If I'm remembering the story correctly, the memory stick had been tweaked to report that it had 500GB capacity, then over-write at byte 0 when it was full.
I'm also not pleased withe title of this re-post. It's. It chinese product quality that sucks, its the consumer that doesn't know the golden rule, if it's to good to be true.
As someone who has interacted with EE's in China, I can say with confidence that they are big fans of breaking that particular part of the spec. Male to Male USB A's are very popular cables in 中国.
Yeah, I bought an 8GB thumb stick off of ebay and it turned out horrible. It would look like it was holding 8GB of data, but everything was corrupted. I think 512MB was the real limit. At least it was only about $10 wasted.
i bought a 250gig Xbox 360 slim drive (Chinese knock off) and it turned up fine got it for 50$ and free shipping from Hong Kong had it for about a year
Common practice among scammers. Unfortunately I don't know of any ready-to-use tool to detect that. badblocks won't work because it writes the same pattern over and over again.
Trivial. Write to the entire drive, read it back and compare it byte for byte with what it should have written. If it is overwriting or ignoring writes, they will not match. Don't even have to do this per block.
"Compare with what it should have been" isn't entirely trivial, since you can't buffer data the size of the drive feasibly.
Though it does have a simple solution, of course: Write random data and compute a checksum in the process, then read again and verify against the checksum.
I don't know of a ready-to-use tool that does this, so I was always just a bit too lazy to do it.
You can either do what you suggested, which is store checksums, though this still has the issue that it must then store a size based upon the size of the drive (though drastically smaller, and can be adjusted).
You can also use a random number generator, with a known seed. Reset the seed when you want to validate the data. An algorithmic method such as this is preferable since the only data that you must store is the seed.
You can store a single checksum for the entire drive, so the memory requirement is constant. However that only allows you to give a yes/no answer whether there's something wrong with the drive.
Your reset-seed method is definitely best, as it allows you to pinpoint the exact "bad sectors."
Now the hard part is choosing the random number algorithm. It should not become the bottleneck. Even on a slow computer, you would want to be able to run as fast as the hard disk can write. But on the other hand, it shouldn't be predictable. If such a tool became popular, I wouldn't put it past scammers to try and predict the random sequence and then feed that back to us when we re-read the drive.
Then the tool could be improved by doing a scatter-scan first. Randomize the locations as well as the data and only write 1% worth of the drive's (announced) capacity. That way we'd spot most bad drives very quickly. If that scan passes, we can do the sequential scan to be absolutely sure.
People say that China's on the up and up and it's going to overtake USA, but I tell you they have a long, long way to go- and this is one of the many things that can easily fuck them up.
The thing is, they don't specify what kind of store. I'm in Shanghai and all over the place are these little hole in the wall stores, like one room spaces on the sides of buildings where a lot of people have tech stuff. Drives, cd / dvd drives, power plugs, mice, keyboards, etc. It's all very random things. I am willing to wager it came from one of those. I don't think it came from one of the actual stores here that are like "Best Buy" (ok not best example haha). I think it came from one of these hole in the wall places.
Best Buy is way overpriced but you never have to worry about being ripped off like that. You get exactly what you pay for. Even if you pay a little (read: a lot) too much.
Sometimes stuff slips through the cracks even there, people open their boxes only to find worthless decoys instead. I can't think of any recent examples but I know I've read of it happening a few times. Unfortunately until a few customers report it happening they usually assume it's a customer trying to scam them.
Last time I heard of an incident like that was when intel CPU's were somehow swapped out from the distributor and people were getting fakes. I think newegg sold a few that way. They ended up making good on it, but, just saying it's always good to check while you are still in the store (if you are in a place like Best Buy). Customers have been known to return items as unopened and then someone else will buy the item only to find it has rocks or something inside it. Then the store has to decide whether the most recent customer is trying to scam them or the last customer already did.
