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Unbelievable!

I am suspicious. There has to me more to this story. Conspicuously absent is an explanation of what PayPal told the seller. It would be interesting to see the communications (and the timeline thereof) between all parties.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

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+1 I have used paypal for years and had no issues knock on wood seems that there is more than meets the eye with this story .

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I just got off the phone with Vicky in the Paypal Disputes Resolution Center. She confirmed that in the case of disputed authenticity, both parties would submit documents confirming their viewpoint, which would be reviewed by the resolution center staff, and a decision would be made based on the information, and the result would be return of the instrument and money, or not.
It is not Paypal's policy to instruct clients to smash instruments for a refund.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

guitarwhisperer - you spoke to someone who doesn't know the policy of the company she works for:

"PayPal may also require you to destroy the item and to provide evidence of its destruction."

Yes, it's in the fine print. Scroll down to "DISPUTE RESOLUTION":

https://cms.paypal.com/al/cgi-bin/?cmd= ... tComp_full

If anyone wants to follow this story this is where it originated and they are giving updates (Possibly NSFW):

http://www.regretsy.com/2012/01/03/from-the-mailbag-27/

Thanx for posting the link to PayPal's actual policy, it was very informative. My representative gave me incomplete information, or I didn't describe the situation accurately.

Described in the paypal online document is a specific condition in which case the item sold is actually counterfeit. In that case, the terms SPECIFICALLY STATE that in the case that the buyer is to destroy the counterfeit item and the seller loses the money they gained from it.

In the original case cited in the article, the dispute was authenticity. If the seller sold a counterfeit antique violin, destruction in that case would be required, and the seller would not be expected to receive the item back. Under the section titled "How is the claim resolved" it states " In the event a seller loses a Claim, the seller will not receive a refund on his or her PayPal or eBay fees associated with the transaction. If you lose a Significantly Not as Described Claim because the item you sold is counterfeit, you will be required to provide a full refund to the buyer and you will not receive the item back (it may be destroyed)."

This appears to be the case, and the seller is flaming PayPal as revenge for foiling his theft plans. In the updated link the seller does not show paypal's policy concerning counterfeit items.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

It remains hard for me to believe that people will buy expensive musical instruments on line without actually seeing or playing them. That violin may well have been a piece of junk with a fake label.

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I suppose that we will never know the true story in this case. I can understand the rational for why counterfeit items should not be returned, but is that PayPal's job (to remove fake items from the marketplace)? It seems to me that they would only have the authority to void a transaction and the duty to report the alleged offense to the appropriate authorities. Perhaps revoking the PayPal account for those deemed to be (attempting to) passing off fake goods.

I would guess that PayPal determined that the violin was a fake (whatever that means). We don't know exactly how it was advertised or what it was claimed to be. We know there are tons of violins that are labeled as Strads, but are indeed not. I'm sure there are other similar problems in the antique world. This is a tough situation, there may be really nice violins out there that have "deceiving" labels but are of definite value as an instrument. Someone should be able to buy and sell these for what they are. I'm all for protecting people from fraud but I also understand the concept of caveat emptor. . . If the seller was claiming it was something it was not, that is wrong; but if the buyer is gong to buy something like that sight unseen, he or she needs to decide between 1) taking the sellers word, 2) arranging for independent appraisal BEFORE the sale is finalized or 3) look elsewhere.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I'm sure the buyer would have been quite happy to receive a $25,000 dollar violin for $2500. I'm sure the violin had some value and it is a shame it was destroyed.

People are still accepting Paypal? Next you'll be telling me that people are still doing auctions on eBay.

So... What do you guys think about the flood of Counterfeit Martins coming out of China that are for sale on Ebay....

How about all the old "The Gibson" guitars that are just some junk shop guitar with a fake label sitting on them or an authentic Gibson neck on some miscellaneous body.... Lots of people are swindled by these things every year....

How would you feel if you bought a "Martin D-28" online at a price that is about right for a used D-28.... and then, when it showed up - you discover it was obviously a fake that recently came out of China? Would you say - Oh, well... Maybe I should send it back to that fellow so he can scam someone else?

