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Fake USB Drives
Friday, September 9, 2005-9:52 PM
In the past I was always confident in merchandise I bought at the computer market here in Guangzhou. I was confident that I would walk home with what I wanted and wouldn't pay too much for it.
At the computer market all the vendors have similar inventories and, if you're willing to shop around for a few minutes, have to offer their customers competitive prices.
Police make sweeps of the shops every now and then checking for fake goods. For these reasons, I never minded shopping at the computer markets. Yesterday that changed.
Before I even visited the store I already made my first mistake. Even I had done even a little research I would have realized that the two gigabyte Sony Flash USB drive I was being offered was both too small and too cheap to be real.
But, the packaging looked authentic, nothing like the fake DVD packages you find on the street. And the product itself looked authentic, even if the design was a bit simplistic. I bought it, a little nervous it might be too good to be true.
Even when I plugged it into my laptop, it appeared to work. But, when I used the drive to transfer files, all the data was corrupted.
Early this afternoon Natasha and I returned to the computer market. We confronted the guy.
He was a little nervous, but he pulled out his laptop, swapped the drive with a new one, demonstrated the product, and I left with a new drive.
When I got home this one didn't work either. More or less the exact same problem. I did a quick Yahoo search on fake Sony USB flash drives.
Right away I found loads of pictures and complaints about fake Sony USB flash drives. Not only were these drives fakes, but they barely worked, and the capacity was only a fraction of the advertised capacity.
I went back to the market, without Natasha to confront the guy. I tried not to over-rehearse, but to a certain extent it was unavoidable since I'd have to confront the guy in Chinese.
I found him, demanded my money back, and when he suggested other remedies, including only refunding some of my money, I raised my voice with him. The cashier was anxious to just give me my money back.
After I got all my money back, I took a stroll through the rest of the market. Vendor after vendor had the same product on sale, some branded with different manufacturers, some different colors, but all the same size and shape.
One guy even pulled one out of a drawer and tried to sell it to me. When I saw what he was trying to sell me, I walked back to him and asked him if it was fake.
"Yes," he answered.
"Pian Ren!" I told him. "You cheat people."
Whether it's counterfeit DVD's, shoes, baby food, or computer accessories, it all bothers me. This is one thing about China I don't like.
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