Received Fake SD Card

Jakg

Bought a card advertised as a Transcend Class 10 SDHC card on eBay 2 weeks ago.

I bought it for a wedding but the seller went on holiday so I got an email the day before telling me that he'd forgotten to cancel the wedding so would post when he got back.

It arrived toady (15 days after payment, 4 days after when he promised he'd post it), however it looks very fake (the sticker on the card is like a ghosted copy and is coming off at one side).

I'm running H2testw to verify the SD card - and although it hasn't finished (to verify the 32GB capacity) it's showing a write speed of 2.84 MB/s which is nowhere near what a Class 10 card should be doing (10 MB/s).

I suspect I've been sent a generic 32GB SD card with a sticker on it... I wouldn't mind, but the whole reason why I bought this one was because of the speed.

What should I do?

I could put a dispute in for "not as described", but I don't want the seller to get away with selling counterfeit goods, wasting my time, making me pay return postage.

I could put a dispute in for "counterfeit goods" but does this not require loads of proof (i.e. a headed bit of paper from a shop?) which is lots of hassle to go to for a £19.50 SD card.

I was going to wait for H2TestW to finish (the cards so slow it's going to take over 3 hours...), send a threatening email demanding a genuine card on my doorstep or a full refund, but i'm not exactly sure what to threaten them with...

Once the cards finished the test I'll snap some pictures next to my genuine cards.

techspec

I bought some from overseas - they were all fake.

Some were even 2gb that had been tampered with to show 16gb when installed.

You should not be threatening anything until you have offered the seller a chance to respond to your findings though. First contact should always be polite.

In my case i was told to keep the cards and was refunded in full.

Once you have your money, either direct or through ebay/paypal - report their listings if you are SURE they are fake. Ebay are strict when it comes to clothes being fake - but are still catching up with some fake technology goods.

The sellers who i bought off were thrown off ebay.

Jakg

I don't believe these are fake sizes - the last 32GB fake was 4GB which this has gone past.

Perhaps I should tone down my email a little.

Enterprise_1701C

There is a difference between Ebay and Paypal disputes, if you go for one you have to prove it is fake, if you go for the other the seller has to prove it is real. I think it is the Ebay one that they have to prove it is real, but I am not certain, someone like Soolin will be along before too long to confirm I am sure.

theonlywayisup

Jane_Blackford wrote: »

There is a difference between Ebay and Paypal disputes, if you go for one you have to prove it is fake, if you go for the other the seller has to prove it is real. I think it is the Ebay one that they have to prove it is real, but I am not certain, someone like Soolin will be along before too long to confirm I am sure.

You are correct.

With an Ebay dispute the onus is on the seller to prove it is authentic.

With Paypal, the buyer must prove it is fake.

However, you MUST always give the seller a chance to rectify a problem first.

Jakg

Looks like I was wrong - it's just a 4GB card with the file formatting cracked & a new sticker on the top...

The yellow/blue 32GB card is the fake, the black/blue 8GB card is a genuine card. They are both supposed to be Transcend Class 10's so I put them up side by side for pictures & a test in H2TestW: