Have inadvertently sold a fake item and now buyer is threatening me with police

[HelpMeSoWorried]

Have namechanged as I am so embarassed. And also sorry to post in here, maybe should have posted in legal, but I know there is a lot of traffic here.

I was given a Mulberry bag as a christmas present a couple of years ago and tbh I never liked it much anyway and never used it (apologies to any handbag fans). As far as I knew it was genuine and had all tags with it etc.

I had no idea what it was worth but recently did a bit of research and they are about £700 new I think. So I decided to get rid and put it on gumtree. I was inundated with enquiries and sold it to a lady last week. She was really happy with it and I got £350 for it.

She has texted me today claiming it is fake and saying she wants me to pay her back and she will return the bag if I give her my address. She doesn't know where I live as I met her in town(at her request!) but she has my name, and obviously my number.

I am very upset and shocked as I would never have sold it if I thought it was not real, I would have maybe just given it away or something. Its completely against my principles, I am an honest person :( I am sat here crying now as I am so scared.

I really needed the money, I don't want the bag back and I don't want to return the money as as far as I am concerned I sold it in good faith and she happily chose to buy it. I am not a criminal, or a scam artist, but she is threatening to report me to the police. :(

can anyone help?

All of this is true, except I can't believe the OP really believed the bag was 100% genuine...

That's the thing, SaraBellum -- and this buyer spent time examining it in person. She didn't purely rely on the pictures or on the ad.

ladymuckbeth: just because someone has never bought you such an expensive gift doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I've got over a grands worth of jewellery in my dressing table that I don't wear because it was bought by an ex. It's perfectly possible the bag is real.

if you know there was a serial number on a tag, but she doesn't know that you know, don't mention that at all until he returns the bag.

then look for a tag with the serial number on it.
you can ask Mulberry what they look like (ie if there are any markings that show that it's genuine - raised print, watermark etc), so that you can check there is a genuine serial number tag in the bag.

if the tag isn't there, or it isn't a genuine tag, then you know that it's not your bag.

AKiss - I didn't say I'd never been bought such an expensive gift - I have, but not out of the blue only to not like it and that be considered normal. Of course things like that happen rarely although the OP has ignored several posts asking whether it was normal within the confines of her relationship for such an expensive and poorly chosen gift to be bought.

I think you need more info on why she thinks it is fake.

This needs to be verified by the manufacturers.

She might be trying to give you one that isn't, instead of the one you sold her.

I would not trust a buyer or a seller on Gumtree - I've had so many problems with it, well, Ok, I've only used it four times and two of those were dodgy. And the people either ignored my attempts at redress or tried to (but I paid with paypal, the second time, and got it all back)

People think it's safe for selling stuff that isn't good enough for ebay - they don't realise they are owned by the same company, or something like that anyway - paypal said they cover gumtree ads as well and would have a record of the original ad, like ebay keep them for a while.

So Gumtree will have a copy of your ad even if you don't - I think. I might be wrong.

And by the way, "perfectly possible the bag is real" is not the same as selling it with the clear belief that it is DEFINITELY genuine.

Math the fact that the buyer spent time looking at the bag has no impact whatsoever on the sellers culpability under the law.

I agree with ladymuck - I think it's extraordinarily unlikely that the OP doesn't know whether the bag is fake or not.

I have twice been bought a genuine designer bag - once by DH and once by Dsis, it would not occur to me that they would be fake because I know them and that's not their style. If I sold them and someone accused me of them being fake I would be outraged and absolutely certain of my position.

This doesn't really add up for me....

But why on earth would the OP even consider the possibility that it wasn't?

It never occurred to her that it might be fake, or she wouldn't have sold it as genuine.

I don't think she has done anything wrong and it's no way the same as stealing a mars bar. That's a conscious deception - this was clearly not.

I think she needs to find out WHY the buyer thinks it's fake, which afaik she hasn't established yet, and then get the bag verified by Mulberry, (I got one verified by a much less posh company once - they said it was real but it must have been a Friday afternoon job as the stitching was so bad!!!) and THEN you will both know where you stand. It's called arbitration.

I won a LV handbag a few years ago. It was complete with a plastic wrapper and a £9.99 price tag. I won it in a tombola in Barclays bank! On the other hand, my neighbour bought me a LV handbag from a charity shop which was almost perfect apart from the interior being suede. There's different types of fake goods out there. All you can do is make sure it's the one that you handed over, OP. Take a very good look at it. If it's not the same one, don't hand the money over and call the Police.

edmcdunnogh, and others who say it does not matter if it was fake or real, all that matters is the intention...maybe that sounds fair to you, but is not NOt what the law says.

