What would you do?

[mylittletyguy]

I have been looking into this a LOT....Basically what "disneysum" said is true. Disney cannot do anything about this. If people are purchasing these pins directly from the source in China, and then chose to resell them, there is nothing illegal about it. It is no different then businesses importing goods from China, to resell here in the US....if you buy from anywhere here in the good ol' US chances are they are goods purchased from a manufactuer in China, and re sold for a profit. (walmart, anyone?) Pin sales are no different. Claiming that they are "Direct from DISNEY" or of "first quality" is what the issue is. COUNTERFEIT pins are an issue (like sending your own disney pins to a place to reproduce them and then claiming that they are true disney pins) that is a copyright infringement....and THAT is illegal. There HAVE been people arrested and charged for COUNTERFEIT Disney pins sales...but as far as scrappers go, it is like going to an outlet store and buying seconds....same thing, only most ebay and secondary market sellers are claiming that they are not "seconds," "Overruns," etc.....

And also like Disneysum said, if DISNEY isn't doing anything about their own EMPLOYEES trading for the scrappers, they sure as heck arn't going to do anything about people selling them.

 

[imp]

Disney can't do anything about it and they will tell you that. How can they do anything when most of their staff is trading these scrappers in the parks to honest children who bought actual real pins and ended up trading for fakes. That makes Disney just as guilty as the eBay sellers. My daughter had this happen many times until we realized what was happening. We complained through phone calls and emails and Disney did absolutely nothing about it. If Disney brought the manufacturing of pins back to the USA, this scrapper issue would be none existant but bottom line Disney just cares about profit and these scrappers are such a minor detail to them.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with this. I can't say what Disney would or wouldn't do, but I don't agree that they can't do anything.

They can't do anything about scrappers on cast lanyards, other than getting rid of pin-trading with cast members entirely. Apart from the difficulties of trying to train every cast member to identify a scrapper with certainty, they can't have cast members suspiciously examining every pin offered to them, or telling children that they can't trade because their pins are no good. One could argue that they should trade out the pins on cast lanyards frequently, to get rid of the bad pins, but that might make cast trading too expensive to justify continuing it, so they turn a blind eye.

Although I do think that if you complain to Disney about receiving scrapper/counterfeit pins from cast lanyards, they should replace them, I can understand why they don't want to do it. If they made a practice of doing this, it would be very easy for people with scrapper/counterfeit pins to 'launder' their pins by taking them to Guest Services and saying they received them from cast lanyards ...again, this would get pretty expensive, and they would essentially be subsidizing the scrapper/counterfeit market.

In this case, you have an identified US seller, and you have the scrapper/counterfeit pins which Disney people can examine to determine their authenticity. That is the ideal situation for them to pursue a criminal prosecution and/or civil suit. There has been at least one successful criminal prosecution of scrapper/counterfeit sellers in the US. Disney must have had a hand in initiating that investigation, because I can't imagine that law enforcement agencies are dedicating resources to trolling ebay listings for scrapper/counterfeit sellers. If you sell scrappers you are dealing in stolen goods, and also subject to prosecution ...a seller who claims that he innocently purchases thousands of pins, at prices low enough to make a profit by selling at less than $1 per pin, is surely guilty of wilful blindness.

When it comes to the distinction between scrappers and counterfeits, I suspect that we as a community are wrong in assuming that most of the bad pins are scrappers. I think most of them are counterfeits. If you look at the number of lots being sold on ebay, and the ratio of good to bad pins on cast lanyards, it becomes obvious that the bad pins often outnumber the good ones, especially in the case of Hidden Mickeys. Just how many pins do we think are failing quality control during authorized production?

As for manufacturing the pins in US factories, Asia doesn't have a monopoly on crime. There will always be people who will steal scrappers from the factory floor or from the heap of pins intended for destruction, or steal pin moulds for the purpose of making their own pins, regardless of where the factory is located. Counterfeiters don't need access to the factory at all. Relocating to the US would, however, make pins far more expensive.

 

[Psycho Pixie]

Disney Can do something....

They can train their Lanyard wearing CMs to look for fakes and bad runs. Then the CM can remove the bad pin and destroy it. I have seen some pineducated CMs do this. They still accept the trade, but then review the lanyard and literally destroy the posts on any that are no good.

"Oh but Psycho Pixie, that will cost Disney to much money in the long run." I beg to differ, I know they have boxes and boxes of older run Hidden Mickeys stashed away at the park. They could easily refresh the lanyards with those. Then once the CM's report how many fakes they are getting daily, Disney can start the process of dis-allowing fakes being traded to lanyards.

 

[Keshiiaboo]

Aw! if you have kids or like to put them in pictures, put them in pictures. I wouldn't try and trade..

 

[BugCatcherJenna]

Disney is all about making people happy, if you unknowingly bought your family 50 fake pins on ebay to trade (which costs probably $50 on ebay or so...) and you got to the parks, and the CM's denied you of all trading you would be very, very unhappy- as would the whole family.

Disney wants to keep their guests happy, so they will never deny a trade... Even if the pin is fake.

I don't see fake/scrapper/over-run/whatever pins going away any time soon... unless CM trading goes away with them. : /