Gaming Can Ebay counterfeit sellers get ridiculously difficult to spot?

SwaGoat · Jul 26, 2016

Well it's pretty much what the title says and I'll add more.

Recently,I thought of buying Donkey Kong Country for Gba.
I had 2 options,
the one was to buy it for about 30E without a sticker but it is guranteed that it is the real thing,
and the other was to search on ebay for one that would look as real as it could from the outside.

So,I'm not adding photos because I don't really don't know if I get in touble for that,and I doubt there's much to tell from the photo since it's just the cartridge from the front side.
But other than that,I'd like to ask about you're experience in buying gba games and overall games from ebay.Can I really stand on the fact that the picture looks real and the seller is top rated ? or could there be bigger problems on the inside of the cartridge?

Αlso,there's something like a third option I'm quite suspicious about,
buying the game from another seller having stock photo from the cover of the game,
which yeah mostly is suspicious,and the money for that aren't waste-able (they're about 22E, just like the second option.)

Thanks in advance.Sorry for bad English.

PS;I've read many ''Guides'' on how to tell the fakes apart from real ones,but like I said,the only clues I have are from the front side of the cartridge

WillTheLion · Jul 26, 2016

Are counterfeit gba games even that common? I never have got one from anyone I bought online.

If you buy the game and it's not what it's supposed to be you could just file an ebay claim and get your money back as far as I know.

SwaGoat · Jul 26, 2016

WillTheLion said:
Are counterfeit gba games even that common? I never have got one from anyone I bought online.

If you buy the game and it's not what it's supposed to be you could just file an ebay claim and get your money back as far as I know.

Well,I haven't got many games myself,I've just been hearing much about ebay games,and overall,everything.The only game I got,was counterfeit,but for that time,I didn't know about counterfeit and all,the game had battery inside it and would,with uknown reason reset everytime it loaded,except if it was loaded on original gameboy advance,but that stopped too after a while.
I'm afraid of refunding or returning the item,first of all,I've never done it before on ebay,even though, I doubt it'll be something difficult anyways.

FireEmblemGuy · Jul 26, 2016

Could ask the seller if you can see pics of the cartridge, but some general rules:
If the seller has bulk amounts of the cart, it's a counterfeit.
If it's shipping from China, it's a counterfeit (but that's not to say there are no counterfeiters that ship from the US or EU).
If the seller wants payment in Australian dollars and they're not in Australia, it's a counterfeit.

You can also look through a seller's feedback history, although eBay's taken some really anti-consumer measures to obscure some of the available info over the last year or two.

If you want to post or PM me a link to the listing I could take a look if you're not confident; I have no interest in buying it out from under you.

RevPokemon · Jul 26, 2016

FireEmblemGuy said:
Could ask the seller if you can see pics of the cartridge, but some general rules:
If the seller has bulk amounts of the cart, it's a counterfeit.
If it's shipping from China, it's a counterfeit (but that's not to say there are no counterfeiters that ship from the US or EU).
If the seller wants payment in Australian dollars and they're not in Australia, it's a counterfeit.

You can also look through a seller's feedback history, although eBay's taken some really anti-consumer measures to obscure some of the available info over the last year or two.

If you want to post or PM me a link to the listing I could take a look if you're not confident; I have no interest in buying it out from under you.

I would also add

- Never buy a game with stock photos used. I would not even bother to ask for legit pics since it is a scam.
- Make sure it has something like 100% Legitimate so that you could request a refund from ebay
- Use a seller with good ratings. Sure the ratings can be inflated but a vendor with a good SELLER rating is still something you need.
- As stated before make sure the person is not selling tons of copies of the game
- When buying keep in mind that if the price is too good to be true then it is probably a scam. Check game pricing websites to see if the price is reasonable.

migles · Jul 26, 2016

RevPokemon said:
I would also add

- Never buy a game with stock photos used. I would not even bother to ask for legit pics since it is a scam.
- Make sure it has something like 100% Legitimate so that you could request a refund from ebay
- Use a seller with good ratings. Sure the ratings can be inflated but a vendor with a good SELLER rating is still something you need.
- As stated before make sure the person is not selling tons of copies of the game
- When buying keep in mind that if the price is too good to be true then it is probably a scam. Check game pricing websites to see if the price is reasonable.

if a person sells more than 1 copy
check on ratings, there can be hundreds of people that bought the game saying "good seller" and generic stuff because the game works and looks fine to a normal person. but you only need 1 person to spot a fake..

