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Fake
High Capacity USB Sticks abound on Ebay You're goin' pay pal, since Paypal won't pay |
 So you are surfing along one day
on Ebay and see a high capacity USB stick, say 128 Gb for $27 and think it is a bargain?
Think again. Thousands of Ebay'ers are getting ripped off as Ebay
and Paypal turn a blind eye to the blatant fraud taking place on the auctions website.
What is even more interesting is that fake capacity USB sticks is not a new
phenomena. If search the internet you find it has been going on for years.Yes folks I got burned by one of these from a seller out of China. There are sellers all over the world and this website "http://sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/" follows and reports regularly on the problem. Here is how it will go down for the big scammers out of China. The seller will have a rating of 30-60 positive sales, selling non-electronic stuff like jewelry, cheap art, or whatever. Then all of the sudden they have a "buy now" offer for numerous high capacity USB sticks for a super great price. Regular articles such as this Kingston 120 GB sell for over $250, not $27 or $30. Here is a perfect example of one I think is a fraud active as of March 21, 2010 on Ebay. In fact the same seller has two "buy now" auctions running for these flash drives. Both end within four hours of each other. He has sold a total of 725 sticks in just a few days. I reported the auctions to Ebay but 20 hours later the auctions are still live. It seems like Ebay is more willing to give the fraudulent sellers the benefit of the doubt at the risk of ripping of good honest people.
The example here shows a 5 day listing. The seller is moving about 125 bogus USB sticks per day. Before the first mailed out sticks arrive at the customers, the auction will be over and the seller with Ebay's help will have defrauded 615 people more than $16,600. I am confident this seller will be removed from Ebay in the near future. You can follow up using this link showing the feedback for the seller changhui19828. Update 30.03.2010: This seller was removed sometime around March 22, 2010. Normally the seller will not have any legitimate feedback for their fake flash yet, let alone any negative. If he does have positive feedback, it might be feedback he left for himself, or left by his friends using another account. If he has feedback, click on the feedback of the people leaving feedback. If you see a lot of names with "No longer a registered user" this guy is probably leaving feedback for himself while using many different accounts or is in a ring of fraudsters. If you find a lot of feedback in a short period of time, and the item has not been offered for a period of time not comenserate with the shipping time for legitamate people to leave feedback, then suspect the feedback is made up. Most sticks will not have arrived until the "buy now" sale is over and most people do not immediately test their high capacity USB stick so they will not know they have been defrauded until they lose valuable data when the stick finally fails on them. I found mine was defective as I tried to load it up with 60 Gb of files and found it gave me numerous errors while writing. I could not reformat the stick and scandisk would hang up when trying to scan it for errors. When you plug the stick in the computer you will see it has the capacity rated but that is only because the chip has been manipulated electronically to display this value. The manipulation of the stick is an old trick these days. So now comes the hard part with Ebay and Paypal. I wanted to leave negative feedback. I thought at first that the stick was only defective. Not until a little searching on the internet did I find out there is a big problem with fake and counterfeit USB flash memory. I could not believe what I did not see when I went to find my transaction on Ebay. Under "My Ebay" there was no record of me buying this stick. from tibet_art_collect. Only through the Paypal transaction could I find the seller name. I was able to leave negative feedback. The seller had already had his account disabled by Ebay at that time. I filed a claim with Paypal on Feb 7, 2010, as off March 21, 2010 Ebay's or Paypal's buyer protection plan has not refunded me my money.. I started contacting all the buyers for the stick that had left feedback for the seller. The problem is Ebay only allows you to make five random contacts per day when it does not have to do with an active auction. Many people had not yet tested the stick but yet had left positive feedback for their bogus sticks. Others tested their sticks and found they were bad.
Another buyer I had contacted received a message from Ebay that the seller's account had been hijacked and not to even expect to received the USB flash memory he had ordered. My whole experience with Paypal is that they give you every impression that they do not want to give you the buyer protection that they advertise. "Buyer protection" is just an advertising lie for them. My claim was open for one month, and nothing was said about returning the goods to the seller. I got an e-mail one day saying I had 10 days to send the bogus stick back or the claim would be canceled. I wrote the seller to get his return address. Ebay responded with this message:
I never head from the seller, so I wrote Paypal to get the seller's address. They sent me a mail with the address yet with all the street numbers and zip code blocked out with "X"'s! So I had to contact Paypal by phone to clear up the address issue. The dispute line had a minimum 15 minute wait time. I called them again, now a bit agitated and got a priority line to the dispute person. By this time I knew it was a counterfeit stick and had read enough on the internet that it is illegal to send counterfeit goods through the mails. I explained this to the woman at Paypal. They did not care. I must break the law to get my refund. I also explained to them what they already knew about the seller being a fraud. That did not seem to effect them either. Ebay/Paypal knew the seller was a fraud and confirmed it on three occasions.
Still yet Paypal knew the seller was a fraud, did that held no bearing on whether I would get my money back any more easily. The woman in disputes did not seem to care that I would have to commit a crime to send back the stick when I used the mails. I then asked why it made sense to send a counterfeit item back to China to a seller whom Ebay/Paypal knew was a fraud. She could not say why it made sense, other than that was Paypal's policy. I told them this was just putting good money after bad for the $11 shipping cost. I then asked what happens if I send the package back with registered mail, and the seller doesn't accept it or does not pick it up at the post office. She said as soon as I provide proof of shipment, the refund will be made. She would make sure of this buy putting a note in my file. She also said they would pay the shipping and a $7 credit showed up in my account. The actual cost was $11. So on March 1,2010 I send the junk stick to the address Paypal resent me with registered mail.
I supplied the tracking number RR 75 760 409 5DE (01.03.2010) to Paypal to get my refund. I get nothing. Now they want proof of pickup in China. The case will be decided on March 17. On March 17, I go to the German post office website and see there is a record on March 7, 2010 of the package being in China attempting to be delivered.
Again I write Paypal to see where my money is. Now Paypal writes me:
Now at this point I was about ready to blow a gasket! I had done everything they wanted. They could not confirm the tracking number and now they say I am out of luck. I had to call the idiots at Paypal once against to find out what was going on. The woman on the phone Jessica, #41728 had indeed managed to confirm that the tracking number was valid. She again made the notes in my account and said I must file an appeal now via Fax with all my supporting documents including the post office receipt. There was no way to upload documents to my case file which was closed and the fax must be used. In fact there was no way to attach supporting documents even when the case was open. Don't forget if you paid the Paypal transaction with a credit card, you can dispute the claim with the credit card and you will most likely win, but filing a claim with your credit card company will put you in violation of PayPal's terms of agreement. You will most likely have your Paypal account closed because you violated their terms of service. Update: 30.03.2010. After having to call Paypal again, I finally was allowed my refund! It is about time!
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