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Comment by dmm | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't buy an sd card on amazon because of the risk of getting a fake. There are tons of fake sd cards out there and amazon refuses to take responsibility for their supply chain.

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Sandisk cards for domestic sale in China have 18-digit authenticity code on scratchpad, and you can verify it online at verify.sandisk.cn.

So, "buy in China because there's too many fakes in US store". Ironic isn't it.

I came here to say the same. :) I can attest that this works. I've checked these codes on several cards along with speed and full rewrite/compare tests, to verify capacity and A1 rating.

Never had an issue.

I've checked a couple of fake Sundisk cards from Aliexpress as well, detected as fake as they should.

I'm sure there's a name for this effect, but I am always fascinated by the complaints about fake products on Amazon. I have _never_ received one and I spend several thousand on Amazon every year.

I _know_ it must be happening, I just can't understand if I'm lucky, if it's an effect of my location, or somehow related to the way in which I shop on Amazon.

Many of the major product listings seem to be okay—for example I've ordered a number of the Samsung Evo+ cards I link to in the blog post, and tested each one and never found one that didn't perform as the first I bought—but I have gotten fakes here and there.

Almost every time, though, it's because the Amazon official supplier/warehouse was out of stock and I accidentally ordered from one of the secondary suppliers. The problem is, unless you know what to look for in the interface, it's hard to determine if you're buying from Amazon or the manufacturer, or some 3rd party.

Even then, there are many reputable 3rd parties. But there are many who are not.

The worst cases in my experience are ordering 'Apple OEM' type products. I will not buy a charger or any other Apple accessory on Amazon because more than 50% of the time I've gotten a non-Apple-manufactured product.

> The problem is, unless you know what to look for in the interface, it's hard to determine if you're buying from Amazon or the manufacturer, or some 3rd party.

Also, Amazon sometimes commingles their own stock with that of 3rd-party vendors, so "Ships and Sold by Amazon" doesn't mean what it used to.

EDIT: fixed numerous typos >:(

> I have _never_ received one

That you know of.

My take is that a 'fake' that's actually identical in terms of function is real enough for me (these could be ghost-shift output from the same factories, for example). The horror stories you see about SD cards though are unusable things that pretend to have huge capacity but won't hold data etc. so those are truly fakes.

I believe a lot of it can be attributed to shopping behavior. For instance I personally never "Sort by: Price: Low to High"; you are almost guaranteed to end up with a fake product at the top. What's more subtle is that when I watch other people (as part of a group project) order stuff on Amazon they seem to not pick up clues about the quality of the product. They purely focus on title, picture and of course price.

Wirecutter claims that the Evo Select line is an Amazon exclusive rebranding of the Evo Plus line and that this should reduce concern about getting a fake - for that line at least. https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-microsd-card/

Haven't had any issues. Plus on top of that I mostly buy warehouse deals - i.e. open box/returns.

Where do you buy SD cards?

DigiKey

MicroCenter.

They price match Amazon, NewEgg, B&H, and lots of other places. A lot of times their prices are already lower than Amazon.

I've never had a fake SD card that was sold by Amazon.

At least in Amazon US, they comingle Amazon inventory with other FBA sellers, so even sold by Amazon isn't a guarantee.

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