PayPal makes good on the purchase of fake goods
A reader provides a lesson in what to do when the goods you get online are fake
Follow @infoworldSteven wrote to the Gripe Line several months ago asking for help resolving a dispute over an online purchase he'd made: "I purchased a Rado True Active watch from Online Global Mart. I paid for it with PayPal. The watch was advertised as being authentic."
Steven paid the price advertised by the merchant: $300. At the official Rado site, this watch sells for $1,150 -- and the FAQ at the site states clearly that buying Rado watches online is risky. That's a red flag when it comes to counterfeit products: a price that's too good to be true.
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"It arrived while I was out of town," he reports. "When I returned, I opened the box to find a crudely labeled watch box with the words Rado on it. This is no Rado watch! It is a poorly made counterfeit. I immediately contacted the seller with my complaint -- never to hear from him again."
Steven immediately contacted both PayPal and Discover, the credit card linked to Steven's PayPal account, complaining that the seller knowingly sold him a counterfeit watch while claiming it was authentic. Discover immediately issued a temporary credit.
Later, says Steven, "I received a letter from Discover informing me that it had revoked the temporary credit because the dealer had completed their part of the bargain." He called Discover to find out how that could be true -- the watch was a fake. "The issue was a simple one," he reports. "I still had the watch."
Steven wanted to return it but could not find an address on the seller's website nor get the company to respond to his requests to return it; if the company accepted a return, he wouldn't have needed the help of his credit card company or PayPal. He contacted PayPal and was told the dealer had provided evidence that it had completed the transaction, which was, of course, true. "But when I informed the customer service person that my complaint was regarding fraud," says Steven, "I was told to contact IC3 since PayPal could not do anything about it."
Steven was dismayed. "Aren't organizations such as PayPal and Discover supposed to protect us from fraud?" he asks. "To me, this seems like implicit approval of counterfeit products and their sale."
Based on my viewing of the ad for this watch on the site and in the documentation Steven provided, it appears that this merchant claims this watch is authentic. But when I contacted the seller, I was informed, "We told Steven a lot of time before order that the watch you order is replica A+ quality." The vendor also insists it would have accepted the return within seven days, but Steven missed that date. "He claimed for return after one month," a spokesperson told me. "So in this case we can't accept the return."
