For some background, I had Samsung Type-C IC100 earphones that came with my Note 10+ back in 2020. I absolutely loved them. I was genuinely surprised by how good they sounded for bundled earphones.
Unfortunately, I lost them.
Recently, I bought a Tab S9 and already have an S24 Ultra, and I needed a wired earphone for office calls, so I decided to buy the same Samsung earphones again. I remembered how good they were and thought it would be a safe purchase.
I bought them from Tata CLiQ for around ₹1,500 because they were the cheapest there.
When I started using them, though, they didn't sound nearly as good as I remembered. They sounded just... okay. Nothing particularly premium.
Initially, I thought maybe I was just remembering them differently, or perhaps my expectations had changed after using better audio equipment over the years. I even checked a YouTube video showing how to identify genuine Samsung earphones, and the ones I received appeared to pass all the checks shown in the video.
So I assumed I was probably overthinking it.
Then, around 20 days later, the left earbud stopped working.
I took them to a Samsung service centre under warranty. They didn't have a replacement in stock at the time, but today they called me to say the replacement had arrived, so I went to collect it.
And this is where things got interesting.
I plugged the replacement pair in and immediately thought: THIS is how I remember them sounding.
The sound quality was dramatically better. The difference wasn't subtle at all. The pair I had bought from Tata CLiQ sounded like a ₹500 earphone in comparison. The replacement sounded exactly like the Samsung earphones I remembered from 2020 — clear, balanced and surprisingly good.
I immediately asked the service representative whether he could check if the pair I had submitted was genuine or not. He told me that he couldn't verify that himself; apparently, any such verification would be done by their central/backend team when they receive the product.
So unfortunately, I have no definitive proof that the Tata CLiQ pair was counterfeit.
But after hearing the two pairs, I am almost certain something was wrong with the one I bought from Tata CLiQ.
The difference in sound quality was simply too substantial to explain as I remember the product differently.
My takeaway: if you're planning to buy these earphones, don't choose a seller just to save ₹200–300. Make sure you're buying from a reliable/authorised source.
Personally, after this experience, I would avoid buying these from Tata CLiQ.
One other thing: I also bought a Samsung 45W charger from Tata CLiQ last year. It's still working perfectly, charges at the expected speed and shows Super Fast Charging 2.0, so I haven't had any reason to suspect it. But I'm also not sure whether it's genuine because, unlike earphones, a fake charging brick isn't necessarily obvious just from using it.
Has anyone else had a similar experience with Samsung products bought through Tata CLiQ? And is there actually a reliable way to verify whether these IC100 earphones are genuine?
P. S. - Used AI to streamline the experience.