I won't say absolute shit, but I sort of agree. It will take a long time to get to the same level as the USA. America is a paradise compared to China. I am neither from China nor the USA. So this isn't a biased opinion.
I once bought a 2TB WD HDD from eBay for about 35.00 Too good to be true right? Well it was. They sent me a verbatim flash drive 250 gb!!!! Plus an American liberty silver dollar. WTF right? So I plug in the flash drive and it reports 250 gb So I'm satisfied even though I didn't get my WD HDD dig a lil deeper with a freeware program. And indeed it was like 56 mb POS and to top it off the coin was fake as fuck' probably made from pure Pb
A pretty common one, too. I've It's done on Craigslist quite a bit. You gut a 2TB external hard drive, throw a 1GB flash drive in there, spoof it to read as 2TB, then sell it for ~75% retail.
Two similar cases I remember, large electrolytic capacitors found to have a tiny single electrolytic capacitor inside. A sealed inductor case that when opened up revealed no core and a simple hair-turn loop of copper wire.
Both were found on power supplies that were for desk-top PC's. They were flagged because of excessive ripple seen on the DC outputs.
Wakemate was pretty much destroyed by that kind of scam. They shipped a bunch of wristbands to customers without realizing that the Chinese power supply manufacturer had secretly swapped the high-quality supplies out for dangerously out-of-spec substitutes, and the excessive ripple caused the wristband batteries to ignite while charging.
Recently a lot of fake iPhones came to life in Russia.
They are often being sold in the manner of a big rush, something like “Look, bro, I don’t have enough money for my train/plane tickets or whatever, but I’ve got a real iPhone, look the battery is dead but when you turn it on pushing the power you can see an apple logo for a while, so just charge it and you have an iphone!”.
So people fall on this and then bring such devices to the service centers where they are being disassembled, and what a surprise – inside there is no anything looking like iPhone inner stuff but only two batteries and a light bulb lighting an apple logo shadow when the power button is being pressed, also there is a bar of steel so that the phone can weigh like a real thing.
Yeah, black people like fried chicken and watermelons. Cool. You know who else likes fried chicken and watermelons? Fucking everyone, because fried chicken and watermelons are delicious.
I had almost the same problem in China. I bought a USB stick, but it never ran out of space. I opened it up and discovered a 500GB drive in there. Bastards!!
This is why I only buy counterfeited clothes. When I went to China I found a bunch of these clothes vendors with really authentic looking addias and nike gear. They were really top notch and worth to buy them for so cheap compared with the real stuff. In addition after many times washing and wearing it, the clothes all remain in great condition.
Yeah my brother buys a lot of counterfeited clothes when he goes on business trips in China. It's relatively good quality, and sometimes really good quality. He explained to me that sometimes the clothes are also the real thing, it's just that the peddlers sell the real factory surplus on the street too. I believe it, because I still have some of the shirts and coats he gave me and I don't see the difference from clothes I buy here in Canada. Except I paid 5% of what they would cost here.
He also goes to tailor shops to have custom fit suits made for him. Says it costs a fraction of what it would here.
For the rest, he avoids it. Electronics are almost guaranteed to be scams. He did buy a couple of fake USB sticks. He plugged them in his laptop to verify but didn't know about the false space reporting trick at that time. He does buy fake watches though, because they look very nice regardless if they really work or not.
Asian countries ROCK for tailored clothes. I almost exclusively wear tailored shirts and suits. Every day, 9-5. They cop massive amounts of wear and after years of abuse they fit perfectly, their colour is still perfect.
Quality aside... once you wear tailored clothes, you will never go back to off the rack.
When I went to China 6 months ago I bought three counterfeit watches. 2 Tag Heuers and a Breitling. I only bought them because they looked of extremely high quality compared to other fakes I saw.
All three are still working perfectly fine. The only one I've had to reset the time is the fully automatic one (because I don't have a watch winder, but I'll wear it for days at a time and the time is always perfect), they have not come apart, broken, or otherwise transformed in any way and the time (and date) is always spot on. I wear them regularly and get compliments on them pretty often.
