AUTHENTICATE this COACH

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#2,162
linz8617 said:
Geeze, Im sorry. I did not know all of the rules, I am new to this site. But thanks for such a warm welcome. And by working for COACH once means two years.
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Thanks for your offer and comments, but you have to understand my reaction, and why we only accept and welcome opinions from posters whose opinions we've learned can be trusted..

We frequently get brand new posters - and I mean registered here only for a DAY or two - jumping in & offering their "expert" authenticaion advice. Often it's a concerted attempt by former, now banned members of this forum to give us a black eye by giving totally wrong advice and causing problems, it's happened many times.

Often it's someone who has 3 six-month old Coaches and fancies that she's an expert. Often it's people claiming to be former Coach employees who have NEVER received any solid training in how to recognise not just current fakes, but fakes from any time over the last 50 years. Several "former Coach employees" have creatred MAJOR problems especially when older items are involved, and there's a small clique of them who occasionally pop up at Ebay's boards and try to bully the posters there into kowtowing to them and believing their almost 100-percent WRONG claims and statements about an item's authenticity.

Many members here and at Ebay also can tell you stories about bags they KNOW to be genuine (and that the experts both there and here have verified as genuine) that they've taken to a Coach store and after nothing more that a manager or SA trying to pull up a style number on their computer, been told that they were fake.

So when several brand new posters in a row come here saying "I know all about fakes, I worked for Coach" and "I can smell a fake a mile away" we DON'T consider their opinions dependable and we make sure our other members are aware of it. As I said in an earlier post that I linked to, until someone proves that they really ARE experts, and are basing their opinions on solid experience INCLUDING an info and photo collection of both genuine and fake bags, we can't and won't allow them to give advice especially when large chunks of our members' hard-earned incomes are involved.

It takes more to spot fakes than thinking it looks like the ones you remember, or any imagined "spidey-sense" or over-the-internet "smell". And we're not impressed either when a brand new poster jumps up and down typing in Caps how SHE KNOWS IT'S REAL, OR fake, or whatever when someone else with years of experience has already said the same thing 10 or 20 posts back. I worked for car dealerships for 25 years but that doesn't mean I can recognise a counterfeit brake pad. You don't absorb that kind of knowledge from the air around you at your job, you have to actually work at it.

So to protect our members, only someone who's demonstrated a reasonable amount of expertise is encouraged to authenticate, and when more than one brand-new poster pops up within less than a week claiming that they know how to spot - or smell - a fake Coach, we're going to assume that they DON'T until proven otherwise, and they may even be here to cause trouble.

Anyone who really wants to help needs to read and learn how we do things and show that they'll actually able to learn from the process. Otherwise it creates problems and can lead to someone being ripped off because they trusted the opinion of the wrong person.
 
#2,163
I understand that and I can tell you that I was trained on how to spot a fake COACH bag in the two years I worked there. I am not going to say I can spot other fake namebrand bags, nor would I have given my advice on a much older vintage COACH bag. I only gave my opinion on a bag that displayed the things on a COACH bag i was trained to look for. Had I known I was not supposed to give out my opnion, I would not have. Like I said, I am brand new to this site, and I had no idea, I am sorry.


Hyacinth said:
Thanks for your offer and comments, but you have to understand my reaction, and why we only accept and welcome opinions from posters whose opinions we've learned can be trusted..

We frequently get brand new posters - and I mean registered here only for a DAY or two - jumping in & offering their "expert" authenticaion advice. Often it's a concerted attempt by former, now banned members of this forum to give us a black eye by giving totally wrong advice and causing problems, it's happened many times.

Often it's someone who has 3 six-month old Coaches and fancies that she's an expert. Often it's people claiming to be former Coach employees who have NEVER received any solid training in how to recognise not just current fakes, but fakes from any time over the last 50 years. Several "former Coach employees" have creatred MAJOR problems especially when older items are involved, and there's a small clique of them who occasionally pop up at Ebay's boards and try to bully the posters there into kowtowing to them and believing their almost 100-percent WRONG claims and statements about an item's authenticity.

