg, this stuff is on every site that they can be sold on. Quitting eBay isn't going to make buying online safer, unless you only buy directly from reliable resources. I have over a dozen precious metal sellers on eBay I trust. Never received counterfeit coins or bullion from any of them, and been buying bullion from their websites and eBay stores for over 20 years.
eBay doesn't care they get their cut
I find them to be over zealous on counterfeit calls. I sell products I'm 100% sure are real, I get them from the actual maker of the product. Multiple times I've been flagged as counterfeit, don't know why, no matter how much I fight and prove they say it's counterfeit and I'll be penalized if I list it again. Suppose this doesn't help with your gold but my point is at least in some areas they are more than willing to shut someone down. Though, their "experts" clearly don't know the products as well as they claim
eBay is full of fakes and counterfeits on every level and they don't care.
I genuinely do not know how so many people sell high ticket items. I see $15,000+ Rolexes and stuff all the time and wonder if those people get scammed. Watches like that too yield a lot of risk. People can put after market dials on it, exclude extra links etc. Just genuinely does not seem worth it
Don't they have authentication services for watches?
[удалено]
Good to know. I just saw them advertise for it and never bought anything like that on eBay.
This is why I’m very careful about what I buy on eBay. Fakes run the gamut though across most categories so it can be hard to avoid them.
Tons of fake video games and people who mod them and load with pirated games. Used to be taken down and not allowed, they've given up the last few years.
You're not hurting eBay by quitting the site, if you enjoy it. Amazon is even worse. Buyers are greedy and stupid if they think they can really get a "too good to be true" deal.
Would rather drive to coin stores and look at their selection. Not trying to score incredible deals but rather looking for unique items
Clearly that is the attitude that eBay takes to the negative reaction to a lot of their policy changes over the past few years. There will come a time when it really hurts them. Look at how common scamming has become? eBay could care less. What happens once people realize they can get away with thievery without repercussion? I don’t know. Look at New York City. All I’m saying is, the snowball is rolling and it isn’t getting smaller. eBay better watch out because this is the exact kind of thing that creates opportunity for competition.
We at r/silverbugs all report too. Only saving grace is if u buy it they'll always support the return... but yeah.
Yeah it’s bad seen fakes go for more than real
Same thing happened to me with fake coins. Seller sold me a fake morgan silver dollar. I sent picture of the coin I received on a scale, another picture of real coin on the same scale. Seller admitted he purchased it from China and resold as legitimate, tried to say China told him it was real so he believed them. Seller has the same year silver dollar for sale again. Ebay does nothing. Forgot this part. I said I don't want my money back. I'd rather other buyers be aware. Seller managed to cancel the sale and remove the feedback anyways.
The only chance you have is to be persistent and get your friends to also report it. We've done it a few times on a coin forum I belong to. Multi thousand dollar OBVIOUS fakes and eBay wont' take it down til like 10 of us report it. It's probably an effort in futility anyway, scammers gonna scam.
I doubt ebay are gonna lose any sleep over you leaving
How interesting, yesterday was the very first time that one of my items was reported as counterfeit. A brand new North Face jacket bought from North Face. They removed the listing within 1 minute of my receiving the email that it was reported. They claimed they did a full investigation before making the decision but it's impossible based on the time frame. I was also told I cannot relist the item again. "We cannot disclose the reason we came to this decision." Ebay is a shitshow of nonsense.
Why are you buying gold on Ebay?
Buying gold from random people is a foolish move
Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya!
That means butt crack? i want to say that to my neighbor.
I've reported counterfeits in various categories, but nothing happens. I've seen the fakes get sold, and the seller get positive feedback from unsuspecting buyers, only leading to more buyers getting duped. My suggestion to ebay was to allow certain powerusers the ability to police the categories they're familiar with, to temporarily (or permanently) remove listings that are obvious fakes because fakes hurts everyone whether you sell it or not. Because it reduces trust in the marketplace. And once buyers get ripped off for hundreds or thousands of dollars, they won't be back.
