As I said initially, what gave it away was the one pedal that blew apart on the first ride. He took the pedals and packaging to a local shop and they couldn't believe the level of detail in the fake packaging.

An eBay complaint to the seller required him to return the defective pedal in for inspection - only the defective one, for a possible replacement. The cost was prohibitive to ship back to China, so he chalked it up to a lesson learned.
The seller never acknowledged his claim, backed by the shop, that they were counterfeit items. And eBay dropped the whole issue when he didn't return the defective part.

In my own experience, eBay's guarantees are not worth much.