The Verdict Is Still Out on eBay.

While I sell all of my useless (to me) clutter on eBay, I am still skeptical about purchasing certain items thru this method. Designer purses are best purchased thru a store. A REAL store, not an on-line one. My sister bought a Gucci purse thru an on-line store claiming it was authentic, and it looked exactly like my Chinatown version - FAKE. While I've sold some authentic purses on eBay, they were used ones at good prices. What I mean by this is that they sold for around the same price I'd pay for a very good fake one in Chinatown, but they were real. I don't mind buying knock-offs, after all, that was the whole point of my Hong Kong lay over last summer.

I recently bought a Coach sling pak from someone on eBay with over 1,000 positive feedbacks. It came with the box, tags attached, and Coach literature. Yet I still have a niggling, nagging suspicion that it may not be real. I should have learned my lesson from the Kooba fiasco. The woman claimed to be a flight attendant who was sick and stuck in another country. A month passed and she had never mailed me the bag that I had paid several hundred for. Luckily it was Paypal to the rescue and she refunded my money.

Moral of the story - Do not expect designer items to be real on eBay. If they make knock-offs of whatever it is you're trying to buy, chances are it's fake if it's on eBay. If you get it at a cheap price, enjoy it in all of it's unauthenticity. But, if you're paying a lot anyway, go to a real store.