Counterfeit Mitutoyo digital calipers (2019)
canadianhobbymetalworkers.com
canadianhobbymetalworkers.com
Those sellers know perfectly how to play the complaint systems of the platforms, and it's destroying the customer experience.
When I want cheap crap, I now buy it where I know it's cheap crap, and when I want quality, I preferably buy it directly from the manufacturer, or from a renowned dealer.
If you are going to get questionable Chinese stuff, you might as well skip the middleman and get it from AliExpress, albeit with very slow shipping.
On the other hand, Ebay (and I presume Amazon, I never use them) tends to buy cheap stuff off of Aliexpress, mark it up and resell it, sometimes also faking the brand.
I'm not sure how much is deliberate dishonesty, but there sure is a lack of truth. Product titles are often a mishmash of words copy-pasted in and half irrelevant/misleading, making searching for some things completely impossible. Sellers often use pictures of other companies' products (sometimes multiple different ones), and contradictory specs are not uncommon. They often don't have sufficient English to understand and answer questions trying to clarify. I have rarely been disappointed, but my expectations are always pretty low.
At least that's the impression I have gotten. I'm willing to accept that others may have had really bad experiences there.
The honesty of Aliexpress sellers varies. A "blanket hoodie" I bought doesn't even go to my hips.
Many AE sellers, when confronted with insufficient or wrong items delivered, will offer coupons or discounts rather than replacements or refunds. You have to insist on what you want because interacting with Chinese businesses often requires assertiveness.
I'm a diamond-level buyer, so AE pretty much sides with me 99% of the time and since I don't make frivolous disputes.
I'm dealing with an Aliexpress seller that sent me the wrong thing and it's basically not worth shipping back to China. I'm trying to get a few dollars from the seller but they're slippery as hell, want to privately paypal me the money etc. Never again!
All these fakes ends up in brick and mortar stores as well and in some cases you have to pay more than original should costs for poor quality fake without even knowing it.
Amazon / ebay won't move a finger since they get to collect they fees. Removing fake listing is time consuming and even if they will remove it once, those will soon be back in stock again...
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000098107734.html?spm=a2g0o...
They're all-metal, two decimal digits of accuracy, and I've been supremely satisfied. Zero retention is great, feel is good, they're way better than anything I'll ever need as a hobbyist.
Which means nothing. Same as buying from eBay or AliExpress or Wish.
(Surprised Pikachu face)
What is really lacking is a filter to get rid of all results not sold by amazon.
It now takes less time to hunt down a reliable specialist online supplier, e.g., [1] than it does to wade through all the fraudulent listings and fake reviews on Amazon to find even a plausibly reliable product/vendor.
At this point, despite being a 20+year loyal Amazon Prime customer, I'm finding It's a better use of my time to find a good vendor, often family owned.
[1] I currently use batteryjunction.com, seems reliable, in my region for quicker shipping, no connection other than customer, and there seemed to be others of similar good quality in other regions.
Does seem like a big opportunity too! Ofc, need financing for inventory, but maybe partner with an existing supplier...?
$62 is half/third of the price from reputable sources, even the other sellers (and Amazon itself) on the Amazon website.
The truth is that many (perhaps most) purchasers wouldn't need or notice the difference between the fake Mitutoyo and rebadged $5 calipers and Amazon makes it very easy for sellers to sell fakes with little or no consequences.
No battery issues so far. And they were just recertified, touch up honed and as accurate and repeatable as ever.
Yes, I have quality digital ones too. I like and use them too, but they work fine, until they don't.
Really, I'd like a mid-range model; not a cheap one or a cheap one sold for more, and not a high-end one, just something that works reliably and repeatably, and doesn't chew through batteries. I have a ~20 year old (guess) set that fits this description, and several newer cheap and crappy ones that do an okay job if you keep spare batteries on hand. It seems impossible to find more like that old one.
There are factories that run "midnight shifts", where the same workers, on the same production line, spend a night building a batch of counterfeits.
If you rent instead of own the manufacturing line, you are open to this. A design is easy to copy, a factory not that much.
I see all of this as way to tip the scale of profit sharing between the ones with the idea/design and the ones who make the product. Whether it is balanced or not, I can't tell.
A cheap copy that performs well is also in a way pressure to innovate. The factories innovate in making things cheaper, the designers innovate in making things better. Someone who manufactures themself gets to do both.
I know of a specific US-based specialist manufacturer who makes some of the best-in-class products in the world - a LOT of R&D and optimization. The castings and machining were done at a plant in Asia. After shipping their product, they discovered an obvious Asian knock-off selling for 1/3 the price. They immediately called their manufacturing partner and got that shut down, but it was too late - the Chinese competitor already had inventory, customers, marketing, etc., and just switched factories. And there's still debate in the purchasing community about which to buy.
Those 'midnight shifts' literally enabled a new competitor from the starting gate for just a bit of extra temporary profit - straight up theft. (If it was my biz, I'd have not only gotten them to shut down the backdoor selling, but also put as a top priority finding a new manufacturing partner and moving production at the earliest possible date).
The other option was to go to bricks-and-mortar retailers, where if they had it in stock and if you were willing to pay full retail price, you'd get something that wasn't a counterfeit.
Amazon seems to have pulled off some marketing magic where flea market sellers plus a refund policy equals one of the world's largest companies.
I gave up trying.
I wonder if anyone has been killed already because of Amazon's disregard for a manufacturer's right to his brand.
This is good for all of us. Amazon is becoming a place to buy low end essentials and it gives opportunities to smaller businesses to build reputation and sell directly. The only thing that’s missing is a good directory of indie shops. No, Google isn’t a good one. We should build a modern yellow pages.
Tiny differences in the design of precision devices can void the accuracy of measurements (for example, using a resistor of the same value, but with larger temperature coefficient can make the device pass accuracy test at room temperature but fail at slightly lower temperature).
Of course it doesn't matter for most machine shop uses of calipers- but when it does, there is definitely more to it than meeting stated accuracy once.
- AS9100 certified engineering shop.
How many people saved from Amazons cheap access to equipment?
I'd guess more are saved.