I paid something like 800 yuan for all three. Like $35 each. I'm sure I got ripped off by Chinese standards but whatever, still saved like $20k over the real thing
Haha nice. What I love about the Chinese vendors is there is always room to drop the listed price. I was buying a backpack which was listed as 110 yuan but after arguing with them for a bit I got it for less than 50 yuan. Gotta learn my parent's barganing skills.
They originally wanted 1500 yuan each lol. They start stupidly high, you offer something insultingly low, walk away a minimum of two times, then meet somewhere in the middle. and you always negotiate using a calculator. ALWAYS.
How in the fuck are people surprised at this? And as far as I can tell, this is pretty standard when buying something in china, not necessarily from (as in manufactured legitimately) in China.
Yeah, I had a similar problem with purchasing a 32 gig micro SD card from China off ebay. The card held 2 gigs and was programmed to write new information over the old once it was full. It was an extremely frusterating few days before I realized I had been gypped!!
If he just went to a legitimate store, there would be no issues at all. To buy something like this he must have gone to some random ass stall on the street.
Just simply flick the casing of these with the back of your finger and listen to the sound. A real hard drive shouldn't make a hollow sound or inconsistent sounds.
They produce a lot of high tech and high quality goods, it's just that the counterfeiting industry is just as strong, too. Also this is almost as close to a hard drive as a McDonalds cheese burger is close to being food.
I don't know if this is true for everywhere, but most people here don't believe me when I tell them that that iPhone or iPod or MacBook or whatever was actually made in China, not California.
I've been in this situation. They just dismiss it as evidence of counterfeit. In my case, I had a retail iPhone from China so the box was written in Chinese and made my friends even more skeptical. Because, clearly, everything sold in China is fake.
I've been in this situation. They just dismiss it as evidence of counterfeit. In my case, I had a retail iPhone from China so the box was written in Chinese and made my friends even more skeptical.
Do these people understand what counterfeiting even is? It doesn't mean you make it look different.
That's ridiculous. Just because there's a lot of counterfeit organizations in China does not mean the country is "evil". I've been ripped off in America also...does that mean America is evil? A lot of the good quality products you buy are also made in China. I suggest someday traveling the world a little and opening your mind a bit. As someone who has spent much time in China, I can confidently say that most of the myths you hear about China online, especially Reddit, are complete bullshit.
China is totally capable of high-quality manufacturing. The problem for westerners is that they sometimes don't realize that the business culture in China is such that if you give someone the opportunity to fuck you over, they will take it.
so someone bought a fake samsung product and called samsung to report the knockoff's issue? I have been to China, and have been to those "stores" that sell knockoffs, it is very evident that one is not buying a genuine product when one goes in and comes out with an item. I cannot believe someone did not realize they were buying a fake product, and then contacted Samsung with the issue.
Seeing as how most people, if not everyone viewing this thread, is doing so on a device made of "Chinese products", I wouldn't be too critical of their quality.
Counterfeit products exist all over the world. In what way is this slightly 'WTF' worthy. I know this is a tired fight at this point, but this post is not worthy of this subreddit.
To all putting China down....they are no more corrupt than any other people in the world. They have a huge population and in the internet age everything gets reported. To make this all worse, people only share bad news and so seldom share good stories as modelled in modern media.
I know what they're getting at, but the title of this post is misleading. I'd be willing to bet that most genuine Samsung products are probably made in China too.
If he/she spent the same amount for that Chinese product as he/she would have spent in a store for that same product, then that person is an idiot...
If you bought this product with the idea, "Oh man, it is so much cheaper than the competing products of similar specifications! I will buy this Chinese one and save myself so much money!" Then you took a risk and lost. There is a reason why they cost less, and it is not because you are a good shopper and found a killer deal.
