eBay facilitating and protecting sellers who list counterfeits through the “eBay Refurbished” program

Here’s a counterfeit Playstation 4 controller being sold through the so-called “eBay Refurbished” program.

Counterfeits have always been a problem on eBay. But recently eBay launched a new program called “eBay Refurbished” through which select sellers can list “refurbished” items and get benefits like promoted listings and a shiny new badge that shows up in their listings. Here’s what eBay has to say about the program:

“Quality-vetted sellers”? “Refurbished by experts”? “Reconditioned to 100% functionality by vetted sellers or the manufacturer”? “Multi-point inspections”? Wow, this sure sounds like eBay have some stringent standards for the program. Surely, they’ll only grant the prestigious “eBay Refurbished” badge to the cream of the crop. They’d never use all that flowery language and then grant the badge to any ol’ Tom, Dick, or Harry who just wants to sell crap he ordered on Alibaba, would they?

Ah, well that explains it. This guy’s a top-rated seller without so much as a single negative feedback. That’s what they must mean by “vetted sellers”.

Let’s place an order. I wonder what we should buy

Wow, 112 crystal clear controllers sold? 232 red camo controllers sold? 432 purple controllers sold? This seller obviously has a ton of experience refurbishing Playstation 4 controllers. I have no qualms now that I see he’s sold thousands of them. Let’s buy a titanium blue one.

Now we just have to wait for it to arrive.

Okay it’s here.

At least they didn’t send it Media Mail.

Hmm…. “China Electronics Recycling Inc”? Canoga Park, CA? Where have I seen this before?

Oh, now I remember. It’s that seller who repeatedly listed lots of counterfeit PS4 controllers on B-stock supply, calling them “refurbished” instead. Don’t believe me that they were counterfeit? Here’s what just a few of that seller’s customers had to say:

In any case, let’s open the package.

CUH-ZCT2E? Why a European model? It seems odd that a U.S. seller would have hundreds of European model PS4 controllers.

This serial number sticker is clearly a reproduction. So is the housing. But let’s not be hasty. We can’t conclude the whole thing is counterfeit. The seller did state, after all, that the entire housing may have been replaced as part of the refurbishment process. As long as the motherboard inside is genuine, we can’t say it’s a total scam. But first, there’s an important thing we mustn’t forget.

Never forget to RTFM.

That’s odd. Why would the manual for a European model controller refer to “SCEA” (Sony Computer Entertainment America)? You’d think it would instead refer to SIEE (Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe) or just “SIE”, wouldn’t you? Additionally, it seems strange that a North American 1-800 phone number is listed as the support number for what’s ostensibly a product intended for the European market. I think at this point we have no choice but to open it and look inside.

The battery being installed upside down is the least of our problems.

Oh dear. This is a puzzlement. It looks like a genuine battery, but the rest is fake.

As usual with fake controllers, there’s not even any solder on the anchor pads for the joysticks.

S2PG001A is actually the correct part number for the PMIC on JDM-055 controllers. But this doesn’t appear to be a genuine one. Neither does the MediaTek MT3610N. They both have the wrong numbers of pins. But on this topic I’m no expert. So I could be wrong about that. I suppose it may be possible the MT3610N could come in more than one package size. All I can say for sure is that genuine PS4 controllers don’t use chips that look like these. Also, unrelated to the questionable chips, get a load of the stray bits of solder smeared on the board near the lower left of the photo. That’s sloppy work.

These appear to be genuine Alps joysticks. When tested using DS4Windows they worked just as well as the ones installed inside genuine controllers.
Although I didn’t measure them to check, these appear to be the newer 2.3k ohm variety of joystick potentiometers used in the last JDM-055 PS4 controllers as well as PS5 controllers.
The battery looks genuine. Visually, at least. I didn’t test it though.
The board layout and markings are all very similar to a genuine JDM-055 motherboard.
Even the part number “1-982-707-32” is copied from a genuine board.
The charge port lacks the usual piece of black tape you find on genuine controllers as well as many counterfeits.

Well that was interesting. Now that we’ve had our fun, let’s return the controller for a refund. The listing stated all returns are accepted for 30 days, even remorse returns. So we’ve got no reason to feel bad about returning it. I’ll just open that return, print a shipping label, and drop it in the mail.

Just gotta wait for it to arrive to receive our refund.

Great it was delivered. Now let’s check for that refund.

The only remaining task is to warn others about this scam through appropriate feedback. Let’s be sure not to mention the return request or anything else in our feedback comment that violates eBay feedback policies and could cause our comment to be deleted.

There. That’s straight to the point. There’s no way this comment could violate any of eBay’s feedback policies.
Wow. This guy’s a top-rated seller without so much as a single negative feedback. That’s what they must mean by “vetted sellers”

I don’t think you need a tinfoil hat to see that eBay simply doesn’t care that their so-called “experts” are just hawking fakes. The stock images this particular seller uses are nice and clean. They claim the items are “refurbished” and the fact they’ve been graced with the “eBay Refurbished” badge with its “One- or two-year warranty” and all its BS wankery about “vetted sellers” and “Multi-point inspections” means buyers have little reason to be suspicious. Plus the account is registered in the U.S. Buyers may be skeptical of similar listings that ship from China, but both the ship-from location and the seller’s account are U.S.-based. So there are few red flags for buyers to be wary of, other than the stilted English used in the listing text.