Personally - I think I would drop the hammer on the guy.... Report it as a counterfeit, get my money back... Smash the thing up, light it on fire, douse the flames and happily ship back the pile 'o scrap and charcoal.... Let those people learn their lesson about trying to scam folks.....

What happens if you just re-sell it... and it gets passed around a couple times.... till it hits Martin's Warranty department... and they are asked (By an innocent buyer) to warranty a fake..... Maybe they will return it without warranty... Likely - if they returned the instrument at all - they would deface the labels so it was obvious and permanantly marked as such.... Now, the buyer who paid $3K for the guitar is left with a $300.00 "Fake, Defaced Martin".... He still got ripped off - but not by Martin....

It may be true that in the violin world - there's a lot of very high quality fakes out there.... This being the case - the "Honest" thing to do is to remove the fake/counterfeit label.... That way - someone could legally sell it as a Concert Quality 1850's unmarked violin or whatever and not be trying to sell a forgery.... A good violin is still a good violin..... and a really good antique violin still has value in that it's a fine instrument.....

Thanks

As mentioned, there's probably more going on in this case than we know but, I am of the opinion that PayPal is basically evil and try to avoid it whenever I can.

The issue with PayPal is that their policies are "black and white one size fits all" and they refuse any flexibility whatsoever. As anyone who's been around the block once or twice knows, "one size fits all" almost never does.

If you search on the internet, you can find dozens and dozens of cases where PayPal's policy resulted in a lot a problems for its customers, especially small businesses, due to their inflexibility and hardline rules.

It's of course possible that all of the "I hate paypal" and paypal warning sites have all been created by scammers and bad business people who simply don't want to pay for their own mistakes but, it's even more likely that at least some of the disputes are legit.

I've had to use the paypal dispute system twice and was looking into it a third time and luckily have come out o.k. but, I can definitely vouch for their inflexibility when it comes to application of their policy.

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John,

I think we are more in agreement than you know. I am not advocating letting people scam people and push forgeries into the market, but I also think it is a very bad idea to buy something like this over the internet without verifying it's authenticity first. If someone does this and gets burned, they share some of the blame. Not to defend or bash PayPal, I don't think enforcing the destruction of items they deem to be counterfeit is in their purview. To be clear, I am against forgery, I just don't think the gun and badge belong to PayPal. Not that I have any great ideas about how it should be handled. I don't even know what the relevant laws are. . . Perhaps, rather than insisting on proof that the item was destroyed, they should require proof that a fake was reported to the applicable authority before they issue a refund. Imagine a case where both sides submitted contrary appraisals from legitimate experts and PayPal picks the one they believe and order its destruction, BUT the expert they sided with got it wrong. . .

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

It may be true that Paypal has some heavy handed policies.. Many people have had trouble that it took a long time to resolve..

I think in this case, as we get into it further and learn more details - it's not about heavy handed policies as much as it is about counterfeits, fraud, and the Seller's sour grapes when they got caught and lost a pile of cash.....

We obviously do not have all the facts from the article... There is no information about what the Buyer sent to Paypal to authenticate the forgery and how they proved it was a fake - no doubt Paypal would require some sort of expert authentication before requiring the destruction of a valuable instrument.... I really doubt you could just send an email that says "Gosh, I think I got a fake, I want my money back" with no evidence of anything being wrong....

If you have a chance - take a look at the neck joint in the picture shown... It certainly doesn't look like the sort of neck joint you would see on an actual Concert instrument... It looks more like the flat butted glue joints you see on $50.00 instruments - that fall apart after 30-40 hours of use.... The linings also don't look "Right" to me either.... I just see things in that picture that look like it wasn't made by a master.... I could be wrong.... but it would not be difficult for a trained eye to tell the difference between a true Master built Concert violin and a department store special that had been "Aged".....

Thanks

Smells a little fishy to me!! I have been using Paypal for years and have never had any hint of stupidity on their part. I can't imagine them telling anyone to destroy an item for returned money unless some disgruntled employee is trying to take out his hatred for his employer. But there is always a first time for everything.

Ken

Looks to me like a really bad fake. Not only the neck joint, but the underside of the fingerboard, the color of the maple inside the back, overspray on the label, the apparent thickness of a sprayed finish on the back near the point, the way the neck broke don't jibe with what you'd expect to see on a violin supposedly made before WWII.

