In a personally satisfying court decision, Ebay of France was ordered to pay LVMH the equivalent of $61 million for not doing enough to combat the sale of counterfeit good on their website.  Everyone knows that almost all of the brand name clothing and accesories sold on eBay are counterfeit, but eBay, in defense of the little guy, says that they will fight the ruling.  (I’m sure they would fight it anyway even if they didn’t have to pay… right eBay?  Right?  You really want to help the little guy, right?)

I had a disasterous ordeal last year when I tested my luck and ordered a Lacoste sweater off eBay.  It was a fake.  I tried the official eBay/PayPal channels to get my money back.  Ebay/PayPal wanted me get a signed letter from an “expert” saying it was fake.  Sure thing.  I’ll just go to the sweater expert store and drag them into a potential legal battle.  But, being in NYC, I took the sweater to the Lacoste HQ on Madison Ave.  They corroborated my guess, but wouldn’t back me up with a letter–company policy.  End of the story is that I dropped the “L” word, lawsuit, (along with the “B” word, blog, and the “M” word, message boards, into enough of my emails that someone gave me my $60 back.

My take on counterfeit goods is that it is all in the presentation of the sale.  When you walk down Canal Street or see the DVD street sellers, you know they are counterfeit, so the seller is not being deceiving in any way.  If someone chooses to pay $50 for a knockoff handbag that retails for $400, it is with the full knowledge that the bag is not authentic and of likely lower quality.

On eBay, one can be naive enough (as I was) to not realize that almost all of the designer clothing and accesories are counterfeit.  There is nothing except for sheer cynicism to make you believe that the auctions are not for genuine goods.  I would not have been upset if I paid $10 for a knowingly counterfeit item and it sucked.  But I paid $60, a reasonable sale price for the genuine article, and I expected it would be as such, which is why I was so angry.

Ebay can fight rulings like this one all they want, but each time someone overpays for a knockoff good, like I did, they lose another customer, which is much more meaningful for them as a business in the long run.