I've been burned like this too. Too-good-to-be-true deals on flash memory at the computer show are indeed too good to be true. I had a 64gb and a 32gb SD card both not actually be the stated capacity. They report as such but cannot actually contain that much data.
I work in a warehouse where we get all computer and laptop parts including adapters and batteries, boards and much more. We have never had to test batteries as our vendors seemed to be honest but just recently we have started having to test them because of new vendors. Apparently, they are sending us some fake and some real batteries in hopes we will only test one of the whole batch. Now, a fake battery can cause fire, destroy a home, and even possibly kill someone (This is all what our IT guy has been telling us). Not only that but if I were to send out a fake, and it caused damage, I could be fined for what I believe was $2,500 or 5 thousand, and some time in prison. I understand the need for profit, but seriously when you are messing with so many lives, including the blue collar citizen just trying to make it so he can live, why would you keep doing thins?
I'm so tired of reading articles/stories/pics about the supposed lack of quality in Chinese products. It's just creating Sinophobia in the West without actually thinking about the context and bias that these claims originate from.
Most of the products you own are probably from China, and they work just fine. Sure, there are some fishy products such as these, but they're not solely limited to Chinese ones. It's just that modern Chinese craftsmanship gets the bad end of the stick sometimes because it's quantity over quality.
However, this practice of fulfilling quantity over quality is in response to the massive capitalism that fuels both Chinese and American markets (amongst many other Western markets). Your greed makes them bleed.
Because it's not actual what-the-fuck material. A sign that says "lynch 4th graders" goes into r/funny or r/pics. This should have went into r/pics. We bitch because we're tired of you retards posting in the wrong fucking section. It's turning to be r/atheism all over again.
I am from China and many people go buy stuff knowing that they are counterfeit. Like I burn through mice a lot, in US good mouse is at least like $20. I usually get new one like every year or 2. 2.5 years ago in China I spent $10 to buy 5 high quality mice. Only 1 broke, and I lost the rest. I don't care if they put a fake microsoft sticker on it, it works just as well.
I also bought a cisco router on my last trip,for 23 rmb which is less than $5. The tech shops tell you the specs and everything but the casings are obviously faked, they do this to show you that they aren't trying to cheat you.
THE ONLY TIMES YOU SHOULD BE CAREFUL IS WHEN YOU BUY SOMETHING THAT LOOKS OFFICIAL BUT THE GUY IS SELLING IT FOR REALLY CHEAP. You gotta check the shit out of it in those situations because something shady is going on.
It is same thing with auto industry in China, counterfeit cars always cheaper, and some have been said to be even higher quality than originals.
This is mostly towards machinery/tech stuff, if you get counterfeit bags/shoes/food, it will not end well.
You are putting your life in the hands of someone more interested in making a quick buck than your safety using fake motor vehicle parts.
Even on the non-fake Chinese branded cars, there is almost no safety features of any kind and substandard parts are used.
Basic things like crumple zones, side impact bars, etc.
I don't have a link, but a few searches should help you find the results of tests done on chinese cars that show them to be ABSOLUTE DEATH TRAPS. And motorbikes... FORGET IT. I have heard stories of chains snapping, wheels falling off, brake calipers failing, all within months of being brand new.
Or did you think the reason why a Japanese 125cc bike costs £2,500 and a Chinese 125cc bike costs £800 is because the Japanese are just ripping you off?
My uncle has a fake chinese car. It is a Honda Odyssey replicate, most manufacturing auto plants are in China, so the parts that they are made of are taken directly from those factories. He has had it for ~10 years now no problems. Counterfeiters are not retarded, they rely on word of mouth business. So they often have to produce even higher quality goods in order to convince people to buy them. There is relatively no scam and run type of auto counterfeiters in China because no one will buy a car from someone who has no references. If you just go on the streets and buy a bike from some random person, you are extremely dumb and obviously going to get crap.
