Big problem in action cam related circles, where lots of people have broken recordings due to fake cards.
Yes, but there is a significant difference --- I can always return it to Amazon postage free if the capacity is fake and it won't format properly. Presumably, Amazon extracts the appropriate weight in flesh from the seller.
The way retail typically works in the USA, the vendor assumes all the risk --- any problems get unrolled backwards. You can sell a fake product on Amazon --- but it will likely cost you --- not Amazon (who controls the money) nor the end consumer if he is astute.
Basically, Amazon acts like an escrow service.
Amazon and other retailers have played this game for a very long time and they aren't in it to lose money.
In my experience, the thing most commonly faked with memory cards is the capacity --- for example, an 8Gb card altered to appear 64Gb, until it is formatted.
If you want extra assurance, buy Amazon branded cards. In this case, Amazon assumes almost all the risk so there is little incentive for fakery.
On Amazon? I highly doubt it. The threshold for “too many returns” is probably rarely hit. MicroSD’s are super cheap - people don’t return things that are cheap because they don’t consider it worth their time. Then these companies go and pay people for good reviews and just keep flipping inconsistent/garbage products.
If punishment were a real thing that companies had to deal with then this wouldn’t continue to be a problem. It’s been this way for many, many years. Amazon has no equal competitor, there’s nowhere else for folks to go and people rarely look at the specific vendor they’re buying from. As far as they’re concerned it’s all Amazon.
Remember, Amazon holds the cash for all sales. The cost of returns is extracted from vendor disbursements. A fake card sold for $10 may cost the vendor $20 if it gets returned.
If “the system worked” i.e. companies get appropriately punished for selling bad products, then this issue wouldn’t still be so widespread. It’s basically a feature of Amazon now. People just assume they’re going to randomly get junk. It’s baked into our expectations at this point.
I suspect the real issue with memory cards is that most people probably don't check them. The solution is --- don't be like most people.
I’ve bought more off target.com than Amazon and I read at least one other commenter here who does the same. Walmart.com also has a wide range of products.
Even sd cards. Which are still going strong.
A lot of cheap cards from China can't even pass this basic test.
Oh and compute read/write times while doing so.
If the read back data doesn’t validate, or you can’t write the amount expected, or the read/write rates don’t match expected? faaaaaaake
Pretty accurate too. I personally never had an actual fake Sandisk SD card from Amazon. I bought probably 50 of them in the space of 6 months at one point. Other brands were not great.
USB flash drives though? Literally all trash. I tried at least 5 different ones before I just gave up.
No idea what the market looks like now however.
“One vendor in particular interested me; it was literally a mom, pop and one young child sitting in a small stall of the mobile phone market, and they were busily slapping dozens of non-Kingston marked cards into Kingston retail packaging. They had no desire to sell to me, but I was persistent; this card interested me in particular because it also had the broken “D” logo but no Kingston marking.”