For the record, I have no problems whatsoever with generic controllers or other products made by third-parties. 8BitDo, for example, make some great controllers and sell and market them both legally and ethically. Companies like them are to be commended. What I have a problem with are scumbag sellers who deliberately scam consumers by intentionally describing a product as genuine and then sending a counterfeit instead. Of course, that’s been going on forever. But the twist here is that now eBay are actually assisting these people more blatantly than ever before.

I didn’t think to get screenshots before they were removed, but as I was waiting for the controller to arrive I witnessed several more buyers leave negative feedback for the seller, saying they received fake controllers. By the time I received my order though those negative comments had all been removed by eBay. So there’s no doubt eBay is complicit in this and are doing everything they can to protect their anointed sellers in the “eBay Refurbished” program, international intellectual property laws be damned.

No more ALPS joysticks on recent JDM-055 Playstation 4 controllers?

This JDM-055 motherboard came from a broken PS4 controller I bought on eBay.

A few weeks ago I bought a box of broken PS4 controller parts on eBay. There were a few motherboards and some miscellaneous housing bits in the box. It was a good deal. But what surprised me the most was this board inside that had black joysticks with orange potentiometers.

The right stick on the board was cracked, but that wasn’t the interesting part. What was more interesting is that there were no signs whatsoever that anybody had worked on the board before. The controller had been opened up and there was some dust and dirt on the board, but no signs that anyone had touched anything at all with a soldering iron.

No signs that these were soldered in by hand.

These orange joysticks are readily available all over Aliexpress, eBay, Amazon, etc… so it’s not uncommon to find them inside boards that have been worked on before. From the “F” logo on the sticks I believe they’re made by Polyshine/Favor Union, which is the same company that makes the flexible conductive film for the buttons. You can even see the “F” logo on the conductive film in the photo at the top of the page, albeit upside-down.

This board didn’t look like it had been worked on before by anyone. All the solder joints for the joysticks looked original. Nobody had removed the original ALPS sticks, installed these black and orange ones, and then subsequently broken the right stick. This board had simply never had ALPS sticks in the first place. These orange ones were factory original.

I was so curious about this that I actually asked the seller if he knew anything about it. He confirmed for me that he hadn’t replaced any of the sticks himself and had purchased the lot from a wholesale seller. He said the board was like this when he received it.

I was mystified. I was dying of curiosity, but had no answers. The seller had said he believed the wholesale vendor he bought it from was selling Walmart customer returns. I wondered if maybe, like Gamestop does with some products, Walmart had refurbished the controller and used aftermarket parts. Still, it didn’t look like it had been hand-soldered, so it seemed unlikely to me.

Just today I received another ZCT2U controller with a JDM-055 board in it that I bought on eBay. Interestingly, it too has orange and black Polyshine/Favor Union joysticks in it. It also has no signs at all of any rework.

And the serial number, for those who want to try to find one in the wild.

I think at this point I can be reasonably confident that I’ve got my answer. These controllers were not refurbished. Neither Walmart nor any other retailer had anything to do with it. Sony has simply stopped using ALPS joysticks in their controllers and switched to using Polyshine/Favor Union joysticks. Or at least, that’s the case for some of the newest ZCT2U controllers. Maybe it’s just the ones with 1-982-707-21 as the part number?

I’ve worked on plenty of JDM-055 boards that have the usual red, green, and white ALPS joysticks in them, so it’s not the case that all JDM-055 boards are like this. But it looks like maybe the most recent revision uses these new joysticks. They’re almost identical to the similar-looking ones you can find on Aliexpress, but the center button (i.e. L3 or R3) makes the same kind of clicking noise the ALPS ones make. This is in contrast to all the orange and black ones I’ve bought on Aliexpress in the past, most of which have made a noticeably louder clicking sound than the ALPS ones.

Sadly, the controller I received today doesn’t seem to power on. The seller said it was connected to a faulty charger which caused the battery to burn up. That seems to be a common issue, but I’ve seen it most often on JDM-011 and 020 boards. I’ve had plenty of those with burnt up charge ports and melted plastic from the BD9200 chip on the board failing and overheating, presumably due to the controller getting plugged into the wrong kind of charger. But usually those at least power on. They overheat almost immediately, but they do at least come on briefly, whereas this one isn’t even detected by my computer at all. Maybe if I get some time one day I might mess around with it and see if I can figure out how to fix it.

Regardless of whether I fix this thing or not, I think it’s incredible that from the looks of it Sony has dumped ALPS. If I’m not mistaken, Sony controllers have had ALPS joysticks in them since the original DualShock controllers for the Playstation, which means they’ve been together for 25+ years. If Sony and ALPS have parted ways, then this is like some kind of huge celebrity breakup. It’s tragic, in a way. But exciting, too, particularly for modders and tinkerers, since Favor Union joysticks are usually easier to find and not faked anywhere near as much as ALPS sticks are.