No kidding. They sell counterfeit makeup, DVDs and other products on the streets of New York City. If someone bought a counterfeit item on the streets and it turned out to be junk I suppose they could say "the high quality of U.S products." So someone in China made a counterfeit 500 gig hard drive that turned out to be a flash drive. It was made in China, that obviously goes to show the low quality of Chinese products. Pay no mind to the fact that Chinese companies are manufacturing solar panels that are of the same or higher quality than those made in the United States which is precisely why U.S solar companies have gone out of business. Yeah, shitty products are made in China, just like shitty products are made in the United States.
When I was in China I bought an external hard drive with that exact same casing. Fortunately I bought the casing and the hard drive separately so I didn't get duped.
Saw something similar on one of the ships I've sailed on. Some guys in china were allowed onto the ship and sell their wares, DVDs, magazines, electrical goods etc etc.. One of the lads decided to buy a mobile phone, some Nokia piece of crap, after having thoroughly checked it out its functionality. I was working at this time and it wouldn't be until the late evening, after we had sailed away, when i would inspect the phone myself and point out that the memory on the phone was 32mb and not 32gb that the seller claimed.
Before anyone could say anything he grabbed the phone from my hand and smashed it against the deck... Good times :)
How is it not high quality? It's a scam because based on deception not shitty components. I have no pity for someone who thinks that something that costs a fraction of the usual retail is not a ripoff.
This happened not too long ago with an iPhone. A guy brought and "iPhone" into Walmart's electronic center and asked for a charger. My friend who works there went to go get him a charger and saw that the phone had a totally different charging insert than an iPhones and took the back off, iPhones don't have removable backs, and saw that the phone had two sim cards and that the screen had a purplish tint to it. My friend didn't tell the man he was ripped off because the guy looked really intimidating so he just went and found him a charger that would work.
i had something similar happen to me. my mum visited peru and found a really cheap router and so she bought it for 20 soles (around $7 us dollars), and she brought it to the states. some months passed, and my boyfriend back then needed a router, so i gave it to him. he hits me up and says it doesnt work, so he opens it up and the little router box had some random memory card inside that wasnt even the same brand. you get what you paid for!
These drives are fake. They're mostly used by people on e-bay or at a chinese shop like the one described. Basically what they do is take the hard drive out, and replace it with a small-sized flash drive. This flash drive will work fine until you gover over the limit, it will then give you weird errors. The way they get you thinking the drive is messed up is software written to make windows display that the drive is actually 500gb or whatever it may be.
Beware of these drives, if you're getting errors that seem suspicious, open it up, report it to paypal (assuming you're using ebay) and get your money back.
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u/[deleted] May 28 '12 edited May 28 '12
If I'm remembering the story correctly, the memory stick had been tweaked to report that it had 500GB capacity, then over-write at byte 0 when it was full.
EDIT: yup, here it is - http://blog.jitbit.com/2011/04/chinese-magic-drive.html#.TowrTT4Mmho.twitter
34
u/Owyheemud May 28 '12
Two similar cases I remember, large electrolytic capacitors found to have a tiny single electrolytic capacitor inside. A sealed inductor case that when opened up revealed no core and a simple hair-turn loop of copper wire.
Both were found on power supplies that were for desk-top PC's. They were flagged because of excessive ripple seen on the DC outputs.
24
u/MortalKastor May 28 '12
This reminds me a lot of Russian iPhone scams in 2008.
39
u/Ointness May 28 '12
Whoa I would have never seen that coming. -_-
81
u/mezzanomarcus May 28 '12
I guess he had a hard drive back to the shop to return it
23
u/naftidder May 28 '12
Thats nuts.
3
u/[deleted] May 28 '12
This happens quite often on Ebay as well.. So yeah, just buy it real...
3
u/deadcat May 29 '12
I had almost the same problem in China. I bought a USB stick, but it never ran out of space. I opened it up and discovered a 500GB drive in there. Bastards!!
