eBay No Longer Removes Counterfeit Rolex Listings. Thanks AI!

I’ve been using eBay since the 1990s and I’ve bought well over a thousand things on there, including several vintage Rolexes. It’s a great place to find rare items and I’ve defended eBay on watch forums countless times. Luxury Bazaar even got their start by selling watches on eBay. So, this isn’t meant to be a “hot take” or a hit piece on eBay. I still use the site regularly. I simply think it’s time to address an odd situation that needs addressing: eBay no longer removes counterfeit Rolex listings, and it’s because they’re relying on AI. Let’s go over the whole eBay-fake-Rolex situation.

Can’t You Report Counterfeits on eBay?

Actually, eBay removed the “Report Item” link from their listings, so it’s incredibly hard to find, but here is the current link to report counterfeit items on eBay. You can fill in the item number and get a message like “Thanks for reporting the content you found to be problematic on our site. We’re looking into it now.”

The problem is, invariably, you’ll get this followup: “We looked into your report and didn’t find the listing to be in violation of our policy. This determination was made using automation or artificial intelligence.” In my experience in the past year, 100% of the time, no matter how preposterously fake the watch is, and no matter how much concrete proof that it’s counterfeit you provide in your submission, they tell you it’s not in violation of their policy. I reported ten more obvious fakes before publishing this article just to be sure, and as expected, all ten of them indeed got the “not in violation” response.

If anybody has managed to get a counterfeit listing removed from eBay via their Report function recently, please let me know. I reached out to all the watch enthusiasts I know and none of them have. Since this article was published eBay has reached out to me, but their stance on this issue isn’t exactly unified or clear.

Wait, Why is eBay Allowing Fake Rolex Listings?

At first I thought eBay hadn’t realized that their removal rate of fake Rolexes had dropped to 0% (or close to it), but I can confirm some high-level employees who are genuine watch geeks are aware of it and are concerned about it. One even personally reached out to me and removed some fake listings I was concerned about (thank you!). But that process isn’t sustainable. And unfortunately, there are some even-higher-ups that seem determined to handwave away eBay’s broken reporting function.

I suspect that eBay’s “AI agent” determined that its goals are most efficiently met by saying everything’s fine all the time. I’m not going to be a luddite who grumbles about tech companies using AI, but I will say this: eBay’s model needs to be tweaked to take user reports seriously. You would think it should be easy for eBay to start taking action on user reports again–the way they had done for over a quarter century–but I get the impression that their acquisition of authentication software startup 3PM Shield has added a thick layer of corporate AI hell to a seemingly simple task.

Sustained knowledgeable human input is the only thing that can prevent model collapse over time. In my opinion, by trusting their current AI model so much while turning off the faucet of human inputs that they were receiving, eBay is ironically preventing their AI model from actually getting good. If a watch nerd took the time to find eBay’s extremely-hard-to-find report form and explain why a Rolex is fake, there’s likely a good reason.

Forum Culture Already Acknowledges that eBay No Longer Removes Fakes

The “WatchOut” section of the Rolex Forums used to be a lively place: knowledgeable users would point out reasons why certain eBay listings were fake, people would join together to report the item as counterfeit, and everyone would rejoice when the item was inevitably removed. In the luxury watch world, fighting against counterfeits is a constant community effort, and joining together to remove counterfeit eBay listings was a cool part of watch forum culture.

That’s gone now. The only semi-active thread in that forum is a thread complaining about this exact issue: how eBay just uses AI for authentication now. eBay threw a 15+ year tradition of receiving free community labor in the trash, all because an AI agent thinks it knows better.

Doesn’t eBay Authenticate Watches? Wouldn’t They Spot a Fake Rolex?

eBay does automatically send watches to third-party authenticators if they’re worth $2,000 or more. But most of the fake Rolexes on eBay are under that price point. I’m going to give eBay’s authenticators the benefit of the doubt and assume that none of this hot garbage would get past them, but still, even obvious fakes can get surprising amounts of bids. There must be countless victims who have paid $700-$1,500 for atrocious fakes like these:

Many of these fake eBay Rolexes are actual vintage watches from affordable or no-name brands, but with the dial, movement and inner caseback redone to say “Rolex.” You can see our guide to spotting a fake Rolex for tips on avoiding watches like this.

And to all the concerned watch enthusiasts working at eBay: Good luck on your epic corporate quest to get the Report function working again. To their credit, they managed to clean up the backlog of fake Rolex Marconis on their site, so hopefully reporting will be restored soon. We’re rooting for you!