I don't know about other people but I've never had this issue and I use amazon for everything I can...
We're talking about counterfeits. You don't believe you've ever had this issue, but why would you be certain?
But yeah, I have never even had a hint of any suspicion that anything I've bought on Amazon was a fake.
It's good practice to run all your new memory cards through a storage test application to confirm it can store what it says. Doesn't mean it's not counterfeit, or that it will continue to accept writes to the full disk, but it's probably ok (and you may have sequential write/read stats as a result)
I thought that was a very clever fraud. Can't find the article now...
I thought that was a very clever fraud. Can't find the article now but I'll check on desktop later and share if I can...
Both of these things can and do happen with items at B&M stores and other vendors.
Think about the whole cable modem backdoor that was recently discovered...
Or the various cases of food poisoning that happen seemingly regularly...
You aren't safe just because you purchase items thru a different "trusted" source. This is the outsourced world we live in today. When everything is outsourced, the possibility for counterfeiting, tampering, and maliciousness rises - because nobody can be held accountable (diffusion of responsibility).
At one time, it was possible to trace things back far enough to find the original culprit and prosecute them. Today, if you're lucky, you might find a reasonable suspicion of a company - who will instantly (sometimes with a literal click of a button) close up shop, move everything, and re-open the next day under a new name. Furthermore, even if you ask around about them, nobody knows nuthin'.
Food poisoning is an interesting case to bring up. If you know that a neighborhood restaurant has food poisoned you or someone you know, then you stop buying food there.
And if you buy something from a physical store like Best Buy or Safeway, you also know there's someone you can sue and somewhere you can go if the product is recalled by the manufacturer. Those companies have a brand to protect and will take steps to do so.
So no, the brand isn't dead and it is still a good proxy for quality of service or quality of merchandise. I forgot that for about 8 years until Amazon reminded me.
There's still a major harm.
I returned them for a full refund, even after 1.5 years, but I can't shake the belief they knew about it. Furthermore, when they find out something is a counterfeit, they should be required to notify all known past purchasers and offer them the option of a refund or exchange.
It's a pain, but so far it's worked, and every time I'm looking for things I see more horror stories: "Huggies" diapers that have no branding on them and break all the time, electronics sold as new that would be considered in poor quality if sold as used, etc.
Nobody links to any examples when they say they're everywhere.
And this is the second most recommended product on Amazon for that search.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Memory-Rotatable-Laptop-Compute...
Reviews can be "bought" - sometimes literally, sometimes "under the table" (reviewers are supposed to disclose things like "I was sent this item by the seller for feedback and review" or similar - but do you think all reviewers are honest?).
What also happens (far more often than you'd believe - but if you look close, you can find it) is a product will be sold and gain a large number of great reviews, then the seller will turn around, and mark the item's cost up to some insane amount (an item normal selling for $5.00 will be marked up to $99999.99), only to later put a different item (description, pictures, etc) in it's place (keeping the SKU the same), drop the price back down to something reasonable, and now "new item" has "old item" 5-star reviews.
I see this all the time on Amazon when I look at my purchase history over a year or more time-frame. I purchase a lot of stuff on Amazon, and I mostly see this kind of thing on the hobby electronics and stuff I purchase, but I have seen it also on regular products. I'll look at my past purchases, and the name and picture of a purchase I made will be changed to something I know for a fact I didn't purchase (because it was something I'd never purchase, due to non-interest, my purchasing patterns, or not marketed for my demographic or such).
Of course, this is with "hobby electronics" - a lot of which are drop-shipped out of China/Hong Kong, or were imported to the USA for "Amazon Fulfillment" purposes. But I have no doubt this same thing happens with other, more general products. If the seller doing this plays their cards right (like selling RAM sticks with the reviews for flash memory cards), it can sometimes be very difficult to tell that a swap was made, without reading every review very carefully. Imagine this being done with products like clothing or fashion accessories...!
Has it not happened to you, or has it not happened to you yet?