Buyer beware!

Got a pair of Apple AirPods Pro for Christmas. Purchased from a US seller on eBay with an approximately 15,000 positive ranking. At the time of purchase there was no negative feedback on his account related to counterfeit goods that I could see. Seller indicated that they were refurbished, which accounted for the significantly lower price than new. They shipped from the US, not overseas. I figured I'd take a chance because PayPal always seems to back the buyer.

They arrived in about a week. Open them up. Box, all accessories, they look legit when I compare them to all the pictures on-line for detecting fakes. Looks good, down to pulling off the rubber cups to check out the speakers. This things look PERFECT.

Go to pair, and the graphic shows up with the case and the charge of each earbud and the case. Check inside the settings, it shows the model, serial and firmware. Run the serial, and it is legit. It allows me to rename the AirPods from Michael's AirPods Pro to whatever I want. It shows up on the Find My application. They autopair across Apple platforms. The sound is even good with noise cancellation and transparency.

The first give away was there wasn't the option for Spatial Audio which my iOs supports. This bothered me, so I made sure the firmware was up to date as were the iOs on my iPhone 11 Pro and 2020 iPad Pro. The option didn't show up on either. So I went digging through some on-line forums and it suggested unpairing the AirPods and repairing them to see if the left AirPod had a faint blue glow. Sure enough it did! That confirmed it, fakes. I have no doubt that they will soon address this and it will be impossible to tell them apart.

Contacted PayPal and they filed a claim and said since there are now reports on the seller's account of selling counterfeit Apple products that I'll be refunded and probably won't even have to return the fakes. If I have to, they'll send a FedEx label. Checked on eBay, all of the sellers listings are gone. I'm guessing they at the very least suspended the account pending an investigation and it may get nuked. Damn, burned an account with nearly 15,000 positives!

Ended up biting the bullet and buying a set from BJs, and these are definitely legit.

So be careful, because the shit China is turning out is becoming pretty damned impressive.

I would never buy something like that on eBay lol

The real things are made in China so it’s probably pretty easy for them to reverse engineer the things or ex employees making side money

Yeah, I think a lesson across the board is, dont eBay.  And dont Amazon.  

If you have a legit product to buy, buy from a legit storefront.  Otherwise, this will likely happen.

You should see the fake Omega watches

Amusingly it might get to the point where the fakes are actually better than the originals

I agree. I think it's funny how electronic purchases are swinging back to brick and mortar shops due to the prevalence of fakes.

Plus fuck amazon.

Fakes probably come out of the same factory.

Make them for $1, sell them for $50 vs make them for $1, sell them to Apple for $25, and apple sells them for $100.

This.

Also I’d never buy anything from someone with that many positive reviews on eBay.

People selling real stuff are probably going to be people who have it in their garage and whatnot. And they aren’t gonna be the people selling 15,000 items of anything.

One of the Magpul guys told me story years ago, said someone contacted them wanting to warranty a set of MBUS Pros. Funny thing was they hadn't been released yet. Some mofo in China was already knocking them off before they got to market!

For anything that is commonly counterfeited I only buy straight from the vendor. The savings I skip will be made up for in lack of hassles returning a bogus product.

Why not? PayPal has you covered. Won't cost me a penny, might get to keep a set for free that still are decent, just not the real deal. Pretty much zero risk, just a 15 minute phone call to PayPal to file the claim.

I would never buy them from Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, but the pricks at eBay are pretty solid on protecting the buyer.

And I have purchased plenty of refurbed Apple products on eBay with great success... This is the first time I've had an issue, but I went into it knowing it could be an issue and they'd take care of it.

Purpose of the thread is to point out just how good the fakes have become.

Those sub $100 Chinese homage watches are pretty good. $400 must be damn close to the real thing.

I've seen lots of counterfeit knives, gun accessories, and electronics in small stores including gun stores. "Mom and Pop" stores have the internet too...

This is precisely what is happening.

I got burned for about 15 bucks on a fake relay for my pickup. It looked good but not quite.  No more eBay vendors for me

A lot of "fourth shift products" end up in the US.

Plenty of people who have eBay businesses with rankings in the tens of thousands. They often buy closeouts and move them in bulk. This seller had a lot of last season clothing with retail tags from stores on them. I know people who scour the local outlets and buy stuff up cheap and double and triple their money on eBay and the buyer is still getting a deal.

In any event, the seller's store did not look like your typical knock-off goods store, looked more like somebody who just churns and burns.

I'm not even mad.

Well no kidding, they got the blueprints when they started making the real thing.

The company the wife unit works for got burned a few decades back.  They are now expanding into China yet again.  Lets see if they get burned once again.

