seoulcc.org — Lately there has been a huge increase in the number of counterfeit flash drives on eBay. Sellers claim to be selling large drives (e.g 8GB) from name brand companies, like Sony, but they are actually 64MB drives that have been re-labeled. These drives usually break within a few weeks of being purchase. Please digg this to stop the scammers!
Mar 7, 2006 View in Crawl 4
takteekMar 7, 2006Submitter
It will get the word out so less people will be scammed.
raksliceMar 7, 2006
evanm: People who leave feedback for an item saying "Great Product", etc. without actually trying it out need to be removed from eBay just as much as fraudulent sellers. If you can't try out your item for some reason, that's fine, but then at least restrain your comment to just the transaction related stuff.In the case of some random drive that you buy on e-bay, this means actually firing up your disk util and seeing what it says, then using it to repartition and reformat, not just trusting that whatever random partition was already on the disk is the right size. And in the case of a USB device, making sure that if it says it's a USB 2.0 device, fire up your system into tool and see that it actually connects at the proper speed.The challenge it, people who don't know anything about partitions, filesystems, etc. are going to be buying these things, and all they can do is plug it in and say to themselves "the propeties box says X, so it must be X" and "I can't try coping an 8GB file to it because I don't have any files that big", and maybe they don't have enough sense to figure out what the point of buyer feedback is (letting other buyers like you know about your purchase and how it went), and so they're going to leave some nice "Great Product" comment just to be polite. But that just puts more responsibility on the people who know these things to do the checking, and make their feedback count.IMHO, if you're looking around on eBay for some kind of product you don't have a lot of knowledge and experience with, and you're not prepared to look closely at listings to find all the specs and costs, look up all the model numbers and anything you don't understand - i.e. learn a lot about the product, skim a lot of feedback, keep an eye out for irregularities in selling patterns, check out the item when you get it and diagnose minor problems, leave reasonable feedback, and in general to be patient, you should just go straight to your local retailer. They might rip you off just as much there, but at least you should get the product you wanted out of the bargain, and plus you'll have somewhere to go for maintenance, returns, and other handholding.
Closed AccountMar 7, 2006
People selling fake/mislabled/counterfeit/inaccurate/misleading items??? On eBay???!!Say it ain't so!
jclamanMar 9, 2006
DON'T BUY FLASH DRIVES FROM CHINA! I picked up 2 "Sony" 4 gig flash drives in Beijing when I was there last week. They were very cheap, but only worked for a few days, and then died as soon as I tried to store more than 1 gig.
jclamanMar 9, 2006
I found:<a class="user" href="http://www.seoulcc.org/consumer-alert-sony/Report_on_Sony_Thumb_Drives.pdf">http://www.seoulcc.org/consumer-alert-sony/Report_on_Sony_Thumb_Drives.pdf</a> it shows how to reprogram the Sony drive to the 64mb that it should be.
gapotterMar 14, 2006
"Protect SONY's good name? HA! They've tried to monopolize the market, and infect your computer with spyware - they get what they deserve!
macgyverdbMar 20, 2006
Not all 8 gig stories are bad...a friend of mine has a co worker who had been sent to China on a business trip. He returned with Eight 8 gig USB 2.0 drives...he paid about $12 a piece over there for them. My friend has seen these 8 gig drives they do exist and the irony is Sandisk says they don't have them...yet my friend has seen 12 examples from China with their name on it...these do have a full 8 gig available, they were purchased new over there....which just leads me to wonder why they aren't over here...
alatsatMay 13, 2006
I regret I havent seen this discussion sooner. I bought a counterfeit 4gb SONY Flash-pen from the following auction:<a class="user" href="http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8804096647&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&rd=1">http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8804096647&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&rd=1</a>I contacted seller for a refund (he will probably deny it) and reported him at ebay.
stevedoverAug 19, 2009
Yeah boy do I feel stupid, 8gb MP3/MP4 player from Hong Kong, $25 tested the flash memory on arrival and the comparison failed after only a short while. I have copied a couple of albums and they do play, but I dare not copy all my music, plus the navigation is a nightmare, some of the menu text cannot be changed to English. Otherwise I got what I payed for I Guess, no better next time.