Spot a Fake SanDisk

From SifWiki

1 Memory Cards Overview
2 Fake Memory Cards
- 2.1 Problems
- 2.2 How-To Spot Fake Memory Cards
3 Recommendations
- 3.1 My Conclusion
- 3.2 References

Memory Cards Overview

After recently purchasing a new phone I immediately started looking for a bigger memory card to use with it. The phone in particular is a Nokia N80 and uses a MiniSD card (Mini Secure Digital). At the time these cards were around 50 ukp in the shops, on eBay I spotted a number of sellers selling them for much much less!

One of these sellers was ugoole who had (and still has) thousands of positive feedbacks. Re-assured by this I stumped up my cash and received my SanDisk fairly promptly in the post.

Fake Memory Cards

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Unfortunately, this didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped and the card turned out to be fake. In retrospect there is a lot of details around the net about this particular seller and his cheap counterfeit cards.

Problems

Fake - The card received was not a genuine SanDisk but a cheap copy. The problem with this is that the card will work fine for a couple of months, hence the 8000+ positive feedbacks the seller has. After that you will start having problems! Don't buy one of these counterfeit cards if you value your data, it simply isn't worth the hassle.

Auto-Feedback - The first issue I had was that the seller sent an email on completion of the auction stating that feedback would be automatically left, if I left positive feedback the seller would automatically also leave positive feedback and vice versa. I wasn't happy with this, leaving negative feedback would automatically mean getting negative feedback myself - I don't think this should be allowed on eBay and it irritated me to think I could lose my positive feedback rating so I didn't leave feedback.

Non-UK - Contrary to the sellers description, item wasn't despatched from the UK.

How-To Spot Fake Memory Cards

The card I bought was a 2gig MiniSD card, branded as SanDisk but clearly not, in these photos the card on the left is the genuine card and the one on the right is the fake. Side by side the quality of the product is noticeably different, printing is worse, the stickers don't sit as well, the plastic looks cheaper and as I found out, the quality and reliability is also not there.

If you've already bought a card and you suspect it to be fake, the best way to check for certain is to contact SanDisk support and ask them to verify it. They will need the serial number from the card and will also request pictures of the front, back and sides of the card.

Recommendations

My Conclusion

In future I will purchase items like this from a reputable supplier, the genuine card used in the images was bought from 7DayShop who were quick to deliver and extremely cheap.