What do we think of this ebay listing? – fake fake fakity-fake!

What do we think about this listing??

We think that as sure as eggs are eggs the flash drive on offer is a fake – and the seller clare12374 seems to know it! We think this seller is a deliberate fraudster, but she is welcome to prove otherwise!

Her listing says:

32GB high speed USB 2.0. USB flash drive
Supports windows, vista, mac osx and linux 2,4x
32GB Brand New sealed in packaging.
We have had these made unbranded for our company and are 100% tested and working. The benefit of this device you are not paying just for a name.

These are formatted to UK standard (Fat 32) these are good quality. We dont sell rubbish and anyone that purchases one of these will be very happy.

We beg to differ – we think clare12374’s customers will end up very unhappy when their files become lost or corrupted. Of course, by then, clare12374 will (like so many fraudsters) have disappeared off the scene of the crime.

Of course (if we are wrong and clare12374 is honest) she will immediately test any flash drives she has in stock and remove them from sale. She will also (of course) refund all buyers in full straight away, without question. Somehow we don’t see it – but you never know!

Looks like a counterfeit 32GB Kingston DT150 on ebay Italy

It seems that ebay member clothing.srl has been shopping in fake flash land. The back of the pack shown in the listing lacks the serial number sticker that is present on genuine drives of this type. The seller may be unaware the item is counterfeit – please sellers – check your items are genuine before listing them for sale!

As ever, we strongly advise ebayers to test all flash memory (whether USB flash drive, memory card or MP player) with the free program h2testw.

Report in to SOSFakeFlash if your testing confirms you have a false capacity device.

A rash of new ebay IDs in China set up for devious fraud operation?

We strongly suspect that our devious friends in China have set up a whole new set of ebay IDs to scam ebayers with fake flash memory.

All seem to be selling a very familiar model of flash drive (the most common and longest lasting fake capacity flash drive seen on ebay – shown on the left) using the devious tactic of saying the item is in the UK although the seller is in China!

Careless ebayers who don’t read listings properly (sadly most) are fooled into thinking it must be OK if it is in the UK.

We have news for you – even if this flash drive WAS in the UK (which it undoubtedly isn’t) that doesn’t stop it being a fake capacity item that will corrupt or magically “disappear” your files.

Many ebayers in the UK and elsewhere in the world have now been supplied with fake flash by fraudulent wholesalers and listed these fakes for sale on ebay.

Some are knowing fraudsters who are selling fakes deliberately (like our devious sellers in the far east) but others are innocent victims who had no idea the items they bought were fake.

Either way, all looks well when you plug the flash drive into your computer – the operating system shows what you would expect. Great! Maybe at this point you foolishly leave the seller positive feedback – big mistake!

Perhaps you are a slightly more cautious person, so you write some files to it – seems as though they are written to the drive and they appear in the index. You are now satisfied you got a bargain and leave positive feedback for the seller. Still a big mistake!

It is only when you have “saved” enough data to the flash drive to exceed the real capacity that the problems start! Sometimes this happens months after you bought a fake capacity item. Most buyers think the drive developed a fault when this happens. Not so. It was inevitable that eventually files would be lost or corrupted because the real capacity of the drive was much smaller than advertised.

Once the real capacity is exceeded there is nowhere for files to go! Sometimes the drive becomes totally corrupt and you lose everything you saved to it. If you are lucky you may be able to retrieve some of the files you saved early on.

Do not think you can buy an 8GB drive for £6, a 16GB drive for £12 or a 32GB for £35! All you will get is something fake fake fakity-fake!

Fake 32GB Sony USB flash drive listed on ebay by UK seller

It seems that UK seller sabiastyles786 has been shopping in fakeflash land and come back with some fake sony drives. These were not made by Sony and do not have 32GB capacity. They are fake capacity flash drives that will cause data to become lost or corrupt.

The seller’s description does not match the picture – in the listing sabiastyles786 says:

The USB connector is safely housed inside the sleek case, so you don’t have to worry about losing a cap.

Ahem – not if the drive looks anything like the one in the picture! We have seen this wording in other listings for fake Sony from ebayers registered in the UK. This makes us wonder if this new ID belongs to someone who previously tried to dump fakes on ebayers using a different ID – this sort of thing is all too common!

As ever we strongly advise ebayers to test all flash memory with the free program h2testw.

Report in to SOSFakeFlash if your testing confirms you have a false capacity device.

Very suspect 32GB flash drive on ebay Germany

This item from seller mariandl06 just screams fake to us. No flash drive in this packaging has ever proved to be genuine capacity – all were small drives fraudulently programmed to appear to have higher capacities. The seller may not be aware that these are likely to be fake.

As ever we strongly advise ebayers to test all flash memory with the free program h2testw.

Report in to SOSFakeFlash if your testing confirms you have a false capacity device.

Is this ebay member confused about what he is selling?

The heading on an ebay listing for over 90 flash drives by seller aceelectronics_uk says the drives on offer are 1GB Kingston DataTraveler but the picture shown (see left) is of a 2GB DataTraveler and elsewere the drives are described as 4GB SanDisk!

We were under the impression that the 1GB model had been discontinued – does this mean the seller has a huge batch of old stock or what?? We are very confused about this listing and don’t know what to make of it at all.

We will be interested to hear from anyone who bought one.

As always we strongly advise ebayers to test all flash memory with the free program h2testw.

Report in to SOSFakeFlash if your testing confirms you have a false capacity device.