How to spot a fake Mont Blanc fountain pen when shopping on eBay auction
Everybody knows that you can buy a real Montblanc gem on eBay for much less than you’d pay at official dealers. But beware of scammers which tend to grow professionally with each year and make their auctions looking more and more like real pages of trusted pen sellers.Here are some useful tips to help you avoid losing money to someone who is selling fake Mont Blancs.
Many of the counterfeits you come across will be sold on a 1st, 3d or 5th day of listing, by a fairly new seller with either zero, or very few feedbacks. And if there is any feedback, it has been made a day ago purchasing 1c items. The payment method might be Bank Transfer only (otherwise called ‘Direct Deposit’), or the shipping costs will be quite high and the description will say it isn’t refundable under no circumstances. Remember that once you sent your money you cannot request it back. Therefore use Bank Transfer only in case you trust the seller 100%.
One of the trends scammers use is to find a completed listing for an authentic Limited Edition, like the Virginia Woolf or the Greta Garbo, that fetched a high final bid. Then they copy-paste the description & listing and the pictures and set themselves up as a brand new business seller to fraudulently list the same item, although they don’t have anything to sell (and do not intend to). They list just the one listing for a maximum of several days, they only accept payment by bank transfer, and they won’t allow you to collect the pen in person. But they offer free shipping instead (and some to-be buyers fall for this).
Ebay takes no legal action against these scammers setting themselves up as trusted sellers to fraudulently get funds into a bank account from winning cheated buyers. All that happens is that the scammers become deleted from the system when they fail to pay their ebay account fees within the required time, and by then they are long gone. The fact that you might have sent lots of money to someone’s bank account isn’t ebay’s problem and you will lose your bucks if you fall for this kind of scam. So never send a large transfer to an unknown bank account unless you can be absolutely certain that the seller is 100% legitimate (or still better, you know the seller in person).
So how to detect a fraudulent seller once you’re obsessed with the idea of buying a Mont Blanc pen via ebay?
1. Look for listings offering payment via PayPal. It’s really fast, most sellers won’t charge you any additional fees for transfer (you just pay the sum you intend to), and best of all you can claim a refund once the seller sends you not what you expect to receive (descriptions differs from the real condition of the pen). PayPal will refund you most of your payment. But be sure to file a claim within a month of completing the payment.
2. Trusted sellers have nice positive feedback.
3. Non-scammers show their ID, while scammers choose to make that information private.
4. Honest ebay sellers will show a detailed picture of the auctioned Montblanc pen. If in doubt, contact the seller via email - scammers would never respond to queries, or leave very vague answers.
5. Montblanc does not make ANY Iridium Point Germany nibs.
Hope that these simple to follow tips will save you both time and money when shopping for Mont Blanc pens.
