Fake Hard Drives - Why don't Ebay care?

[rastablasta70]

Why are Ebay not interested in removing the listing for the blatantly fake hard drives?

Bought a 1TB USB drive delivered for £31. Was confident it would be a fake but figured I'd try anyway.

As suspected, it's fake. Looks to be hacked firmware incorrectly reporting size. Disk seems to be around 74GB total, try to write a single bit over and you'll get I/O errors.

ebay is absolutely flooded with these listings, do Ebay not care? I dread to think how many people are scammed daily by these.

[tsmgmd]

Why do people buy items they admit to been confident it will be fake..

How do eBay know there fake if people don't report it.

[red_magpie]

Was confident it would be a fake but figured I'd try anyway.

So you found that the first one was fake, as you had expected - but then bought a second one anyway??

EBay can and does act against scam sellers, but in this case where is the evidence to support it? This seller has sold over 100 of these hard drives in the last month, but to date with very few other complaints. They have over 13,000 feedbacks in the last year, 99.1% positive, with perfect five star detailed seller ratings.

The best way for buyers to protect themselves is to use common-sense and walk away from too good to be true bargains. EBay is NOT like the shops, especially when buying direct from sellers in China.

In this case, fortunately the seller has a UK distribution base. This means that buyers can not only get a full refind through eBay, but the seller will be responsible for the return postage.

[john1297576]

Have you never heard of or read the Money Back Guarantee, using that and it costs the seller, you can also leave feedback and use the report button.

You bought knowing it was a fake, then complain that ebay does not stop it, but do nothing about it yourself.

Ebay never see items that are listed, they cannot possibly examine every one of millions of Items so they have to rely on buyers reporting items, and opening unpaid cases to get a refund.

[plpmr]

of course eBay care that's why they give buyer protection.

Common sense helps -

"Bought a 1TB USB drive delivered for £31. Was confident it would be a fake but figured I'd try anyway."

just like buying gold @ a fraction of its scrap value or £20 notes @ 50p.

As you said blatant.

Why not leave feedback?

[rastablasta70]

Not really the same at all is it? This 1TB hard drive is probably 50% of current market price. So I expect many people fall for this. There is no way of knowing either unless you have technical knowledge on how to find the true size.

I have left bad feedback, doesn't help the next buyer though does it?

And buyer protection? Great, so i get my refund, and the next customer who orders gets scammed.

You've completely avoided my question really. Seems like Ebay don't really care, they care enough to let the small percentage of people who find out its fake get their money back, but I expect 90% probably don't know and by the time they realise the hard drive is failing its too late.

[tsmgmd]

So what you are saying is eBay should employ someone with technical knowledge to travel around the world and test every individual unit to check if they are fake.

Surely a simpler solution is for people with technical knowledge not to buy these things to start with, then report the seller, then open a 30 Day mbg claim and finally leave negative feedback.

[*knight-rider*]

`Not really the same at all is it? This 1TB hard drive is probably 50% of current market price. So I expect many people fall for this.`

and therein lies the issue, because people fall for it because all they look at is the price, which is exactly what you did AND even suspected it was rubbish before you bought it, but continued anyway!
I`ve got two external `1TB HDD`s here myself and paid closer to £60 for them, both of which have worked brilliant for a few years now, so in the end, you get what you pay for, but you guys can`t keep buying this cheap junk then blame Ebay because you could`nt resist `giving it ago for the price` 🙂
Open a return and send it back, then if enough people keep returning these items, the seller will get fed up of paying return postage and hopefully stops selling them, but Ebay can`t police millions of items all the time, they are`nt selling the stuff, other people are!