STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

If anyone is interested, The Wall Street Journal has a pretty nifty article on fakes on ebay in today's paper. Here's a snippet:

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In our test, the black leather Fendi Spy bag ended up being the most expensive purchase, and also the biggest headache. At $260, the bag was 87% below the retail price of $2,000. Yet the bag was sewn together sloppily, with the monogrammed fabric on the inside protruding at some of the edges; and the light, flimsy hardware was suspiciously inferior.

It took three messages and a threat to notify eBay to finally get a response from the seller, in which he promised a refund and asked us to ship the bag to an address in New York. But days later, we found out that the address belonged to his next victim: another defrauded customer, who also paid the seller $40 for shipping charges.

After a month passed since we paid for the bag, we filed a "refund not received" complaint with eBay through a form on the site, and then, at the site's request, an "item not as described" claim. EBay investigated the claim, asking us for proof of payment and proof of return, then refunded $175. Including the shipping costs, we lost about $133 in the ordeal. -- By LORETTA CHAO