CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

Wasn't sure where to put this, but have any of you ever accidentally bought a bootleg off ebay? I recently hit the buy button without being careful or thinking about it enough on this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/171147078533?ss ... 1439.l2649

I've been wanting a brand-new copy of this movie for a while, but I can't buy it directly from amazon.jp, because for some reason that particular item can't be shipped to my address.

Now, a smart person would have zoomed on each image of this movie, saw the bad English on the cover, and the One Piece Film Z poster (why would he include the poster of a different movie in the images?) and everything else that's a little off about this, and thought it was at least suspicious. But, since I've never purchased anything from ebay before and didn't really know about the apparent abundance of bootlegs for sale on the site, I didn't really have any reason to think it wasn't legit, since at a glance it looks like the image of the legit product on amazon.jp:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/switch-langu ... uage=en_JP


Long-story short, I think I've been duped. Makes me feel pretty dumb.

The thing that really gets me is that the seller has 100% positive feedback:

http://www.ebay.com/usr/japandiscovery

How are you supposed to tell a good seller from a bad one, then?

File a paypal dispute and get your money back, if the seller was indeed trying to sell a bootleg copy as a legit disk.

I think the seller including a poster is the least suspicious part of this auction... the difference in english between Amazon's image and ebay's is the key here. Otherwise your right, it does look pretty official- with the plastic wrap and stickers on the case and all. But it would be easy for someone to slap them on I guess.

Oh, definitely. I think I'll be able to return it, since it hasn't even gotten here yet. Just kinda of a hassle obviously. Big buyer's remorse. But, honestly, I'm not sure whether to leave bad feedback or not. Maybe this dude's English is just that bad, so he couldn't tell it was a fake from China (or wherever it was made?) Anyway it sucks all around, not sure how I'm going to get a legit copy of this movie now.

Kind of late, but on the reputable seller end, personally if I'm buying something from ebay I won't buy anything from someone unless they have a high rating and a decently high volume of high ratings. That is, I try to buy from someone who has at least 2000 ratings and a 90%+ satisfaction rating.

Also be extra weary when buying anime items from Honk Kong or any other places well known for bootlegs. In some Asian countries it is legal for them to make what we might consider bootlegs but it's for distribution in the country of origin, the legality gets more shady when those items are sold to people in America and such.

Don't worry easy mistake on ebay, has happened to me as well with a Korean drama, it worked on my dvd player fine though and the picture looked decent so I just ended up keeping it. (the ebay picture was all cute though and it said box set and everything, and I ended up with 6 cds in the cd plastic pocket things, and the image on the cds were stickers lol). Yeah Ebay is notorious for, mostly Chinese, but other sellers as well selling fake versions of all kinds of stuff, silver is an exceptionally bad one as well. As long as your aware of it, its pretty easy to spot which ones are fake and real.

I actually know someone who bought Azumanga daioh at an anime store where I live (America) and it ended up being a bootleg, payed a good amount for it too!

Yeah I see lots of bootlegs of anime around town, though they're easy to spot because, other than the title, most stuff written on the box is in hanji or kanji.

Assuming a seller isn't using bogus photos, you might try checking to see what distributor has their logo on the case. As far as US distributor go, they're aren't that many that sell physical copies so if it doesn't have a logo of a well known distributor be weary, though there are defunct distributors that still have a lot of stuff in circulation like ADV. And the font may be too small to read in a photo, but with the bootlegs I see around town, where the companies contact information usually is in the box, but instead of giving you a web address to a site they give you an email address, and they usually won't have a phone number.