Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Is anyone else besides me getting tired of seeing (and worried about) the recent flood of counterfeit name brand guitars on Ebay? All of these listings are coming out of China. Right now, there are seven "Rickenbacker" guitars listed: items 120005156810, 190005296988, 190005313900, 200004443608, 230004923161, 280004810674, and 280004673756.

If you do a search for Gibson, you'll find dozens of fake guitars listed - Some of them don't even have the right headstock shape!

We all need to file complaints with Ebay for these listings to get them pulled. Trying to wade through all this **** to find legitimate guitar listings is getting difficult, and if these fake guitars get out in the world, we risk losing value on our own legitimate guitars.

I posted about these auctions this morning but my post went into the ether......... It is just unbelievable that ebay can't police things from China better than this! Nearly every category I search in is just FULL of Chinese junk! I don't see too many people bidding, but some do!

It seems to be a hopeless situation Kris,

I have quit looking for deals on eBay for the reasons you are complaining about.

Kaia, eBay does not appear to police anything unless they receive complaints (or threats of litigation) from the corporations whose products are being copied or sold in fake auctions.

As I say, it appears to be a hopeless situation.

Perhaps John Hall will see this thread, and could possibly convince Ebay to at least get rid of the fake Rick listings.

I'm not sure we are seeing actual fake Rickenbackers being made in China (no matter what they say), but cloned auctions from other current and earlier items on the bay. Usually, these get axed in a few days, and I don't think there has been any serious bidding. I think serious buyers who think they can find bargain Ricks in China are seriously fooling themselves. I think the paltry bids that we see may be buddies trying to build eBay rep for the feedback file and to make the auction look more legit. Still, they keep popping up. I think all Forum members know better.

I agree, and have boilerplated a letter of warning to Ebay with a place for the auction number. I get of a couple of these every day, but all I ever get back is their usual "Safe Harbor" thank-you letter.

But if you want some real entertainment, look at the feedback for one of these jokers- Inevitably it ends up--if you dig deeply enough--in a chain of fake Ebay auctions (one guy was selling question marks) that are traded around to pump up a bunch of fake sellers' feedback scores.

Recently saw a '58 Gretsch for 99 cents...and a lot weirder it's gonna get, I'm afraid.

These are not counterfeit guitars. That's too much work. They're counterfeit auctions, which are no work at all. It'll probably die down just as it gets more sophisticated in other areas.

I have unfortunately had to contain my searches to North America because I was so sick of seeing half a page of "superexcellent tool of the electrical guitars".

Kris, at one point today there were NINE such 'cloned' auctions. I contacted the seller of the ACTUAL guitar, whose pictures had been stolen by the Chinese thieves, and got the reply that he had contacted eBay and eBay had done nothing.

I captured a screenshot of the bogus auctions, and the next time I read or hear some story about eBay fraud and eBay's spokesperson lies about their doing "everything' to combat it, I will send a copy of said screenshot to the news agency and demand equal time for the TRUTH. (It should be obvious why eBay doesn't pull such ads - eBay would have to refund the listing fees and therefore lose money.)

eBay has always maintained that they are nothing more than a forum or "middle man" for commerce. It's going to be interesting to see the number of lawsuits challenging that position....I think there are a couple cases coming up that if the ruling is not in eBay's favor will result in some significant changes of policy.

There have been tons of fake Rickenbacker listings that have been reported on this site and I dont't think I've ever seen one last more than a day.

The problem with the chinese auctions is that they are based on hacks...there will always be hackers and people trying to get something for nothing.

"Refund the listing fees"?

I doubt that Ebay sees a penny from these Chinese shysters. I'll bet they try to collect their few pennies, but not too hard. Then they kick the member off, only to have him pop up under a different name.

The problem is that there are so many auctions going on that they can't possibly keep track. But you'd think they could write a program with some keywords that would highlight this type of thing for review.

They should try "Chinese" and "guitar" for starters, and plug in "Beijing" or "China" for the location.

In fact, I've never seen an auction item out of China that WAS legit.

In fact, I've never seen an auction item out of China that WAS legit.

Well, there are some, in fact - beads, for instance (although those are generally not pricey items).

I still believe that there are some of these auctions coming from China which contain counterfeit guitars. Several listings for "Les Pauls" show pictures of guitar headstocks that have a Gibson logo, but the shape of the headstock is wrong - close, but no cigar. Also, the diamond shaped inlays have uneven spacing, or the corners don't line up! A big name guitar company would never let something like this slip through their quality control.

Yes, but the typical Les Paul shape has been copied by many foreign companies for years. Same with the Fender Tele, Strat, P and Jazz basses, Gibson 335, Hofner 500/1 (Beatle Bass) and on and on. Ricks have been copied in Japan and other countries, but generally RIC brings down the hammer on imports.

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Thank God the English language is so hard to grasp, particularly if it is not your mother tongue. How else would we spot those fakers?