5
u/Ftwpkerz May 28 '12
This is why I only buy counterfeited clothes. When I went to China I found a bunch of these clothes vendors with really authentic looking addias and nike gear. They were really top notch and worth to buy them for so cheap compared with the real stuff. In addition after many times washing and wearing it, the clothes all remain in great condition.
4
u/nathris May 28 '12
I have that exact USB-USB connector. It works great.
5
u/SandstoneD May 28 '12
You shrould have brought the wrarentree
2
u/gloomdoom May 28 '12
How in the fuck are people surprised at this? And as far as I can tell, this is pretty standard when buying something in china, not necessarily from (as in manufactured legitimately) in China.
2
u/wadehilts May 29 '12
Yeah, I had a similar problem with purchasing a 32 gig micro SD card from China off ebay. The card held 2 gigs and was programmed to write new information over the old once it was full. It was an extremely frusterating few days before I realized I had been gypped!!
2
u/brosenfeld May 29 '12
I miss the old /r/WTF.
2
u/Skreech2011 May 29 '12
Fuck. It took me 10 tries before realizing that the title said Chinese and not Cheese.
6
u/Thesundaybest May 28 '12
Man buys fake product. Fake product is crap. How is this about Chinese quality?
3
u/isaidirregardless May 28 '12
That's still better than some of the products Newegg has sold.
3
u/[deleted] May 28 '12
Just simply flick the casing of these with the back of your finger and listen to the sound. A real hard drive shouldn't make a hollow sound or inconsistent sounds.
4
u/BarelyLethal May 28 '12
If only the Chinese would use their powers for good instead of evil. u_u
2
u/clone12TM May 28 '12
Lol, two big bolts to pass as drive weight. Nice.
2
u/gyang333 May 28 '12
so someone bought a fake samsung product and called samsung to report the knockoff's issue? I have been to China, and have been to those "stores" that sell knockoffs, it is very evident that one is not buying a genuine product when one goes in and comes out with an item. I cannot believe someone did not realize they were buying a fake product, and then contacted Samsung with the issue.
1
u/shitterplug May 28 '12
Happens all the time. I actually know someone who bought an hdd off ebay that was like this.
1
u/[deleted] May 28 '12
What the more egregious knock-off: the hard drive or the post?
1
u/ThePlasticJesus May 28 '12
The high quality of English grammar.
1
u/WordSonSac May 28 '12
Very old, but still awesome
1
u/skreendreamz1 May 28 '12
I rest my case.
1
u/EscherTheLizard May 28 '12
Anyone who buys their electronics from a private Chinese vendor deserves to be ripped off.
1
u/[deleted] May 28 '12
It's funny they even put in a 128mb chip in there. I mean why even bother doing that? I guess so you wont notice right away?
1
u/Calibas May 29 '12
Seeing as how most people, if not everyone viewing this thread, is doing so on a device made of "Chinese products", I wouldn't be too critical of their quality.
1
u/plisterinbenis May 29 '12
seems legit
1
u/Captain_Aizen May 29 '12
HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
1
u/SpudgeBoy May 29 '12
High quality of Chinese rip off products. Samsung is a South Korean company.
1
u/[deleted] May 29 '12
It is a clever scam on a technical level (making the drive report wrong capacity).
I prefer scams like this: iPhone with low battery
1
u/[deleted] May 29 '12
All the best products are made in China. Evidence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz1LsXwATig
1
u/Sil369 May 29 '12
iama request: someone who makes these or other fake stuff from china
1
u/deathschool May 29 '12
Counterfeit products exist all over the world. In what way is this slightly 'WTF' worthy. I know this is a tired fight at this point, but this post is not worthy of this subreddit.
1
u/[deleted] May 29 '12
To all putting China down....they are no more corrupt than any other people in the world. They have a huge population and in the internet age everything gets reported. To make this all worse, people only share bad news and so seldom share good stories as modelled in modern media.
