Buyer beware !! A tale of woe and a word of warning.

03-31-06, 02:41 PM

This is an add-on to the post I originally made in the storage card forum. To briefly summarise, I purchased a 2 gig SanDisk SD card on eBay for 46 pounds including delivery. A pretty good deal I thought, especially when it arrived the next day. Unfortunately when I put it in my x51v it only showed as 1 gig but my old Palm m130 showed it as a 2 gig card.
Following advice on this site and from the SanDisk technical support people I reformatted the card via a newly purchased card reader. Unfortunately this once again gave me 1 gig but worst of all it also showed as 1 gig on my old Palm.
I reported this to SanDisk and they advised that the card is counterfeit and that there is nothing more to be done. This card appeared as genuine. The packaging looked genuine with barcode etc. and the card even had a hologram. I have asked SanDisk how they know it is counterfeit but I imagine it is probably from the numbers I provided.
Obviously I will take this up with the seller but it is probably not right to post his name at this stage. If anyone in the UK is thinking of making a purchase just PM me and I will let you know.
"If it looks too good to be true it probably is"
I doubt I will get any satisfaction from the seller but I am still a little hopeful of doing something with the card as it originally showed as 2 gig on my old Palm. It will need more than just formatting but if anyone can suggest any Xp commands or programmes that may help I would be grateful. Otherwise it looks like I have an expensive 1 gig card.

Gigi · 03-31-06, 03:17 PM

Sorry to hear about what happened, but thanks for sharing. Was this card shipped from Asia? I know there is a big problem with fake cards over there.

03-31-06, 03:46 PM

The card was shipped from a UK seller and looked genuine but who knows where it originated from.

BirdBrain · 03-31-06, 04:25 PM

Wow, I didn't even realize there were counterfeit cards out there. Had my head in the sand too long, I guess.

03-31-06, 06:32 PM

Have to watch our backs.

03-31-06, 11:52 PM

Thanks for bringing this situation to our attention.

04-01-06, 02:08 AM

Interesting, I have heard this a LOT with the 2gb Pro Memory Stick Duos (for the PSP), but I have not heard of it with any SD or other memory yet.

Shows that there are more and more people trying to scam you everyday

04-01-06, 02:05 PM

I never knew there were counterfeit SD cards. It's kind of sad what people will do.

bnlsn · 04-01-06, 05:20 PM

That's the reason I don't buy from ebay - even if it is cheaper, the risks are often not worth taking

w3iner · 05-22-06, 09:39 PM

I wish they would just do good old fashion Money faking. Why stuff like this?

BirdBrain · 05-23-06, 11:14 AM

Originally Posted by w3iner

I wish they would just do good old fashion Money faking. Why stuff like this?

'Cause money's getting harder to counterfeit, and they'll counterfeit anything they can possibly make a buck off of ... especially if there's a low potential for getting caught!

Pocketbrain · 05-23-06, 11:24 AM

Graham, I hate to tell you, they probably faked the FAT into reporting 2GB, which is what fooled your Palm. When you formatted it, you removed the fake FAT.

(X)

05-23-06, 03:09 PM

Originally Posted by PocketBrain

Graham, I hate to tell you, they probably faked the FAT into reporting 2GB, which is what fooled your Palm. When you formatted it, you removed the fake FAT.

(X)

PocketBrain, Thanks for your observations, you are probably right as I never saw the 2 gig again after I formatted. There are some clever buggers around, it's just a pity they can't use their talents in a more productive way.
I have since bought a new 2 gig through Amazon and it is fine, it was even 3 pounds less than the eBay "bargain". I have also lodged a complaint through eBay and it looks like I "might" get my money back so all in all it has been an interesting experience.

arrowone · 05-23-06, 04:31 PM

I recently purchased a 2gb sandisk compact flash card on ebay from uk supplier. Seems to work fine and reports 2gb in sk tools. how can I make sure?

05-23-06, 07:47 PM

Easy way to check if its a real 2GB card is just copy enough data to fill the card then use a program to check that its not corrupt (good test for all new cards anyways). The problem is if its actually the correct size just not made by the company then there is no easy way to tell if its real or not.

There are a lot of problems with fake USB sticks as well. I will not purchase flash cards or drives from ebay its just not worth it in my view.