An Australian real estate agent who spent nearly $30,000 on sneakers he claims are fake has been denied a refund because he bought them from a 17-year-old student. The man was seeking a refund for seven pairs of sneakers, some of them produced jointly by Nike and Dior.
The man dragged the student and his father to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (Vcat) after he came to suspect that the Dior X Air Jordan he bought in 2020 was fake. According to The Guardian, the limited edition sneakers were released in a fixed quantity of 8,500 low tops and 4,700 high tops, each individually numbered, in 2020.
The man said that the student had "a system with some international associates" who entered raffles across the world and sent the sneakers to him.
The man paid $3,800 for a pair of the Dior X Air Jordan sneakers and later purchased three more pairs for $4,800, $6,700 and $10,000. He also paid $2,690 each for three pairs of Air Jordan 1, in the Bred, Chicago and Royal colour schemes.
But when the sneakers arrived, he noticed "defects" and came to believe they were "unauthentic".
When he couldn't get in touch with the student, he got in touch with his father, whom he claimed agreed to accompany him to get them authenticated.
The man further claimed that the boy's father said that he would take responsibility if they were found to be counterfeits and "sort it out". However, the father disputed this claim during a hearing at Vcat in October.
The duo took the shoes to a sneaker store, whose authenticator clarified that the shoes were fake. The father, however, said that the sneaker store was not an "authorised authenticator."
The man said that the authenticator's "face completely dropped" on hearing the name of the student and said, "he was a fraudster and a scam artist who had been blacklisted", Vcat heard.
The man claimed that the boy's father offered $10,000 in compensation, which he rejected and dragged the case to Vcat.
Vcat member Katherine Metcalf found he was not entitled to a refund, given the agreement was made with a 17-year-old, who due to his age did "not have full capacity to enter into contracts".
Ms Metcalf said that the buyer was aware of the student's age "at all times" and even wished him on his 18th birthday in May 2021.
"Had the agreement been entered into when [the student] was 18 years old the result might have been different," Ms Metcalf wrote in her reasons on 22 December, the Guardian reported.
"Whilst the law generally protects minors from the consequences of their actions, it could be argued that in the present circumstances, it is not the minor who needs protection, but rather the people with whom he chose to do business."
The student's father told Vcat that his son had researched sneakers for his business management studies, the media outlet reported.
"[The father's] evidence was that he only became involved after [his son] stopped all forms of communication with the applicant, and the situation had deteriorated to the point where [the son] was being chased through a shopping centre (allegedly by other disgruntled customers) and threats were being made to [the son's] mother at her place of work," Ms Metcalf wrote.
