My ego makes me want to point out that I'm not annoyed because I've fallen for them (well, not since a long time ago, when I first bought memory cards - so long ago that 8gb was an impressive size), rather what annoys me is that the epidemic of fakes out there it makes it pointless to look for any sort of bargain, or buy a card second-hand. All the fakes being sold pretty much destroys any second-hand market for cards.
Basically I only buy cards supplied and shipped by Amazon, mostly when they have a sale on (even then had one one bad one once - bad-sector rather than a fake). That's the only source I feel I can risk using. Oh, and at one point a big-name bricks-and-mortar retailer had some on sale that were worth getting, but mainly it's Amazon or nothing. This means I probably pay more than I have to, but there's no competition becuase everywhere else is either too slow to reduce prices as they come down for larger capacities, or they are full of obvious fakes.
It's really annoying that it makes Ebay useless for such things. Anything that isn't expensive is far too likely to be fake to be worth bothering with. It's one of several product categories I would never buy on Ebay.
I find it especially ridiculous that you get sellers offering nonsense like 1Tb micro sd cards for $10. In fact the fakers were doing that even before there were any 1TB cards being manufactured by anyone! Who is buying such obviously too-good-to-be-true items?
Furthermore, why do the obviously-dodgy ebay sellers get so much positive feedback, seemingly from people who don't bother to test a card before saying how great it is (same seems to happen with Amazon reviews)?
Usually you just get a small number of buyers who leave negative feedback and point out they tested the card properly and, hey, it's a fake, while loads of others seem to just leave +ve feedback as soon as the card arrives, without doing any testing. Most buyers seem to be too clueless to use h2testw or similar. I never see anyone commenting that they tested with h2testw and the card passed.
I get why Ebay (and Amazon, though they aren't as bad) can't be bothered to police any of the third-party sellers on their site over such things. It would cost them money. But why are buyers so dumb as to effectively collude with fraudsters?
How come, this late in the day, the issue of fake cards is still, apparently, not sufficiently well-known that all buyers will test a card before leaving a positive review/feedback? I still see comments by buyers saying that their device reports the full capacity, ergo it must be a good card.
Basically I only buy cards supplied and shipped by Amazon, mostly when they have a sale on (even then had one one bad one once - bad-sector rather than a fake). That's the only source I feel I can risk using. Oh, and at one point a big-name bricks-and-mortar retailer had some on sale that were worth getting, but mainly it's Amazon or nothing. This means I probably pay more than I have to, but there's no competition becuase everywhere else is either too slow to reduce prices as they come down for larger capacities, or they are full of obvious fakes.
It's really annoying that it makes Ebay useless for such things. Anything that isn't expensive is far too likely to be fake to be worth bothering with. It's one of several product categories I would never buy on Ebay.
I find it especially ridiculous that you get sellers offering nonsense like 1Tb micro sd cards for $10. In fact the fakers were doing that even before there were any 1TB cards being manufactured by anyone! Who is buying such obviously too-good-to-be-true items?
Furthermore, why do the obviously-dodgy ebay sellers get so much positive feedback, seemingly from people who don't bother to test a card before saying how great it is (same seems to happen with Amazon reviews)?
Usually you just get a small number of buyers who leave negative feedback and point out they tested the card properly and, hey, it's a fake, while loads of others seem to just leave +ve feedback as soon as the card arrives, without doing any testing. Most buyers seem to be too clueless to use h2testw or similar. I never see anyone commenting that they tested with h2testw and the card passed.
I get why Ebay (and Amazon, though they aren't as bad) can't be bothered to police any of the third-party sellers on their site over such things. It would cost them money. But why are buyers so dumb as to effectively collude with fraudsters?
How come, this late in the day, the issue of fake cards is still, apparently, not sufficiently well-known that all buyers will test a card before leaving a positive review/feedback? I still see comments by buyers saying that their device reports the full capacity, ergo it must be a good card.
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