The Authenticator Strikes Again

[G1911]

Originally Posted by calvindog

The program has its good points. I recently was nearly robbed of 35K by an eBay seller with over 10K feedback who tried to sell me a card he didn’t possess. After I paid, I realized the next day that the scans were lifted from a Memory Lane auction. When the seller realized he was required to send the card to the authenticator first, he instead wrote to me that he was “ nervous” about sending the card to anyone but me and instead refunded my money. I wrote to him and explained that in future scams he needed to keep the purchase price below the $250 level which triggers the program. He never responded. I sent all this info to eBay including the Memory Lane auction scans and eBay acknowledged the fraud — but only put the seller on probation.

As with any widespread program used many thousands of times, I am sure there are numerous individual occasions it will prove useful. I have no doubt it will save people who have done no research into what a real card looks like especially. This particular scenario though is covered under the prior eBay policy anyways; I have always been refunded at the 30 day mark by eBay when the seller has not actually had the item (or refused to ship) under that policy.

I am not a fan of PSA being able to unilaterally veto a deal following the rules of the hosting platform, and myself and the seller have both consented to and are doing of our own volition for almost any reason PSA or CSG decides. I collect a lot of obscure cards that aren't baseball; so a high percentage of things I buy are technically described or listed on. So far the saving grace for me is that PSA/CSG doesn't understand them either to know it was described wrong. A scratch on the holder, small damage on a rare card I don't care about and saw in the picture, there are way too many ways for PSA/CSG to kill a deal I as the buyer have consented to do and want the card anyways. Some people have reported PSA has reached out to them about an issue before killing their deal; other deals they just kill unilaterally and ignore what the two people want. It's moved a lot of my insignificant plebe money off of eBay because the platform is becoming increasingly unreliable and I'm tired of the 'will I get my card or not' game.

If eBay actually banned scammers and cracked down instead of arranging junk programs like this to dance around the actual root problem, it would be a much better platform.