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ebay thinks my iPhone is counterfeit. ha ha.

janey

janey

macrumors 603
Original poster
Dec 20, 2002
5,316
0
sunny los angeles
I just have to say it somewhere because it's so freaking outrageous. Maybe someone out there will get a laugh out of this..

I'm involved in a back-and-forth email conversation with ebay's trust and safety team regarding my iPhone listing. I mean, I got a new iPhone, why would I keep my old one..except it's been about a week and ebay has pulled my listing a couple times and their trust and safety people, after a bunch of emails repeating the same thing and NOT telling me why the listing was pulled...said earlier today:
I understand your concern about the listing that we removed. Unfortunately, I can't tell you exactly why it was removed for security reasons.

Please understand that it's against eBay policy to sell counterfeit or unauthorized items. It's also illegal. We remove listings that violate our policies.
Click to expand...

Yeaaahhhhh.

My iPhone is counterfeit? And you can't tell me why you think so?

For reference, my ebay listing of my iPhone and my emails to trust and safety have either included or offered to include the following details:
  • receipts for both my phones, with not only my name and email but also...
  • serial numbers on the phone and on the receipts
  • photos of, like, me waiting in line at the apple stores, me using the phone pretty much every-freaking-where from everywhere in socal to defcon and vegas to lake tahoe to wwdc and the bay dating from june 29, 2007 to july 11, 2008! imagine that?
  • numerous photos of the phone itself
  • lots and lots of at&t bills for an iphone
  • documented warranty replacement with applecare
  • documented product registration with apple
  • long email trail with apple executive relations and the apple store regarding warranty replacement
  • phone calls from the apple store about warranty replacement
  • if the serial wasn't enough, you'd imagine Apple would stop me from registering a fake iPhone with a presumably questionable UDID for their iPhone developer program..wait, they didn't. The iPhone in question is registered to me as I can so obviously see in the developer program portal and have seen for weeks now and I can run my apps on it just fine!

And my phone is still apparently counterfeit (and with that kind of logic, every single iPhone on ebay...). So if you keep that all in mind, ebay's pretty much implying to me that i bought a counterfeit iPhone from Apple on June 29, 2007 from an Apple retail employee at LA's flagship Apple Store at the Grove. That just happens to have all the characteristics of a real iPhone, whatever the heck that is.

Well, i guess ebay lost out on fees, cause the last thing i'm going to do now is to ebay it. But i really want to know what kind of cretin will still think it's a counterfeit phone.

I also still can't believe it took a few emails to get to that point.

God, I'm so irritated. And thanks to de blob, I think I'm just going to keep my old phone for testing my apps and playing games now..:(
 
That's insane! Especially with all the proof you have! :rolleyes: I could see if maybe your seller rating was low or you had a shady looking information on the page, but wow... what the heck! :eek:

eBay has been going downhill for a while now, it's only useful for finding obscure items and the occasional deal. Best of luck selling your iPhone! :)
 
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Jefferson

Unfortunately in this case you're the patriot. It sucks but I mean it is sort of nice to see ebay making an effort to curb scamming.
 
Guess you will have to keep the phone, but you could sell the box

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
Kwyjibo said:
Unfortunately in this case you're the patriot. It sucks but I mean it is sort of nice to see ebay making an effort to curb scamming.
Click to expand...
Oh yeah, I forgot one extra part of the story.

Although my listing wasn't up for more than probably 12 hours in total, I got messages from almost two dozen different ebay members making the most pathetic attempt to get me to sell the phone outside of auction.

Think BS like this:
Hi Mate,
I am interested in your item displayed on ebay,i want to get this item for my friend's child who is currently studying in Africa as Birthday gift.I would have love to Bid like others but the nature of my job will not allow me to do this at this time, I will be offering you $600USD for this item.So please if you are interested in selling this item to me,kindly send me your PayPal email address so that I can send out payment immediately via PayPal or you can forward your full information for me to send the payment via PayPal,As i said earlier am offering you $600USD for this item this will include both the shipping and handling cost to West Africa.Your urgent response will be highly appreciated.Please make sure you and get back to me with your paypal email address so that i can send out your payment asap
God Bless.
Please make sure you End up the Auction and get back to me with your paypal email address so that i can send out your payment asap.
Click to expand...

ebay's trust and safety team should be doing a better job dealing with these dirtbags stealing accounts instead :D

Also I feel really sorry for the people who are selling phones on ebay who get tons of messages from those pathetic scammers. ebay only set me one message telling me that one of the people who sent me such a message was probably a scammer. only one? psh.

LimeiBook86 said:
That's insane! Especially with all the proof you have! :rolleyes: I could see if maybe your seller rating was low or you had a shady looking information on the page, but wow... what the heck! :eek:
Click to expand...
Mine wasn't shady, it was fairly to the point with what I'm selling, photos, etc. And my seller rating isn't low, nothing but lots of positive ratings as a seller and a buyer since something like 2002. :rolleyes:

MacDawg said:
Guess you will have to keep the phone, but you could sell the box
Click to expand...
Actually, I'm quite attached to this box that my old iPhone is in right now. It's not the matching box, and it's the reason for the phone calls and emails between apple executive relations and the apple store..mostly over a stupid genius who wanted me to trade boxes when getting my first first iPhone replaced with the current old iPhone and the whole situation was so inane.

But I have fond memories of it. :p
 
NC MacGuy said:
This may be a silly reply but why not stick it on marketplace here? I'm sure you'd have a taker.
Click to expand...

i've actually had a couple PMs already related to this post, hah. i'm thinking, but i probably won't sell it in general.

anyway, today I got two new emails from ebay support with the same text from two different representatives. i'm not very impressed with their canned-text-response-awareness, since the two new emails are identical to about 3 of 6 of the previous emails I got from them as well. Only a couple of them bothered to actually write something else.
 
Did you try to take pics with you're ebay user name written on a piece of paper and the phone?

this will help further prove that it legitimate. It will also help your argument against them later. :eek:

There was a whole iphone box thread that got pushed into wasteland...about ebay and misleading iphone auctions.
Yours shouldn't fall into that.

Hope that helped.
 
Nicolecat said:
Did you try to take pics with you're ebay user name written on a piece of paper and the phone?
Click to expand...

I've offered to show ebay everything, especially the points mentioned above in my first post. They sent me an email today saying they cannot judge the authenticity of the product (wait, they did by pulling my listing!)

Anyway, here's the third email I got today, I think more people will get a kick out of this:
ebayemail.png


Well, if you do a search on ebay..
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?satitle=unlocked+iphone
1328 items found for: unlocked iphone
Click to expand...

Yeahhhhh.
 
And whilst they're taking your legit phone off, they're advertising all the scams, fakes and unlocked iPhones on their homepage!

I HATE EBAY
 

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Abstract said:
Post a link to every unlocked iPhone seller on eBay, or try for at least 20.

Don't even say anything. By sending an email with a LOT of links, I think they'll get your point.
Click to expand...

I just sent them the one link. They sent this back:
We invite you to report any items that could be or are violating eBay policies by clicking the "Report this item" button at the bottom of the page. We will take a closer look at those items and take the proper action.
Click to expand...

If I find the time, I'm getting some friends together to go report all the unlocked iPhones we can. :p

adversecamber said:
And whilst they're taking your legit phone off, they're advertising all the scams, fakes and unlocked iPhones on their homepage!

I HATE EBAY
Click to expand...
Yeah, plus, I got lots of phishing emails from ebay members while my listing was up, and ebay has yet to do anything about a lot of them. Sucks.
 
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