I sold some Rapha shorts on ebay recently. Got a good price for a good pair of shorts, I thought. I bought them from the sample sale some time ago so I know they’re genuine and not fake.

Buyer now demanding a refund, threatening to tell ebay (ooer!) and has already left bad feedback because he’s decided they’re fakes. They’re not.
Aside from being pretty pissed off that someone’s accusing me of shifting snide gear, there doesn’t appear to be anything I can do other than ask him why he thinks they’re fake and hope he doesn’t claim a refund via Ebay.
Or am I missing something?

beware ebay telling them to destroy the ‘fake goods’ to stop them being resold – I’ve seen reports of this happening and ebay/paypal refund issued on them seeing a photo of the destroyed item.

Hope you get it sorted.

I’ve seen this happen too. E bay ask the fake item is not returned.

without seeing any proof either way?

Paypal will side with the buyer. It happens every time.
The buyer probably knows this. Bastard.

without seeing any proof either way?

I don’t know.

I wonder if the buyer knows though and will just ask you to refund half ‘to save the hassle’ and hope to keep a complete pair fo shorts?

bloody roadies :-/

Don’t they know who you are! 😉

Taken from the eBay site:

Follow these steps if you think your item is counterfeit:

If you believe your item is counterfeit, or isn’t as described, contact the seller first.
Give them a chance to sort things out for you.
If you still need help, let us know your problem. We’re available 7 days a week.
You can notify us online via the eBay Resolution Centre or our customer service representatives who are available Monday to Friday 08:00AM – 10:00PM, Saturday and Sunday 09:00AM – 6:00PM.
We’ll work with the seller to help sort things out.
We’ll contact the seller and ask them to solve your issue within 8 days. After 8 days if the problem can’t be resolved between you and the seller, you’ve paid using PayPal and your claim qualifies for coverage with eBay Money Back Guarantee, eBay will arrange for the purchase price plus original shipping to be refunded through PayPal.
If you didn’t pay with PayPal
If the seller hasn’t resolved your issue you can still contact us and we will contact the seller to try to resolve the problem.

May help?

leave feedback to warn other sellers if you can.
does not help you but might stop them doing it to someone else

Can you dig out a receipt/bank statement to appease them?

“sample” – may be a bit different from the normal retail item in some way, hence the suspicion.

Girl I used to with did this- claimed sunglasses were fake, Ebay told her to keep them and she was refunded. She even joked that tbh they were probably the real thing but she ‘wasn’t sure’. I was gobsmacked when she wasn’t asked to return them.

Hope you get it resolved. Worsecase, save his details and ‘win’ a future item hes selling, receive it and claim its fake/hit him with a neg too. Its not petty, its revenge.

nope, it looks identical to the pics in various reviews of the shorts from the time (about 4 years ago).

Sounds like a con artist.

Publish his username.

He might get a dose of his own medicine…

Again a reason why I gave up selling on eBay. Their attitude and PayPal’s (owned by eBay anyway) is always to support the buyer if they kick up a stink. Reversed payments and frozen accounts especially in PP when a buyer makes an accusation and then they get refunded, disappear and you have a fight on your hands to reverse the situation. That on top of large fees on the seller generally.

Will be interesting to see how things go when PayPal is split off from eBay. Particularly if this mean other forms of payment will be supported by eBay.

All that said, yes the ‘sample’ may be the reason for their belief it’s a fake. Similar with OEM versions of products and ‘seconds’ in clothing (seconds being official but imperfect in some small way). eBay listings should make it clear that this is what the item is else you may get this situation.

Some people are trying it on, some are just quite wary of fakes. They’ll look for small details like the labels etc which if different to what they expect if they’re well up on the stuff then they might think something’s fake.

the shorts were bought in a sample sale, but don’t say ‘sample’ on them.

I know we’re getting away from the main point here but counterfeit clothing tends to be very, very similar to the original item. A Sample may also have subtle differences to the final product. It’s not hard to see how someone could mistake the two cases. Why not explain this to the buyer and offer a refund?

