IPhones rotten to the core

Apple fakes trick buyers

HUNDREDS of shoppers are being tricked into buying counterfeit Apple iPhones from overseas “chop shops” in a growing scourge on Australia’s top online shopping site.

The fake smartphones — some of which feature old Apple circuit boards with inferior screens and typo-covered cases — are being sold for hundreds of dollars on eBay Australia despite a host of negative feedback from consumers stung by the trend.

A News Corp investigation found six high-profile sellers accused of selling counterfeit Apple iPhones in multiple transactions over the past month, leaving buyers hundreds of dollars out of pocket and seeking refunds.

But an eBay spokesman said the company had to consider potential “vindictive feedback” from competing traders and whether items had just been incorrectly described before suspending the sellers.

Buyer Dan Warne, from Sydney, was one of the latest consumers to be burned by the trend when he paid $709 for an Apple iPhone 7 last month.

Mr Warne said he regretted buying the device as soon as he saw it in person.

“It was immediately obvious to me that it was a fake,” he said. “The whole thing was not a very good counterfeit.

“The printing on the back where it says ‘iPhone’ wasn’t in the right font, and the spacing of the letters wasn’t right. The back of the box also had typos.

“It did boot up Apple software but the screen quality was pretty bad.” Mr Warne said the phone’s circuit board was almost two years old, even though the phone had been sold as “new,” the packaging was a copy, and the charger had glue sticking out of its body.

eBay Asia Pacific communications senior director Daniel Feiler said he couldn’t comment on a specific case but the company had to consider “the entire history of the seller” before suspending them from the shopping site.

He said many iPhones sold on eBay were not “counterfeit” but argued they had simply been rebuilt with “non-original parts” and incorrectly described as “new” smartphones.

“Obviously, we don’t like it but at the end of the day it is a marketplace so we don’t take possession of the goods, we require the buyers and sellers essentially to resolve matters and we do stuff to help them,” he said.

“In the worst-case scenarios, we step in and we have buyer guarantees where they can get their money back, but we wouldn’t have survived so long if this was a big problem. It’s really on the fringes.”

Mr Feiler said eBay’s second-hand phone market was very competitive.

eBay users who believe they’ve been sold a counterfeit phone can lodge a report with state police, to the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network, or econsumer.gov if the trader is based overseas.

Buyers can also seek a refund from eBay itself or, if they paid for the handset with PayPal, seek a refund up to 180 days after the transaction.