Defective item and the 90+ day run around

[stephenfc]

I bought a 32g micro sd card from china. I received the item in 20 days faster delivery than similar sized items  bought within Canada. I spent 4 days testing the card before contacting the seller to let them know the card was defective and would not store more than 3g of data (approx 3000 songs), any additional data written to the card was corrupt and corrupted the already stored data. On September 27th the vendor confirmed they were shipping a replacement card ASAP.  On November 6th the vendor confirmed it had been shipped. As of today December 16th I still have not received a replacement. I tried going through the resolution centre on ebay and Paypal and the auto reply was the same, basically the transaction does not qualify for either to pursue with the vendor, both indicated I should contact the vendor. I have contacted the vendor again today and fully expect more run around. I do nor expect to ever get a replacement or refund. The vendor has sold almost 10,000 of these cards I'd like to know how many of those are defective and I sure hope no one has used them as storage for important data with out verifying the data did not get stored corrupted.

[pocomocomputing]

Memory cards and USB drives are one of the most fake memory items on eBay. It is a know scam where they take a smaller capacity card or drive and just fake the formatting to show as a larger drive. Most likely in your case it is not defective but a scam. Check the sellers feedback on these items and see how many negatives they have received about this issue.

The seller then makes promises of replacing the item with another one and delays until you are past the deadlines for making a claim through eBay (30 or 45 days) or PayPal (45 days) and also delays long enough so that you cannot even leave feedback (60 days).

If you paid with a credit card using PayPal, then you may be able to a credit card charge back. You need to contact the credit card company which has a phone number on the back. Be prepared to have details of the purchase on eBay and PayPal ready when calling. Credit card charge back period varies and is usually longer than eBay or PayPal. Maybe 90 to 180 days or longer.

PayPal changed their policy to 180 days on PayPal USA November 18, 2014 and will be changing it on PayPal Canada on January 7, 2015. While this does not help you now, be aware of this new time period for any future purchases on eBay or any other eCommerce sites where you can pay with PayPal. The eBay time period will stay at 30 or 45 days so past this, you must use PayPal to make a claim for item not receive or item is defective.

[pocomocomputing]

Some ebay members have written guide on buying memory devices on eBay and how to spot a fake.

http://www.ebay.com/gds/Detecting-fake-and-bad-microSD-cards-USB-drives-flash-memory-/10000000177896...

http://www.ebay.com/gds/Detecting-fake-flash-memory-on-e-bay-/10000000013353853/g.html

Outside of eBay there are web pages on the issue:

https://flashfakecentral.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/can-ebay-stop-the-sale-of-fake-and-counterfeit-mem...

https://fakememorysentinel.wordpress.com/

[tvango123]

Unfortunately, how many people actually try to fill the entire usb drive or sd card up to the maximum prior to giving feedback?  Very small percentage I think.

Buyers will pop the card / drive in and see wow it's actually showing the right size and they think they got a great deal, write a feedback without thinking much further.  Some will put a few files takes a smaller step and copy a few files, sees it works and say to themselves: looks good, awesome...

What I did was fill it up with large video files.  The whole copying process looks legit.  It is not  until I try testing the first and last file that I notice the problems...

I contacted the seller about the issue and they refunded me completely.  I left a neutral feedback but I think in this case I should have left a negative feedback because they are banking on the fact the buyers won't check, this is simply wrong.

[femmefan1946]

Well at least you left a record that there was a problem.

I hope you also left Detailed Seller Ratings with a ONE STAR rating for Description.

DSRs are much more important than feedback.

A normal transaction gets Five Stars.

If a seller's DSRs drop below 4.3, her ability to list and sell are severely restricted, her fees may rise, and she may even be kicked right off the site.

The lowest Rating is ONE STaR. No stars is a free pass.

[stephenfc]

Thanks for the replies. I'll stick to big box stores for memory cards from now on.