I recently purchased some brand new Air Jordan 1s from eBay Australia using their 'Authenticity Guarantee'. There are a lot of these types of sneakers being sold on the second hand market, which is why I suppose eBay has implemented the program to a select range of products. Unfortunately I was fooled into believing my eBay purchase was safe.
The sneakers I got were completely and totally fake. Since I spent more than $300, of course I wanted to verify myself whether the sneakers were legit. Luckily there are lots of videos and online resources to do this. Out of all the things I checked (colour match, stitching, logo positioning, etc.) they all raised red flags for being fake. I contacted eBay about it and they have sided with the seller since they said their authenticity was verified by a third party.
When I checked their terms and conditions to find out who this third party is, there was no mention of the company. How it works is that the seller ships to the 'authenticator', then the 'authenticator' ships to me. But who knows where or who this is done by. Through my research, I've also read that they rip the tags off shoes they believe to be fake, and apparently this has happened to genuine sellers.
that sux. They showed on the news people sniffing the shoes for authenticity.