Ebay Usb Memory Stick Fakes

[richardm6994]

This is probably old news to the more IT literate amongst us, but its news to me having just been scammed.

 

There are thousands of memory sticks on eBay which falsely advertise there storage capacity. I bought one which was 512GB....great.

 

Start filling it up and get to about 8GB and it then starts corrupting the data already stored.

 

I contact the selling who points out the small print to me;

 

"item has not passed quality control tests with the manufacturer hence it's budget price, therefore the usable capacity can vary from 8-512GB. As we can not guarantee what the usable capacity may be, errors may occur once this is reached which will require a format"

 

 

A quick search of Google "eBay memory stick scams" shows that what they do is basically buy a cheap 8GB memory stick and then do something to the chip which fools your computer into showing it has more storage (i.e. 512GB) than it actually has and they sell it on at a higher price as a 512GB memory stick.

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/cln/tnimitz0/cheap-512gb-fraud-fake-capacity-usb-flash-drives/167592666015

 

I've only lost £10 and the corrupted files are not important, but things like this still pi55 me off.

Being honest, I didn't know if £10 for a 512GB memory stick was cheap or the right price......having looked deeper after this all came to light, it is obviously 'too good a price to be true'..........oh well, we live and learn.

[ozz]

I too have been fooled with a 16gb mini ad card. Small print said 4 to 16 gb. When I tested it it came out as 4. So I thought if it's good enough for them it's good enough for me so I complained and said it only had 3gb and I got a refund they didn't want the card back!.

[HAWKNORTH]

I was looking at these on e-bay last night and thinking what a good price they are. You're right Richard, what sounds too good to be true often is. Thanks for the heads up though.

[speedtripledan]

I only over buy branded usually from amazon. I always check sellers reviews before buying, I've been lucky so far

[sj-bradley]

512 Gig memory sticks? Really? I don't think they exist yet.

 

Sorry to hear you got caught out on this one.

 

https://fightflashfraud.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/512gb-flash-drives-dont-exist/

 

I also had some fake sony memory sticks for a PSP I have. I immediately got back to ebay complaining about these fakes

and got a full refund. You should try this too in order to help try and stamp out these counterfeit goods.

 

Simon.

[Longboarder]

Never had this problem with floppy discs. Always got the full 1.4. No problem with buying fakes from ebay cos it didn't exist yet.

 

Nigel

[fry61]

I'll join you in back to the future Nigel, still use the back of a fag packet if I can find one. The computer I used at work was always a pain, as I was generally up to my elbows in muck & grease from the innards of some electrical machine when I needed more information.

[Guest 2b cruising]

What type of computer did you have at work Bob.

Was it an ABACUS. LoL

Just like me, when I first joined the army work was gruelling.

The other soldier was on leave.

[fry61]

Had Microfisk in the workshop for umpteen years -- stick the correct sheet in before work & just a thumb & finger on front bar necessary to access all the info.

 

Computer -no idea make -- led to greasy prints all over the place.

[sj-bradley]

So 512 Gig memory sticks are finally here - but WHAT a price. ...

 

As for the 1.4 floppies - I still remember using a program that could squeeze a whole 2 Meg out of them 2M30 it was called.

 

(Of course, it wasn't always reliable, but you DID get some more storage when it worked. That extra 600 k, Wow, things were flying along ...

 

Simon.