Ask him to return and you’ll refund and hope he does, otherwise you may lose shorts and the money. I’d even suggest offering to pay for return postage. It’s a pain, but some eBay buyers are ****.

hit him or ebay/paypal with a small claims, especially if you have the original purchase receipt. a judge can decide if it’s fake. ebay can’t. and the fraudster probably has a stash of fakes if asked to send it to Rapha (or whoever) for them to examine.

What HORA said. My experience was identical.

E bay asked you not to return the item to stop circulation. This is as well as the refund.

Seems to be a fairly common scam these days.

It sounds like you have sold to an idiot

Sadly eBay won’t be at all bothered

My missus got negged before crimbo as some fool worked out she’d made 20p on the postage

Unfortunately the missus had not realised eBay now take 10% of shipping costs too and was actually out of pocket for it

I’d still be steaming though if I were you and be cautious of having the cash claimed back, you need to take advice on how to avoid that. As you’ve 2 consecutive negs maybe fold the account and start again?

It’s stuff like this that made me stop bothering with eBay.

Waste of time and energy.

Out of interest, did you list them as being ‘sample’ items?

Get on the phone to ebay asap and talk it through with them. They are usually very helpful once you are speaking to them and may well arrange for the goods to be returned and the negative feedback removed.

What Andy ^ states!

EBay seems to make people go paranoid, you see it in some of the responses on here too.

I may have missed this but did you state clearly in your ebay ad where and how you originally purchased the shorts?

As above, samples can have minor defects or differences to the final production items.

Empty your PayPal account now.

I’ve sold for years on eBay (hint if you sign into eBay.com you can find out just how much you’ve sold over the years. £19,000 on my account!)

I have only had one negative in that time and I spoke to eBay and they sided with me the seller. I have had loads of goods sent to me that I have bought that have been substandard and have sent back and eBay have paid for the return of the goods to the seller’s too.

Talk to EBay, if you bought the items online then there is likely a paper trail somewhere for you to find?

Don’t they know who you are!

Imma ring up the mail, ‘tv personality denies selling knock off shorts to unsuspecting cyclist’

The whole “ebay always sides with the buyer” is nonsense. Not to say they won’t sometimes side wrongly with the buyer, but I’ve done a ridiculous amount of selling over the last 16 years and I’ve never had a single claim upheld against me. They don’t make it easy mind- there’s a lot of hoops to jump through, some of them not very clear, and IMO it’s totally designed to make you give up. But I’m the sort of gobshite that’ll spend an hour on fighting a claim to save 50p.

I’ve had the counterfeit thing twice and didn’t do anything particularily clever to fight it- asked for reasoning and evidence, argued with it, did what ebay asked, stayed really on top of it. I think one dude genuinely thought he’d bought a fake. But anyway, knocked it around for a while, one happy customer, one thwarted fraud.

a judge can decide if it’s fake.

That’s exactly what the courts need to be spending time doing.

Deciding if second hand cycling shorts are fake or not 😐

People buy 4 year old secondhand cycling shorts….. 😯

From a guy that does as many miles as the op…

Maybe he’s decided to buy Renton’s bike but hasn’t quite got the cash do needs the refund from these…

Mattbee = cock

Renton, get over yourself. Xxx

the shorts were bought in a sample sale, but don’t say ‘sample’ on them.

Did you describe them as “samples”?

all sorted. Rapha were brilliant in helping out and confirmed that the shorts were genuine, when they really didn’t have to. So cheers to them.

I didn’t state that they were bought from a sample sale as it’s irrelevant where I bought them. The shorts weren’t different from the full-priced item, they were just end of line stock.

Buyer was upset because they were different to the ones that he used to have. why this meant that he had to accuse me of lying and selling on snide goods is still beyond me. It’s not how I’d have behaved anyway.

Glad it ended well. I’d hope that Rapha would have that level of customer services given their prices TBH!