Matrix, a little help please!

[civdiv]

I recently purchased a copy of World at War, Squad Assault: Second Wave, Band of Brothers: Earned in Blood, and The History Channel's Civil War: The Battle of Bull Run over EBay. The seller was supposedly in England, and had a very good rating. Today I received the games and they appear to be counterfeits. I have seen counterfeit software overseas on many occassions, and that's what these appear to be. And the package ended up coming from Malaysia, which is known for it's counterfeiting of consumer products. My question is, what should I do with the counterfeit? I have demanded my money back, and the seller stands to lose a lot as he will lose his EBay account, with over 1000 positive comments, plus his PayPal account. But, obviously my biggest concern is getting the $75 back that I spent on the four games. The publisher is the following;

AK Studio International

I'd be happy to just get my money back. But do I send the counterfeits back? They are very well done, and if not for the packaging (just looking at the disk), you'ld think they were the real thing. After posting this msg I am going to Paypal to freeze their account.

[Erik Rutins]

civdiv,

ORIGINAL: civdiv
I recently purchased a copy of World at War, Squad Assault: Second Wave, Band of Brothers: Earned in Blood, and The History Channel's Civil War: The Battle of Bull Run over EBay. The seller was supposedly in England, and had a very good rating. Today I received the games and they appear to be counterfeits. I have seen counterfeit software overseas on many occassions, and that's what these appear to be. And the package ended up coming from Malaysia, which is known for it's counterfeiting of consumer products. My question is, what should I do with the counterfeit? I have demanded my money back, and the seller stands to lose a lot as he will lose his EBay account, with over 1000 positive comments, plus his PayPal account. But, obviously my biggest concern is getting the $75 back that I spent on the four games. The publisher is the following;

I'd be happy to just get my money back. But do I send the counterfeits back? They are very well done, and if not for the packaging (just looking at the disk), you'ld think they were the real thing. After posting this msg I am going to Paypal to freeze their account.

What you're doing is all that really can be done. We've been engaged in an active campaign to shut these folks down for a while now. Unfortunately, they seem to be able to setup new E-Bay accounts quickly and they are always also quickly padded with positive responses. The key thing is to read very carefully what they are promising. Very often, they'll mention a detail about the packaging that will ring false and we found that querying them before buying as to exactly what would be received would set off alarms.

I've never heard of the company you mentioned. I wish you luck getting your money back, unfortunately it's in the hands of crooks now, unless PayPal can get it back for you or your credit card can cancel the charges.

Regards,

- Erik

[civdiv]

There was nothing in the ad that would have indicated that they were counterfeit. They mentioned that just the disks and the manuals would be shipped and the moxes discarded, but that makes sense. I knew it was coming from overseas (England, according to the listing), so discarding the box made sense to save on shipping costs.

Hopefully it will come down to this; I threaten to leave a negative comment with EBay and PayPal that their goods are countefeit, and I agree not to post these comments if I get my money back. I'll either destroy the disks and send them a photo of the destroyed disks, or I will mail them back at their expense. Then, once I have my money in hand, I'll report them for counterfeiting and have their PayPal and EBay accounts terminated. Having their accounts nuked and my money back shouldn't be hard as they are guaranteed by the Safe Buyer Program. I've already reported them for counterfeiting to EBay. I have to give them a day or two to respond to my email demanding my money back before I can freeze their PayPal account.

[Marc von Martial]

They mentioned that just the disks and the manuals would be shipped and the moxes discarded, but that makes sense.

Though it may make sense, this is for most of the part a number one indicator for counterfeit software on Ebay.