Amazon shamelessly advertises fake products: unsuspecting customers are ripped off
Anyone who regularly orders online will certainly have come across various fake products. Even on Amazon, you are not safe from dubious dealers who try to rip off potential customers with unbeatably cheap offers. In addition to fake SSDs, there has also been an increase in offers of gigantic microSD cards, which are offered at supposed bargain prices. We reveal how you can spot the rip-off ads in a flash.
Amazon rip-off: gigantic memory cards lure with small prices
The internal smartphone memory is too small, the digital game library of the Nintendo Switch has grown since the last sale, or a number of films and series are to be downloaded onto the tablet before the holiday trip. reasons for that Purchase a large microSD memory card are there many. And indeed, the prices for the tiny storage media have continued to plummet in recent years. Solid models from well-known brands such as SanDisk with 256 GB of memory are now available for less than 30 euros (view at Amazon).
But for the price, you can easily get twice, if not four times, the storage space! At least try that Whitening search results on Amazonwhen looking for a microSD card. 512 GB of storage space is available for around 20 euros, a 1 TB model is available for 33.75 euros and a whopping 2 TB of storage only costs 74.99 euros – that sounds tempting, doesn’t it?
But with such offers, the alarm bells should ring immediately for potential buyers – because most of the products are brazen fakes.
SD and microSD cards can vary greatly from model to model. In the video we tell you what to look out for when buying:
Wrong microSD cards at Amazon: How to recognize the fakes
So that you don’t fall into the trap of the dubious sellers, we have created a small checklist for you that you can use as a guide to recognize brazen rip-off offers for microSD cards:
- Design is based on SanDisk/Samsung cards
- When specifying the memory, odd GB numbers such as “982 GB” are used
- Prices are irrationally good, tickets cost only half or even less in direct comparison to reputable competitors
- bad user ratings and comments
- slow transmission speed
If you have already bought one of the fake cards, it might even be that you don’t even notice it at first. This is also reflected in the ratings of some fake models on Amazon. Some of them turn out surprisingly well.
If you put the memory card in your computer, for example, you might even see the amount of memory advertised. Only when you save your data does it become clear that it is a fake. Because they are simply lost during the writing process. It is common practice for these fake cards to have the memory controller modified to that the system is fooled into thinking that there is more memory.
With tools like h2testw (Download at heise) you can check whether everything is correct with your microSD card.
Fake SSDs are also increasingly being offered on Amazon:
Those looking for a new microSD card should rather to a model from well-known manufacturers like Samsung, SanDisk, Kingston, PNY, Intenso, TransCend or Lexar and make sure when buying from Amazon that you have the appropriate card sold by the manufacturer itself or by Amazon. You should refrain from third-party offers.
All models whose Rating under 4 out of 5 possible stars lies, you should avoid. Don’t be fooled by utopian bargain prices. If something is too good to be true, it usually is. If you see a fake offer on Amazon, report it via the website so that the ad is removed as quickly as possible and the retailer is blocked.
Finally, here is a list of some fake microSD cards that we came across while researching Amazon. This list is far from complete. You should definitely not put these models in your shopping cart:
