AliExpress fake memory card

Vectis

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81914729#Comment_81914729

Exactly what I was thinking too. If you bought something and it's a dodgy fake item, why would you then go back and order again from the same company?

I really think we all need to take a bit of responsibility when ordering, especially from companies like Temu, AliExpress etc. The stuff is dirt cheap for a reason, and basically you pay your money and take a chance. There's little or no consumer protection for items bought from companies like this in China. But, surely we all know that, don't we?

forgotmyname

How are you testing the cards?

I have a load of memory cards and some show as corrupt or state that they need formatting because they have unusual
filesystems like Raspberry Pi installations not formatted to NTFS/FAT/FAT32 or Ex-Fat etc…

Sometimes it's the card reader, I have a couple that look identical but the internals are v1,v2 or v3 and the
older cards will not read 128GB memory cards I get various error codes or failed read/writes etc.

1957DfurdPensionist

Those of us with a little IT nouse know that memory of all sorts is very expensive at the moment - said to be something to do with massive demand for it in AI datacentres or some such?. However, I have Chinese friends and have visited China and seen how they can source and provide all manner of fantastic new tech. In many ways they're way ahead of UK and Europe. They graduate as many as a million new engineering graduates every year. They landed unmanned stuff on the Far Side of the moon and brought back samples. Having said that, clearly some of their bright minds, which I trust is a tiny minority, have allowed themselves to be employed in manipulating computer tech to enable scams such as the AliExpress additional storage device scams which are all too prevalent by the look of it.

More out of curiosity than anything. I recently bought a rather (too) cheap Portable SSD from AliExpress and it was delivered quite fast. Sadly, as soon as the bubble envelope pack was in my hand I knew something was wrong. It was almost as light as a feather! Having got home from the pickup delivery shop and taken the thing out of it's box I weighed it - 18 grammes!

So not wishing to risk it for storage of anything important, I made sure my PC protection was up to date and downloaded h2testw.exe. I plugged in the SSD and let h2testw do its stuff for about a quarter of an hour, then I cancelled the operation as it was writing far too slowly for an SSD drive. h2testw said it had written about 11GB in that time, and that was just the first stage of test - after it has written across the whole drive h2testw then verifies what it has written, but I didn't waste any more time waiting for that. Imagine how long it would take to build a backup drive at that rate - impossibly slow.

So at that point I went looking in AliExpress/My Orders, to see whether there was a complaint route. There is a Returns/Refunds button but it seemed to me that AliExpress wanted me to confirm delivery above all else. There was no obvious route to complaining that I'd obviously received an extremely lightweight fake. That didn't surprise me. So no, I wasn't going to confirm delivery of my ordered item - the ordered item had not been delivered! And I was not going to tie myself in knots trying a different option to the one I really wanted (Complain about fakes here!). Not even "Item not as described" seemed available at that point.

So Plan B - I'd deliberately used PayPal. Surprise surprise the first thing you are greeted with on PayPal if you select an AliExpress order in the Resolution Centre is an immediate screen that says take it up with AliExpress. But there is a smaller print option to continue with PayPal.

This part of the long story short, I provided what PayPal wanted, chose the option "Not willing to return" due to disproportionate cost, uploaded the test evidence etc. and a few days later they said Refund agreed subject to confirmation of delivery back to China. Obviously, I hear many of you say! That's when I decided ok, gonna have to be creative, eh? I tried simply to respond to that message but the online PayPal response process to that sort of refund offer, insists on input of exact return tracking data above all else including selection of the exact shipper from what looked like a few hundred possibles in their dropdown list! . I wasn't going to try to make up tracking data so the only way forward was to abandon the online route, get myself a six digit code to call them with, and call.

PayPal Support have very clever AI answering which immediately finds the case from your calling code and your words of whatcallisaboutary, and then immediately tells you they are waiting for tracking data and ultimately invites you to go back to the online form that demanded it, close the case, or something else equally inappropriate for fakes. So recognising that theirs is not just an old fashioned recorded voice number-structured option direction system and that their AI is listening, in answer to AI's suggestion of choosing 1 2 or 3, I said "I need to talk to a human agent" and it immediately responded "You need to speak with someone" and instantly put me in a queue for a human in the Philippines. Said human lady was very pleasant and friendly - as was I! She listened extremely well to my story of the fake, and my denied attempt at a PayPal refund without return to China. She was most empathetic and asked me to hold on a moment whilst she consulted with a colleague. Net result? Full refund processed immediately which despite a warning it might take a few days, hit my credit card the same date as the call!

But, here's the bit you've all been waiting for (stop that yawning at the back!). Gifted with 18 grammes of plastic case filled with I knew not what except, I guessed, mostly air, I prised it open. Inside a blob of hot glue was holding a black, no label, probably second or third quality MicroSD card in a cheap reader socket, attached to a PCB about the size of a stamp and about 1mm thick, and which had a little 3mm square chip on the other end just ahead of a hard-solder joint to a USB C port on the outside.

Further tests using Validrive, and ChipGenius showed it was actually a 32GB MicroSD which was reporting via a Chipsbank controller (the 3mm square chip I guess) with fake manufacturer ID and fake Serial Number, and of course a fake capacity far far in excess of 32GB. That probably would have meant, if I'd tried to use it for anything important, that it would have accepted Write commands and even stored a directory entry for each file "saved" but in fact would continuously "loop overwrite" as soon as it reached 32GB.. So the uninitiated must beware!

Anyway, I of course took the card out of the junk casing. cleaned off the glue, but was able to reformat it as exFAT. It is now performing a duty in a cheap surveillance camera and has released a decent branded MicroSD from a reliable chain for more important things..

Still reading? You must have been waiting for the punchline ;-)

So methinks, I'll do everyone a favour and use AliExpress' "Report Seller" function for breach of platform conditions - so I made the report with all the latest evidence I'd gathered by taking the thing apart and forensic software testing of the hardware, and photos too, and within 10 hours they responded that my report was unsubstantiated, and that no breach of platform rules or conditions had occurred ! I can Appeal, they wrote.

Ha! Really? think my time is better spent commenting on this thread, don't you?

Hey, you at the back again -Whaddaya mean, "No" ? 😜