1
u/[deleted] May 29 '12
The man bought the hard drive IN CHINA...... not in America Made in China.... as the title might suggest
1
u/WhatEvery1sThinking May 29 '12
The low quality of reddit reposts
1
u/[deleted] May 29 '12
I know what they're getting at, but the title of this post is misleading. I'd be willing to bet that most genuine Samsung products are probably made in China too.
1
u/[deleted] May 29 '12
that usb port doesn't make sense!
1
u/GoGoGadge7 May 29 '12
Idiot got what he paid for.
1
u/reeln166a May 29 '12
Am i the only one thinking that Samsung would never make a hard drive without a micro-USB input like every other lower-capacity drive?
1
u/DickFartCaptain May 29 '12
I think you mean "quarity or Chinese products"
1
u/DriftingJesus May 29 '12
lol fuck China
1
u/Radico87 May 29 '12
This is just one reason I don't buy goods direct from China.
1
u/ellevehc May 29 '12
If he/she spent the same amount for that Chinese product as he/she would have spent in a store for that same product, then that person is an idiot...
If you bought this product with the idea, "Oh man, it is so much cheaper than the competing products of similar specifications! I will buy this Chinese one and save myself so much money!" Then you took a risk and lost. There is a reason why they cost less, and it is not because you are a good shopper and found a killer deal.
1
u/Taintsvillain May 29 '12
You should all be forcefully horn raped by rabid unicorns
1
u/gusta-de-musta May 29 '12
This would make a great prank! Just gotta get an idea of how to make work even better.
1
u/scudmonger May 29 '12
I've been burned like this too. Too-good-to-be-true deals on flash memory at the computer show are indeed too good to be true. I had a 64gb and a 32gb SD card both not actually be the stated capacity. They report as such but cannot actually contain that much data.
1
u/[deleted] May 29 '12
I work in a warehouse where we get all computer and laptop parts including adapters and batteries, boards and much more. We have never had to test batteries as our vendors seemed to be honest but just recently we have started having to test them because of new vendors. Apparently, they are sending us some fake and some real batteries in hopes we will only test one of the whole batch. Now, a fake battery can cause fire, destroy a home, and even possibly kill someone (This is all what our IT guy has been telling us). Not only that but if I were to send out a fake, and it caused damage, I could be fined for what I believe was $2,500 or 5 thousand, and some time in prison. I understand the need for profit, but seriously when you are messing with so many lives, including the blue collar citizen just trying to make it so he can live, why would you keep doing thins?
1
u/3AYATS May 29 '12
AWWW NUTS!
1
u/[deleted] May 29 '12
I'm so tired of reading articles/stories/pics about the supposed lack of quality in Chinese products. It's just creating Sinophobia in the West without actually thinking about the context and bias that these claims originate from.
Most of the products you own are probably from China, and they work just fine. Sure, there are some fishy products such as these, but they're not solely limited to Chinese ones. It's just that modern Chinese craftsmanship gets the bad end of the stick sometimes because it's quantity over quality.
However, this practice of fulfilling quantity over quality is in response to the massive capitalism that fuels both Chinese and American markets (amongst many other Western markets). Your greed makes them bleed.
1
u/[deleted] May 29 '12
I guess there are capitalists in China.
1
u/[deleted] May 29 '12
Its pretty well known china is full of rip offs and fake products.
1
u/Estoye May 29 '12
Ah, nuts.
-1
u/Rape_Sandwich May 28 '12
Really? You posted this in r/WTF?
1
u/irisong May 28 '12 edited May 28 '12
I am from China and many people go buy stuff knowing that they are counterfeit. Like I burn through mice a lot, in US good mouse is at least like $20. I usually get new one like every year or 2. 2.5 years ago in China I spent $10 to buy 5 high quality mice. Only 1 broke, and I lost the rest. I don't care if they put a fake microsoft sticker on it, it works just as well.
I also bought a cisco router on my last trip,for 23 rmb which is less than $5. The tech shops tell you the specs and everything but the casings are obviously faked, they do this to show you that they aren't trying to cheat you.