SwaGoat · Jul 26, 2016

RevPokemon said:
I would also add

- Never buy a game with stock photos used. I would not even bother to ask for legit pics since it is a scam.
- Make sure it has something like 100% Legitimate so that you could request a refund from ebay
- Use a seller with good ratings. Sure the ratings can be inflated but a vendor with a good SELLER rating is still something you need.
- As stated before make sure the person is not selling tons of copies of the game
- When buying keep in mind that if the price is too good to be true then it is probably a scam. Check game pricing websites to see if the price is reasonable.

So I'm quite nooby with this so I'll ask.
I forgot to mention that the product won't be bought for me,it's for a friend,who also has the ebay account.So I don't know if I'm missing any info without being loged in on Ebay.(The listing isn't private fortunately).

What do you mean ''Never buy a game with stock photos used.'' , you mean like an ''clear'' photo of the game's cover?
Sorry for that,I don't speak perfect English.

Also,I can't see the amount of stock.
The seller seems to be quite good since there weren't any bad or controvesial rating but what bothers me is the fact that the ratings were almost the same (bots or something,I really don't know,I'm afraid of that though) the store has 6 negative and 18 neutral feedback ratings.The price seems real,I used a value site and saw that on a Complete Price it'd be about 22$ ,which is almost the price of the product I'm intersted in,but it's the total, (Shipping AND the price of the product)

RevPokemon · Jul 26, 2016

SwaGoat said:
hat do you mean ''Never buy a game with stock photos used.'' , you mean like an ''clear'' photo of the game's cover?
Sorry for that,I don't speak perfect English.

By a stock image I mean the type you find on google like this

44293-Donkey_Kong_Country_(U)(Evasion)-1.jpg

SwaGoat said:
Also,I can't see the amount of stock.

Have you tried following
http://pages.ebay.com/help/search/questions/search-by-seller.html

SwaGoat said:
The seller seems to be quite good since there weren't any bad or controvesial rating but what bothers me is the fact that the ratings were almost the same (bots or something,I really don't know,I'm afraid of that though) the store has 6 negative and 18 neutral feedback ratings.

Sounds fishy

SwaGoat said:
The price seems real,I used a value site and saw that on a Complete Price it'd be about 22$ ,which is almost the price of the product I'm intersted in,but it's the total, (Shipping AND the price of the product)

Good sign but with the other factors take it with a grain of salt.

fatsquirrel · Jul 26, 2016

WillTheLion said:
Are counterfeit gba games even that common? I never have got one from anyone I bought online.

If you buy the game and it's not what it's supposed to be you could just file an ebay claim and get your money back as far as I know.

I dont know but my Pokemon grass green or whatever the game is called is a complete fake. Shit made too. Half of text is missing and the other half makes no sense.

RevPokemon · Jul 26, 2016

fatsquirrel said:
I dont know but my Pokemon grass green or whatever the game is called is a complete fake. Shit made too. Half of text is missing and the other half makes no sense.

speaking of which always make sure you get a good clear look at the labels as that is an area that fakes are general bad at since they often have big errors.

SwaGoat · Jul 26, 2016

fatsquirrel said:
I dont know but my Pokemon grass green or whatever the game is called is a complete fake. Shit made too. Half of text is missing and the other half makes no sense.

Well,truth is that pokemon games are mostly fake on ebay,unless they are expensive,cause it's considered a ''rare'' or a collector's game

Gaming Can Ebay counterfeit sellers get ridiculously difficult to spot?

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