5 min read · Mar 26, 2020
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The sneaker resale market has been on a tear in the last three years. Companies like StockX and Goat have been raising funding left and right to power what is a rapidly becoming a multi-billion dollar market.
While companies like StockX and Goat serve as middlemen to provide authentication services for the shoes being sold on their platform, some users have shied away from the costs of doing business there (these companies can take upwards of 12% of each sale) in favor of more peer-to-peer markets like Ebay and Grailed.
Ebay — to most — is considered the wild wild west of sneaker purchases. Replicas (the sneakerhead word for “fakes”) flood the site, and can be most commonly pointed out with their artificially low prices and the 0 feedback on the seller accounts.
Grailed is supposed to sit somewhere in the middle. While they provide no middlemen services (opting instead for the peer-to-peer model), they do claim a “zero tolerance policy” for fakes. They utilize PayPal as the only payment method on their site, and rely on PayPal’s Buyer Protection policies for users to resolve any disputes.
My adventures starts with the purchase of a rare pair of the white Adidas Futurecraft 1.0 shoes from a seller known as cowsintabis, who usually sells clothes, but seemed to have dabbled into shoes. This pair of shoes, released only in LA during a special Adidas event, is very limited and last sold for about $1,500 in new condition.
This particular seller had a worn pair for $700. Which — given the rarity of this sneaker popping up on the market, was an instant purchase for me.
Once received, though — there were problems. The Adidas Futurecraft is unique in its midsole pattern, which is 3D printed.
Because of this uniqueness, fakes of these are quite easy to spot. The technology to build this midsole requires precise 3D printing technology that is not available to the general public.
Well, once I got my pairs, it was clear these were not authentic. In fact, they weren’t even close.
For starters, the midsole was completely hollow. (The black one, by comparison, is a real authentic pair I own).
In the example below, you can see how the line shines directly through the 4D midsole.
Furthermore, the quality of the midsole was something you’d find on a Chuck-E-Cheese prize. The edges were jagged, as if cut from a bad plastic mold:
By comparison, the black pair had very smooth edges, consistent with the 3D printing process:
In any case, this was the easiest authentication I had ever done.
So with this knowledge in hand, I had reached out the seller. My first instinct is to assume it’s an honest mistake, and to request a refund.
However, the seller decided to claim they were authentic and had “proof of authenticity” from a store in LA called Cool Kicks. The problem is, that store (while they do authentic checks), do not provide a “proof of authenticity.”
After a few messages back and forth and the seller ghosting my request for a refund, I decided to follow through with the PayPal Buyer Protection.
Which I won. I leave a negative feedback score on the seller, to warn others of potentially fakes, and then report the seller to Grailed through the appropriate channels, to which I get this canned response from Grailed:
Fast forward a week — and I check the account.
Not only is the account still active, but my bad feedback has been removed. Grailed removed a warning from a sale of a fake item. There is no evidence this seller engaged in the sale of counterfeit goods at all!
I send another message to Grailed, which gets ignored, and I leave it be.
Until one month later, when the seller sends me a message (the seller also changed their handle):
This leads to a series of conversations where I insist that — no — I am not sending back a fake pair of shoes so they can sell it to somebody else who doesn’t know any better.
They continue to insist that they “refunded” me, and I have to send the shoes back.
Besides the fact that I won claim (seller refused to refund), there is no way I am going to give a scammer the tools back to scam another person.
I end up blocking the person on Grailed to prevent further communication, which leads me to today:
So to summarize:
Grailed not only:
- Ignored my note that a seller was engaging in fraudulent behavior by selling counterfeit goods on their site…
- They removed the public feedback I had left warning other potential buyers about this fraudulent user…
- Then when the buyer harassed me about returning their counterfeit goods, and I blocked further communication,
- Grailed decided to freeze my account.
So much for “Zero Tolerance for Counterfeit Goods.”
Grailed not only condoned this counterfeit seller’s actions, but they went out of their way to kick me off their platform.