The first rule of all legal systems, including the UK's, is that all citizens must be expected to know the law. This rule is important so that people can never claim they didn't know they were doing something wrong.

What matters is what you actually DO (selling a fake bag whilst claiming it is the genuine article), not your intention ("But officer, i thought iit was genuine?!"). As intention cannot be proven.

I would organise a swap back pdq, (and verify she is returning the exact same bag you sold her, in case it WAS genuine). Selling counterfeit products is illegal. Don't know how it works with second hand stuff though, it depends on the wording. Did you claim it was genuine? Or that it looked genuine?

£700 for a chuffing bag? Is it a magic bag? Does it contain the portal to Narnia?

Actually CHandon you are wrong. Under the Fraud Act if the OP believed her representation to be true then she hasn't committed an offence.

I'm just struggling to understand how the op couldn't know one way or the other....

I didn't say that, Chandon. I said that she hadn't done anything wrong - morally, I meant, rather than legally.

I didn't like the way people were saying she had as much as stolen something.

But I take your point, that's why I recommended getting the item verified by someone who actually knows their stuff. It might take a while, and you'll need the buyer's agreement but essentially it is the only way to make sure no one is being done over.

Trouble is though, if the buyer brings back a fake one, that'll be proven to be fake so we're none the wiser.

"What matters is what you actually DO (selling a fake bag whilst claiming it is the genuine article), not your intention ("But officer, i thought iit was genuine?!"). As intention cannot be proven."

Actually while ignorance of the law is no defence, ignorance as to facts can be.

Lol @ ISeeThreadPeople

My thoughts exactly!! had no idea what it was worth until I actually looked into it. Can not believe people actually spend this kind of money on handbags eyes my own primark special

Think of it another way, Help. You can spend a tenner on a bag from Primark which will last you 6 months before it rips/falls apart/whatever, or you can spend £100 on an Osprey bag which will last you 10 years. Handbags are an investment. I'm planning on using my mulberry for a very long time.

I bought a bag from Jones the Bootmakers, it lasted 3 weeks before the strap snapped (leather my arse!). I wasn't happy.

OP you might want to have a look here:

spotfakehandbags.org/spot-a-fake-mulberry-alana-bag.html

Hi OP
I used to work for mulberry up until last year.
If want me to pm my email you can send pics and i can validate it for you. We stopped doing boxes a few years back, before the alexa. And some fakes do come with instructions and serial numbers.
Before i left we were told not to tell people if they had fakes as the people making fakes used to come in to see if we could tell and then go and change the fakes depending on what staff said. Still did though, one lady bought her anniversary present in to be repaired, it was fake, so she dragged her DP in to buy her two!

Don't follow the "how to spot a fake" guides to closely, a lot of these are put about by the fake makers themselves to reassure buyers. And bags are updated season to season. Even the classics, Antony, E/W Bayswater and Alexa have all had minor changes in the last year, unnoticeable until you are studying them like mad. So comparing your bag to a friends or a new one in the shops doesn't normally work either.

Also we cannot verify a bag by the serial number. If you take a fake into store it would not be taken away. However send a fake off to repair it would be kept.

Mulberry shops/outlets will no longer authenticate items as the staff are not qualified enough to spot the really clever fakes.

Everything about the more popular Mulberry style bags can be faked, dustbags, receipts, care cards, etc. It is a huge business.

I think you ought to check the terms and conditions of selling on Gumtree - certainly on Ebay, you have to be able to state that you are 100% certain that the item you are selling is genuine - if you can't, you are warned not to list. That said, there are a large number of fakes on Ebay at any given time.

There is a forum called the Purse Forum, when you can upload photos of your designer item and have them authenticated by people who are expert at spotting genuine/fake items.

IMHO, you should get the bag back (there must be some way of checking that it is the same one you gave her - a mark in a certain place, or something like that) then have the item authenticated and sell it either as a genuine item, with authentication, or a bag 'in the style of ...'.

Arf at handbags being an investment. I've had the same handbag for 3 years. It cost about £3.50 from a charity shop. It's holding up just fine.

For £700 I could do a course, buy a cow, do to said cow whatever I need to do in order to turn it into a bag (here's where the course would come into its own), buy about 589 cakes and still have change out of £700.

People spend all sorts of money on handbags and shoes and stuff. It baffles me. But that's the beauty of the world. Some people spend money on bags, I some people spend money on earl grey and date slices.