The Sneaker Savant

Selling on eBay before the ‘eBay sneaker authentication guarantee’:
Day 0: Prospective buyer knows what they’re looking for. Sees my pics, sees my profile, decides I’m legit, shoes are legit and commits to buy. I sell a pair of shoes.
Day 1: Shoes are in the mail.
Day 2-5: Depending on location, buyer receives shoes and leaves positive feedback.

Selling on eBay after the ‘eBay sneaker authentication guarantee’:
Day 0: Prospective buyer knows what they’re looking for. Sees my pics, sees my profile, decides I’m legit, shoes are and commits to buy. I sell a pair of shoes.
Day 1: Shoes are in the mail.
Day 9: Shoes arrive at eBays ‘sneaker authentication hub’.
Day 10: I receive an email from eBay: ‘We’re too busy and can’t get to your shoes.’
Day 17: I receive a second email from eBay: ‘Hey, just so you know, we’re still too busy and still can’t get to your shoes.’
Day 18: I receive another email from eBay informing me that the buyer has opened an ‘item not received’ case against me, and my account is now on hold. Buyer asks if I can just update him on the status of the shoes; easy enough...except…eBay no longer lets you communicate with your customers: ’Messaging is turned off for sneakers covered by Authenticity Guarantee.‘
Day 19: I cancel my eBay store subscription after 20+ years.

I wrote about this back in November and received plenty of hate on the posts. A popular podcast host also went on a rant on one of my posts saying I was being ‘too negative’. Really? Again, I maintain that I looked at exactly what could go wrong and I extrapolated it. And here we are. A brief search on IG and Twitter shows I’m not alone. This is a goddam mess.

Just like anything - this is a GREAT idea for a certain subset of the sneaker world. Certain Yeezys, certain Off-Whites, certain Jordans. Do we *really* need this service for obscure pairs that no one would bother creating fakes of? Really?

@ebaysneakers - why can’t you allow buyers OR sellers to opt-out of this service?