Comments | lucent_beam: eBay Scam

lucent_beam

eBay Scam

Nov 26, 2007 12:17

When I've sold GBA games on eBay, I never sell the box or manual so I guess I just naively assume that you can trust people. I found a seller selling PAL versions of games and so I bought four of them. But as soon as I opened the package in the mail, I was like, these have to be fake. So I called Nintendo customer support to confirm that these ( Read more... )

Comments 25

artistic_g4m3r November 26 2007, 19:07:56 UTC

I work in a GameStop, and I've seen quite a few GBA bootlegs come in as trade ins. What I've noticed is:

- Different cartridge color. They're usually a dark blue or black as opposed to Nintendo's grey cartridge.

- The word "Nintendo" printed on the mobo.

- The art of the cart. 99.9% of the time a bootlegs art does not match the offical art. Also look for a fuzzy Nintendo seal of quality and ESRB rating.

- The font of "GameboyAdvanced" on the front. Sometimes I've seen it imprinted deeper into the plastic than on an offical cart, or it's been a completly different font.

- Spelling errors. "Nintondo" instead of "Nintendo".

- Patent information. Some carts have no patent info on them.

That's really all I can think of, I guess it's kinda hard to do those checks on ebay, since people can just put up a picture of the legit thing, but it's good to know what to look for.

bomb_the_cherry November 27 2007, 00:02:05 UTC

Usually the boxes are really, really badly done too. In the UK a lot of fake's boxes are the US box design.

artistic_g4m3r November 27 2007, 03:29:35 UTC

I rarely see the boxes, and when I have they were the wrong texture (they were all shiney) and they didn't even look like that they had been put together. (All flattened with the tabs that hold them together sticking out)

yukoasho November 26 2007, 20:21:57 UTC

Ouch, I feel incredibly bad for you. Bootlegs like that never last as long or are as well constructed as official carts.

The only thing I can say is to be careful who you're buying from. Make sure you're buying from someone with a high approval rating, and make sure of where they're from. It's also good to try to stick to the established game stores that have set up shop on eBay instead of random sellers.

And for God's sake, report this to eBay! You have to help take this guy out!

anguisel November 27 2007, 00:14:10 UTC

Make sure you're buying from someone with a high approval rating, and make sure of where they're from.

The approval rating isn't a god way to determine if the seller is legit or not. A lot of scammers will have friends/family/other scammers give them good ratings to appear like a good seller. I remember watching this on the news a while back. They stated that you should email and talk to the people who have purchased items and get their opinions.

yukoasho November 28 2007, 07:07:36 UTC

True. You're probably best off sticking to the actual businesses that do stuff on ebay (the ones with tens of thousands of positive scores).

kimtaro November 26 2007, 20:22:58 UTC

That happened to me on Swedish Ebay with Secret of Mana (can't remember the name for the love of me, but the one with parallel stories with the guy and the girl).

I first got a little suspicious when the manual accompanying the game was a whopping four pages. But I started playing anyway, and it worked like a charm up until saving, when it would just refuse to do anything. And after looking at the cartridge it was clear that it was a fake.

I mailed the seller, and he was very nice about it and he refunded my money without fuss. Then I threw the fake away and bought it in a store instead.

queenemiwee November 26 2007, 21:37:18 UTC

Dang that sucks. Sorry you got ripped off, Annie. I went to that ebay link and was reading about the fake pokemon games... and one of them I actually sort of want:
Pokemon Quartz (hack of ruby & contains very abusive swearing)
Lol, does it make me a bad person that I might find that amusing? ;)

bomb_the_cherry November 27 2007, 00:01:05 UTC

No, I'm a child and I quite want that too, haha.

aheartparade November 26 2007, 22:12:45 UTC

This sucks that this happened to you. I work at EB, and I had never encountered fakes before, until sometime last week. It wasn't GBA however - it was DS. Something really seemed off about them and I compared to new cartridges and yeah, they were definitely fakes. Wrong font, image was bigger, and there was the seal thing too. Creative buggers!