But seriously… DHGate.com appears to be a marketplace for sellers to hock their goods, which means that it’s another place to beware of memory deals that are too good to be true.

I personally won’t buy flash drives anymore from overseas. They look really cool, but they’re not reliable. Stick to NewEgg or Amazon.com (“fulfilled by Amazon”, not individual sellers) and you should be ok.

Ali-Express out of China sold me 20 x 256GB Kingston 200 Datatraveler USB’s — all fake and are they putting me thru the hoops.

Foolish me — I need to to be taught a lesson obviously!! If it’s too good then ………

I had a run-in with Scammy Ebay/Paypal some time ago — Fake Colorburst high end software for 24 inch plus inkjet printers. A UK guy out of Manchester, Michael James a software pirate. I still have the fake DVD.

Anyway, my bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Aust. , Visa — all wouldn’t help. And Ebat/PayPal are the worst.

The Australian Financial Ombudsman got my money back. took about 6 weeks — not including the two months and 50 hours I wasted with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Visa Australia and PayPal Australia.

Lesson: Do a screen capture of every page of the Ebay Ad — be maticulous and document everything. Have all the facts. Present your case susinctly with as few words as possible all backed up with Screen Captures. My family won’t invest any money with the Commonwealth Bank ever again — our monies have been withdrawn and now are with local credit unions. Great place Austalia, I will move here permanently!! You earn 6% here at the Credit Union — in the US we are earning 0.15%!!! The land of the Brave and the Free!! Just don’t stick your head up!

I found several 32GB flash drives on eBay for around $19-$33 — a screaming deal compared to retail stores. I put a maximum bid of $25 for one of the drives being sold by eBay seller [sellingtech2u].

While searching for more flash drives on eBay, I noticed several e-Books on sale on how to not fall for fake drive scams. That, along with the extremely low price tag on the drives, turned my radar on. I decided to search the Internet for information on fake drives.

Oh, my, I had no idea the fake flash drive scam was at such large proportions. I immediately contacted the seller of the item I bid on. I asked [sellingtech2u] about the accuracy of the flash drive’s memory capacity. At first, she said all her drives were”true” 32GB; that she had tested some of them but not all, otherwise they wouldn’t be considered “new”, as she put it.

I insisted that I needed a true 32GB drive and needed her guarantee. I informed her that I would be testing the drive as soon as I received it. She changed her mind about sending me any of the flash drives in her current stock, asking me to wait for the next batch, which would cost $5 to $10 more and would come with a one year warrantee.

She didn’t realize it, but she pretty much told on herself: she knowingly sells fake drives. I cannot leave a negative eBay rating on her account because I did not buy the product from her. I hope that, by leaving my comment here, others can be forewarned about buying from [sellingtech2u].

I found another supplier of really cool, inexpensive flash drives: GadgetTown.com. I tried reaching them on the phone for two days to no avail. I contacted the live-chat rep on the third day, who instructed me to contact their wholesaler rep, Robert, via MSM.

Robert assured me that all of their drives are of true capacity and have been tested by them. So I went ahead and ordered $255 worth of 32GB flash drives. The receipt I received from PayPal was payable to a different company: Yall Inc [confirmed PayPal merchant since 2006].

I received the drives 3 days ago. I just test drove one of them today. It’s a complete fake. It only holds about 13 GB to 15 GB worth of data (corrupt data, on top of it). I tested it by filling it up with large as well as small files. Most of the files simply disappeared after being in the drive for 3 to 10 minutes. Other files remained in the drive, but the contents were either erase or corrupted beyond recognition by the system.

I’ve opened a dispute against them Yall Inc. Let’s see how it turns out.

I’m extremely disappointed at GadgetTown.com and Yall Inc. for selling fake drives. I was planning on buying thousands of dollars worth of merchandise from them but, after this experience, they completely lost their credibility with me.

P.S.: I must confess that it was kind of fun seeing the files just loose all their contents or simply vanishing into thin air.