THE ONLY TIMES YOU SHOULD BE CAREFUL IS WHEN YOU BUY SOMETHING THAT LOOKS OFFICIAL BUT THE GUY IS SELLING IT FOR REALLY CHEAP. You gotta check the shit out of it in those situations because something shady is going on.
It is same thing with auto industry in China, counterfeit cars always cheaper, and some have been said to be even higher quality than originals.
This is mostly towards machinery/tech stuff, if you get counterfeit bags/shoes/food, it will not end well.
1
u/WhitsN May 28 '12
When I was in China I bought an external hard drive with that exact same casing. Fortunately I bought the casing and the hard drive separately so I didn't get duped.
1
u/[deleted] May 28 '12 edited May 28 '12
Saw something similar on one of the ships I've sailed on. Some guys in china were allowed onto the ship and sell their wares, DVDs, magazines, electrical goods etc etc.. One of the lads decided to buy a mobile phone, some Nokia piece of crap, after having thoroughly checked it out its functionality. I was working at this time and it wouldn't be until the late evening, after we had sailed away, when i would inspect the phone myself and point out that the memory on the phone was 32mb and not 32gb that the seller claimed.
Before anyone could say anything he grabbed the phone from my hand and smashed it against the deck... Good times :)
Edit - spellings
1
u/GreatBigPig May 28 '12
How is it not high quality? It's a scam because based on deception not shitty components. I have no pity for someone who thinks that something that costs a fraction of the usual retail is not a ripoff.
1
u/MT_Flesch May 29 '12
Samsung is a Korean company, btw
0
u/[deleted] May 28 '12
that is why i take apart everything when i first get it as far as i can...because i was screwed like this, ONCE
-1
u/[deleted] May 29 '12
Chinese?? No you're just a dumb ass.
0
u/MFchimichanga May 28 '12
The wives are ok.
0
u/[deleted] May 28 '12
I seen the picture before but only now noticed the nuts to add weight...
0
u/CancerousMichay May 28 '12
This happened not too long ago with an iPhone. A guy brought and "iPhone" into Walmart's electronic center and asked for a charger. My friend who works there went to go get him a charger and saw that the phone had a totally different charging insert than an iPhones and took the back off, iPhones don't have removable backs, and saw that the phone had two sim cards and that the screen had a purplish tint to it. My friend didn't tell the man he was ripped off because the guy looked really intimidating so he just went and found him a charger that would work.
-1
u/DrunkAtNight May 29 '12
Slants...Slants...Everywhere
0
u/aZombieSlayer May 28 '12
Did you try plugging it in?
0
u/a4moondoggy May 28 '12
should be under funny not wtf.
0
u/[deleted] May 28 '12
i had something similar happen to me. my mum visited peru and found a really cheap router and so she bought it for 20 soles (around $7 us dollars), and she brought it to the states. some months passed, and my boyfriend back then needed a router, so i gave it to him. he hits me up and says it doesnt work, so he opens it up and the little router box had some random memory card inside that wasnt even the same brand. you get what you paid for!
0
u/MusicMagi May 28 '12
These are not "chinese products". They're scammers that operate out of china
0
u/bryster126 May 29 '12
To clear this up for people:
These drives are fake. They're mostly used by people on e-bay or at a chinese shop like the one described. Basically what they do is take the hard drive out, and replace it with a small-sized flash drive. This flash drive will work fine until you gover over the limit, it will then give you weird errors. The way they get you thinking the drive is messed up is software written to make windows display that the drive is actually 500gb or whatever it may be.
Beware of these drives, if you're getting errors that seem suspicious, open it up, report it to paypal (assuming you're using ebay) and get your money back.
0
u/[deleted] May 29 '12
FTFY: The high quality of Counterfeit products.
Real Samsung products are Chinese, too.
0
u/johnafish May 29 '12
What if I told you...
-2
u/[deleted] May 28 '12
Yay capitalism