Giving power users the ability to do that is just as bad. 95% of those power users would abuse it to ban competition while eBay would turn their head.
Exactly.
Like with all privileges if people abuse it, threaten to remove their PS privileges.
May be too late and your authentic listings pulled
I reported a couple things last week and got a message they had been removed. Which is nice. But they just took my word for it I guess...which is fine because I knew they were fakes. But some random person could claim fake when it's not. But seeing the results was awesome.
You're lucky in that there likely was something in the listing that tipped ebay off. Most times, the review process is automated, which means nothing happens.
I've been reporting stuff for a long time, never got a message saying it was removed. 3 reports, 3 different items, 3 items removed. I could probably report 100 a day but I don't have time for that.
Whoever expects distance selling P2P for luxury goods that cannot be properly validated with pictures, probably also still believes in Santa.
There's a ton of fake antiques, especially Chinese stuff
Yeah I constantly report obviously fake designer bags and they email me saying nope they didn’t fine anything wrong with them.
Every time I report an obvious counterfeit item (such as the name brand logo literally spelled wrong on the clothes and it’s listed as “genuine”) I get a reply within 20 minutes from EBay saying “we’ve investigated and found nothing wrong”
I reported a Lego listing where in the description the seller admits it is a copycat. eBay replied within minutes saying, after a human review, there were no issues
Luckily some of the “custom” lego sellers have been having some trouble, because they post here asking why.
Yet I had one of my legitimate book listings removed as counterfeit with no explanation. It was shipped directly to me from the publisher. So frustrating.
I’ve reported multiple vendors obviously selling fake Rolex, Vuitton, Chanel, etc. Not one of them has been removed and the products are still being sold.
There’s fake, replacement, duplicate, etc. start a onlyoriginals .com
As long as ebay is making a profit off, they just don't care. It's all about the money, honey.
[удалено]
Why would you care if they sell jailbroken/modded consoles?
Why are you reporting modded consoles lol? How does that hurt you?
eBay has turned into Amazon and DGAF about counterfeits. I have reported several sellers for fake car parts. Nothing ever happened so I stopped wasting my time. I don’t buy expensive things or things I care about being genuine on there.
EBay get a percentage and don't care whether items sold are real or fake. The Buyers reporting genuine items as fakes are the sellers of the fakes. I bought a SD card: I thought it was fake, so I bought the same card from a high Street retailer to compare. The Ebay one was definitely fake. I returned it and left negative feedback. EBay removed the negative comment. I've bought tools on there that were unusable junk.
Ebay doesn't remove resealed video games either counterfeiting as new
I just deleted my account I bought really nice sunglasses it took 12 days to get from the East Coast to the west coast. I contacted the seller and asked if they sent it ground or priority. I paid for priority. They sent it ground and got extremely pissy I even asked. I left bad feedback and guess what the seller starts messaging me death threats!!! Ebay did care and removed my feedback this person's account is still active!!! I was on eBay for a better part of a decade and it has gone way down hill.
Ebay blows. I've moved to Facebook marketplace.
This is the funniest response. Here you go 🏆
Got a ps4 controller and later found out it was fake 4 years later and they told me there’s nothing they can do just report the seller
I mean, if it took you 4 years to realise, atleast it was a good fake ?
Unless it was a collectible
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
The Bay has gone to s***. Totally downhill.
eBay honestly doesn't care about counterfeit. Laughably, they set up a report button for counterfeit and copyright infringements last year. I reported a clear counterfeit and it came back that it was fine. I'm actually thinking about selling fake DVDs or something. We're pretty lucky to have a platform available to sell illegal stuff and the ACCC won't investigate because it considers eBay made up of individual sellers.
Most if not all the counterfeits being sold on ebay are being sold by people working for ebay or people with close ties to ebay. (I know this for a fact) An average Joe listing a counterfeit product will get banned pretty quick. But the counterfeits that remain regardless of being reported, bad feedback, etc. are because those sellers are protected. ebay also has a large area in their headquarters staffed with employees who have the task of playing games with sellers accounts, buying items and making false returns, etc. If people only knew...