When companies, especially one like PP, start making decisions about destroying people's property, counterfeit or not, I think we're all in trouble.

Pat

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But think... If they refuse to do anything - then they could be held liable as a party to the fraud.... I bet the policy came about because of legal action against them....

Say their policy was to do nothing..... They could be in a troublesome legal position - They may find themselves required to provide escrow services for all manner of illegal transactions including drugs, all sorts of stolen and counterfeit goods, providing money to terrorists, and even money laundering... and that sort of thing brings it's own sort of trouble that goes along with it...

At least in this case - the public, hard line position against counterfeit goods pushes Sellers of this sort of junk to not use their service...

We aren't talking about a valuable antique Concert violin being sold off with the wrong label.... The sort of thing where it has significant intrinsic value in and of itself that is understood in the Violin market..... (Perhaps like someone sticking a 1970's era Martin label inside an early Collings guitar...) We are talking about outright fraud - sticking a very valuable antique label on a worthless, unplayable department store knockoff for the express purpose of defrauding someone!

Do you honestly feel bad for the seller? I don't...

Thanks

I don't feel bad for this seller (though I don't have all the facts) it appears like there was clearly fraud here. I know nothing about violins but it seems by the comments here that the picture shows an item that would never be worth $2,500. But none of this is my point. I don't think PayPal should order the destruction of other people's property. They do have the right to determine whether or not a transaction they back should be voided (and thereby ruling who's property it is [buyer's, seller's or relevant anti-fraud authority]) . No matter how black and white this case is, there is sure to be instances that are much greyer; is PayPal the appropriate entity to make these determinations?

Respectfully, I think it is a slippery slope to have PayPal laundering money and supporting terrorism. Besides, if someone wanted to launder money through PayPal with bogus transactions, the person on the other end would have to be in on it and would not register a complaint. You are probably right that this policy is designed to protect PayPal from litigation. PayPal is a strange little thing, a bank that is not really a bank. At the very least this discussion has steeled my resolve to avoid these types of transactions.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I'd agree it's hard to know what's true here. I'd imagine the violin luthier community will come to a consensus of the authenticity, based on the pic. Anyone know of a good violin luthier forum? Any thoughts, Alan C?

This statement from the seller makes no sense to me:
"They somehow deemed the violin as "counterfeit" even though there is no such thing in the violin world."

Apparently there is a logic to paypal's policy:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/ja ... oys-violin
Excerpt:
"A spokesperson for PayPal said... The reason why we reserve the option to ask the buyer to destroy the goods is that in many countries, including the US, it is a criminal offence to mail counterfeit goods back to a seller."" Like John said.

It's interesting that:
If the violin was authentic, paypal is as bad as people say it is.
If the violin was a fake, paypal is at least partly vindicated (depending on their due diligence for verification), and we learn again that we can't believe everything we read on the internet.
If the whole story was made up (appears unlikely given Paypal's recent statement), we learn again that we can't believe everything we read on the internet.

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David Malicky

I don't claim to be a violin expert, however the construction of that smashed fiddle looks to be pretty standard to me. It looks like the builder used fairly nice woods and a decent varnish. It is hard to tell from the picture the particulars, but it doesn't take much to make it a $2500 fiddle. I think it should have been judged on it's own merits.
Violins are often mislabeled - should every factory production "Antonious Stradivarious" be smashed as a counterfeit ?

Counterfeit or not depends on how the sale was presented.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

the key here is the law in question. If I sell a watch on Ebay and label it " fake gucci " can I legally send that through the mail. What if I list it as a"well made fake Gucci " and the buyer disputes the fact that it is "well made". can it be legally mailed back.

Likewise suppose I post an " old violin, stradivarius copy, nice tone" on Ebay and the buyer disputes the fact that the tone is nice, but is informed that that is subjective and not grounds for dispute. Suppose then that the seller has read this article and files another dispute with pay pal stating that they have been sold counterfeit goods. What Is the next step LEGALLY, The goods certainly are counterfeit, the question is, does the law make allowances for items that or no longer in production, pass a statute of limitations, or are in the public domain. In the case of the violin, counterfeiting strads is a well established and culturally entrenched practice.

It may be the law that is to blame. seller beware!