Many members here and at Ebay also can tell you stories about bags they KNOW to be genuine (and that the experts both there and here have verified as genuine) that they've taken to a Coach store and after nothing more that a manager or SA trying to pull up a style number on their computer, been told that they were fake.

So when several brand new posters in a row come here saying "I know all about fakes, I worked for Coach" and "I can smell a fake a mile away" we DON'T consider their opinions dependable and we make sure our other members are aware of it. As I said in an earlier post that I linked to, until someone proves that they really ARE experts, and are basing their opinions on solid experience INCLUDING an info and photo collection of both genuine and fake bags, we can't and won't allow them to give advice especially when large chunks of our members' hard-earned incomes are involved.

It takes more to spot fakes than thinking it looks like the ones you remember, or any imagined "spidey-sense" or over-the-internet "smell". And we're not impressed either when a brand new poster jumps up and down typing in Caps how SHE KNOWS IT'S REAL, OR fake, or whatever when someone else with years of experience has already said the same thing 10 or 20 posts back. I worked for car dealerships for 25 years but that doesn't mean I can recognise a counterfeit brake pad. You don't absorb that kind of knowledge from the air around you at your job, you have to actually work at it.

So to protect our members, only someone who's demonstrated a reasonable amount of expertise is encouraged to authenticate, and when more than one brand-new poster pops up within less than a week claiming that they know how to spot - or smell - a fake Coach, we're going to assume that they DON'T until proven otherwise, and they may even be here to cause trouble.

Anyone who really wants to help needs to read and learn how we do things and show that they'll actually able to learn from the process. Otherwise it creates problems and can lead to someone being ripped off because they trusted the opinion of the wrong person.
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#2,165
linz8617 said:
I understand that and I can tell you that I was trained on how to spot a fake COACH bag in the two years I worked there. I am not going to say I can spot other fake namebrand bags, nor would I have given my advice on a much older vintage COACH bag. I only gave my opinion on a bag that displayed the things on a COACH bag i was trained to look for. Had I known I was not supposed to give out my opnion, I would not have. Like I said, I am brand new to this site, and I had no idea, I am sorry.
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Anyone who spots a discrepancy or any kind of red flag in an item up for authentication is welcome to speak up. But please do it in a way that doesn't come across as a blanket authentication. Mentioning that such-and-such a detail was considered by the specialists at Coach to be a couterfeiter-type mistake is perfectly fine and can help us decide one way or the other as long as you were given good information. I and others here who have been around and doing this for a long time have learned a LOT from a few former Coach employees, back when open exchanges of information were actually allowed on Ebay. Unfortunately those experts are gone, and as I mentioned, recent experiences with in-store Coach "authentications" have been mostly a disaster.

The best authenticators so far have been the collectors and especially the trusted sellers, who can always be depended on to keep extensive photo files of every item that they've bought or sold and who are extremely careful to buy only genuine Coach products from Coach and their major retailers. Even I never trust to my memory, my photo files of genuine AND fake bags and accessories from the "classic" period include almost 50,000 files of photos and text both. Memory only goes so far in this area, good clear photos are priceless.

If you still want to help and can forgive my short temper, you're welcome to become a part of the forum. We'd be interested to hear just what Coach looks for when figuring out if something's authentic unless it's the kind of information they would prefer counterfeiters NOT find out - we have a few of those red flags that we don't talk about too. But the way to do it until you've demonstrated your expertise is to just present the evidence and let everyone put the details together. We're seriously short-handed when newer styles from about 2007 to the present are involved and qualified help is always welcome.
 
#2,174
nymph2106 said:
Hi, think my earlier posting was missed.

Item: VINTAGE COACH CLASSIC CITY BAG HANDBAG CROSSBODY PURSE MAHOGANY BROWN 9790 USA
Seller: billybblue
Link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-COAC...item1e722cd471
Comments: Pics of the creed are not very clear, so can't be certain. It says it's made in the United States, and has three digits in the first part of its serial number. Wondering when this was made?
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Genuine. It was made in 1986 or 1987.
 
#2,175
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