Comment by hellcow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hellcow | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Yup, agreed 100%.

I recently purchased 2 Lenovo 65w USB-C chargers. One came shrink-wrapped in a legitimate Lenovo box. The other was in a plain cardboard box with a prominent "Made in China" as its only branding. These were sold from the very same product page.

When I told Amazon, I had to go to UPS to return the fake product to them to receive my refund, so not only do I have to purchase it again (obviously not from Amazon), I have to go to a store to send it back to them -- defeating the whole purpose of ordering it online to begin with.

I've received fake books and other things before as well. Each time I reported it to Amazon, and each time nothing happens.

This is completely unacceptable, and I just now cancelled my Prime membership, which I had since pretty much day one.

For whatever reason, the counterfeiters have no problem lying about anything, except the "Made in China" label.

I'm sure there's a good reason for this, but it's been the only consistent red-flag I've encountered.

Generally, it's because the manufacturer is honest and not interested in scamming people, but the middlemen are.

I'd imagine customs can identify "that came on a boat from China but says 'made in USA'" more easily than "the internal electronics in that charger aren't up to snuff".

I'm sure. It's just become so normal to doubt every aspect of a product, that it's strange to have some element of consistency.

Of course the label of origin still isn't likely to match what was on the product page. But that's almost a plus in helping to ID fakes.

Because when you import stuff to the U.S. it has to have the country of origin clearly marked somewhere. That's why it says Made in China.

Are chargers made anywhere else? Even with official chargers (i.e. that came with the new laptop/phone) I don't think I've ever seen a charger that wasn't "Made in China".

For a while at least, all the Samsung fast chargers sold in the US were made in Vietnam. If you got one from China, it was fake. Or a slow charger.

So was it a fake or just not retail packaging? Lenovo always sends me parts in plain cardboard boxes.

It was fake. The USB-C connector didn't even sit flush with the port and wiggled around.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com