Well, to be honest, even today the prices of 128 GB SD cards are in the GBP 20 to GBP 30 region, so expecting a GBP 6 128 GB card to be genuine seems very optimistic to me. I stick with known brands such as Samsung and SanDisk mostly from suppliers such as Amazon, who will not be gone tomorrow when I need to claim that refund. Amazon also offer a free return service, even on goods shipped from a German supplier (in the case of an item which was too small).
-- Cheers, David Web: http://www.satsignal.eu
There is something wrong. Yes, in the past eBay sellers had the upper hand, but no more. If you are doing business with a new seller and they crap on your that is your fault for using someone without a track record. But any established vendor protects his rating with a passion. I just bought a 7 port powered USB hub for $5. The power pack that came with it won't regulate and with a 50 mA load the voltage drops below 4.5 volts. I wrote them through eBay and without a word they sent a refund.
Out of some five or six returns recently (yes, I often buy the lowest price stuff and complain when it isn't usable) I only had one to require me to return the item and I insisted they send me a prepaid shipping label. I was only out the time and trouble and a bit of tape to seal the reused box.
For most vendors they won't bother with asking for a return of anything in this price range. At least threaten to give them bad feedback if they don't pay for the return shipping. BTW, if they send you a shipping label the shipping is not your responsibility. You only need to prove you shipped it, not that it arrived.
-- Rick
Yes. I have an alter ego who is in a partnership making and selling guitar body components (+ve in thousands, 100%) and, until the PO stopped the Proof of Postage, used just that to prove postage, since we could never deny an item had been delivered; but buyers in despute rarely saw it that way, and used non-delivery as a way-out for a rash purchase. I feel that the seller of this card will deny its return whatever, adding to my loss, and -ve feedback could be removed after a protest that it was unfounded, so is pointless.
This card is a "fake", although its description circumvents that, and I refused to return it because it would have been resold, and I would have become part of the process. My optimism caused me to be defrauded, but its return would only have enabled the seller to make a second turn. Fake or fraud... It is my understanding that fake coinage in your possession must not be passed on or returned, but surrendered, and the loss is yours. Whether this card fits here I know not.
All continues to be most interesting...
-- Mark J From RISCOS on a BeagleBoard-xM and Raspberry Pi2B - and Linux on a PandaBoard ES
I think you really don't get eBay... You are finding all sorts of reasons not to try to get your money back. Your choice.
-- Rick
I go further than that - the market is FULL of stories like this, so when I wanted a flash card I bought it direct from the manufacturer online.
Nothing is easier to fake than a peel and stick label and some packaging.
-- Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. ? Erwin Knoll
Can you tell us which manufacturer please? How do you know they manufacture and can you name some more?
Kingston.
Go to their website
-- Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. ? Erwin Knoll
I'm not convinced that Kingston is a manufacturer or that a purchase from them is safe .
And worse -
While checking for the source of Kingston SD cards I became convinced that Sandisk and Toshiba do manufacture their own SD cards . I believe that Samsung does too.
That's my understanding too: Sandisk, Samsung and Tosh manufacture. All the rest including Kingston and Crucial buy the stuff in and stick labels on it.
-- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org |
You paint with a broad brush, which masks detail...
-- Mark J From RISCOS on a BeagleBoard-xM and Raspberry Pi2B - and Linux on a PandaBoard ES
That is why IO don't buy 'Kingston' cards online except from Kingston.
Over here a Kingston person selling fakes would get the sack. In China, its just how they make income.
That is fair comment,. but its not an issue with lack of memoru., just with speed.
Kingston manufacture *cards*, too, just not the NAND chips. But then only a couple of foundries make them anyway.
-- Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. ? Erwin Knoll
Sandisk/Toshiba, Samsung and Micron (=Crucial) have their own flash fabs. Kingston, Transcend and others just buy flash chips on the secondary market, which means they're at the whim of that market. It also means they may change the exact flash dice used in a product if they can't source more of the original part - that means you're more at risk of them changing the spec without changing the model number.
I just stick to Samsung flash sold by Amazon directly (not Marketplace or FBA) these days - good performance (especially IOPS that are important on the Pi), prices are decent, and Amazon have a (mostly) reliable supply chain.
Theo
Some buyers are dishonest or stupid, it was helpful for sellers to be able to record this against them.
But the system was totally in the favor of the sellers. One mark against a buyer and they would be black listed. So most of them
*literally* would hold your feedback hostage until you gave them positive feedback. If you got negative feedback you would be unable to buy from a large percentage of ebay sellers. So the "dishonest" thing cut both ways.I will admit that I fully use the threat of leaving negative feedback to my advantage. I don't think I abuse it though. But when someone sells me junk as happened to the OP, I don't have any qualms about holding them fully accountable. I won't pay the return shipping and I expect a
*full* refund including the original shipping. Even then if they are clearly being fraudulent I will leave negative feedback.Heck, I remember once when I bought some stuff from one of the mail order outfits like Deal Extreme (not sure if it was them or Dino Direct) and they never shipped one item. I could not get them to issue a $2 refund no matter what I did. Finally I left a negative review on resellerratings.com. After some weeks they contacted me and agreed to give me some two or three times the value of the refund due in trade. Then they wanted me to retract my negative review and I said, "no". They were clearly being mercenary and were trying to buy me off rather than giving me an honest deal when they had the chance.
Honest reviews of bad vendors is the only way to police the market.
-- Rick
You say "secondary market" which seems to imply something negative. I am sure a large company like Kingston buys on contract for the most part. But they may be forced to buy on the spot market when their demand goes up and the supply is inflexible. Even the chip makers can't respond to the market easily. Fabs cost billions of dollars and take years to plan and build. Commodity memory is a very tough market.
I expect they change memory when they find they can get a better contract. The issue is when that memory does not perform as well - as was indicated in one of the referenced articles. Interesting read actually. Makes me leery of solid state drives.
-- Rick
Don't be. I have a genuine kingston here and it flies
-- Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. ? Erwin Knoll
I don't have any problem with them buying stuff from manufacturers just like everyone else does (though in larger volume and probably unpackaged in their case).
The problem is when a Kingston DataTraveller ABC123 (or whatever) ends up having different flash in it because they couldn't buy the same as last week. That means my drive may have different performance from your drive, because we bought them in different weeks.
Given that vendors are very bad at displaying specs for their drives (when was the last time you saw IOPS mentioned on an SD card ad?), I can't be sure that the device I invested effort into determining if it's 'good' for my application will be good if I buy it again, because they could have changed specs and not changed the model number. Something like IOPS can vary over
3-4 orders of magnitude, we aren't talking a few percent here.I perceive this to be less of a problem with those vendors who make their own flash, because there's a tighter coupling between parts coming out of the fabs and being put in end products. I could be wrong though.
It's interesting the note the vast array of DRAM DIMMs coming out of (eg) Kingston compared with the number of SD card lines they sell. I think in the DRAM case they do tie DIMM part number to a specific DRAM part (because of compatibility issues), while there's more leeway to change things underneath in the case of flash.
Theo
True: Timing is very much a part of DRAM specifications. The bus is fixed and the RAM must keep up. In the case of a SATA interface that is never the case.
However if you buy from a manufacturer and the part fails to meet their spec. you do ultimately have a valid cause for complaint.
-- Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. ? Erwin Knoll
But there's no way of knowing whether someone who buys one with the exact same model as yours will get similar performance.
There is no way of knowing if the sub will rise tomorrow either.
One just has very reasonable expectations that it will..
-- Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. ? Erwin Knoll
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