They also make counterfeit parts for commercial aircraft.

Used to work in commercial nuke industry. Five years removed from that.

We got an industry notice around ten years ago that Chinese copies were getting to the point of indistinguishable. Timken bearings were one example, possibly copied right down to Made in USA on the box.

These had the exact font and size... when I say that these could pass for real if not for those two giveaways, I mean it. The faint blue glow was the biggest giveaway, and I might not have ever noticed that as I am near deaf in my left year so I often don't use the left earbud. The Spatial Audio most users probably would never enable.

What another poster said was spot on, consumer electronic stores will continue for this very reason, they might be the only place you can trust.

I’ve handled $800+ examples that were indistinguishable side-by-side from the real thing until you removed the back and examined the movement.  

Need Customs to raid the place.

If I care about getting the genuine article, not a counterfeit I will only buy from one of three places:
-in store
-authorized dealer website
-manufacturer website

It amazes me the shit China will copy.

There are fake OEM Toyota oil filters on Amazon, fake Weathertech window visors and all sorts of other stuff. Products with such low margin you wonder why they bother instead of just making it their own branded product.

Then there is the OEM semi fakes. Where you think you are buying one thing but you are getting the same exact crap sold at the discount stores
Harbor Freight's floor standing drill press is identical to the Craftsman model of the same size, down to the casting marks.
The engine in my Generac pressure washer is the same 5.5hp engine that HF sells as their Predator line.
I got a Tekton tools master security bit set for Christmas and one of the inserts is the same as a HF set down to the little rubber block the bits come in.
I own a not cheap polisher that was sourced out of the Alibaba catalog and the company that sells it slaps their label on it.

That would never fly around here...

Yep, the factory making the fakes is just down the street

Yeah they'll get right on that....

Some are real factory overruns, defective/blemished units, or they just keep running the machines on their own dime.  At this point, many counterfeits are just off label products with no warranty.

Lol,

Most times it is the same factory churning out legit product.

Well where do you think the real ones come from?  The reason "fakes" are so good is because they're probably made in the same factory as the "real" ones, by the same slave labor, using the same materials.  The trick is ordering direct from Aliexpress and not paying an ebay middleman.

Amazon is just as bad as eBay lately. Fake optics. Fake charging cables. Fake headphones.

Having been in school with some Chinese students I have been similarly amazed. I have had to threaten a few with literal unfriending over cheating or copying that took more effort than just doing the work honestly. Some of them actually changed too and became better students and lab partners as a result. A few I had to shun though.

I have bought and own some Chinese stuff that is branded honestly, and some of it is damn good. I know we hate Amazon right now, but I watched a recent documentary on there covering a heavy equipment company that is making some legit cutting edge stuff (SANY).

But some of them think riding on the coat tails of a real established brand will get them more $$ more quickly, and in their culture, if you don't get caught then its ok.

What I have tried to explain at length to any Chinese guy or girl when this subject has come up is that if you are doing your own thing and can convince me of the merits of your original product or idea, you have a good chance of being successful. I have no problem swinging your (insert Chinese name) brand of golf club if it is good. But if you try to make it look like and colored just almost identically to a Taylormade I will not fo...

Reminds me of those people who were buying top dollar optics off Amazon, replacing them with fake-cogs or whatever, re shrink wrapping the package and returning it.

That shit is going to get out of hand soon.

This. I've definitely started following that trend myself.

Our idiot manufacturers send all their stuff to the chinese to make.  The chinese copy the blueprints and start making them at the factory next door.  Hell they probably make them at the same factory on the second shift.

I like "fakes" for certain things. It usually comes out of the same factory just the seller is cutting out the middle man.

Critical electronics are not one of the things I would take a chance on. Some cheap headphones, sure. If they are being marketed as genuine I would raise a stink

Gibson Les Paul guitars.

Used to have some easy tells, but they’ve buttoned a lot of those up.  The feds actually intercept these fakes at the docks from time to time but there’s many ‘Chibsons’ already in circulation.  Buyer beware when you find a reasonably priced Les Paul on Craigslist.  

They are actually decent $500 guitars, but if you are paying $2000 in Gibson tax, you want it authentic.

Reminds me of there Ozark Trail coolers  and the Yeti coolers..

I think it is the same factory as the Yeti..  Just on the 'fourth' shift mentioned earlier...

Being an ex-sourcing manager (international and domestic) for a large American corporation where I know you have their products in your house —- you’re not wrong, at all.

One of my term papers for Embry-Riddle was on counterfeit aircraft components. I think it's dated 1995...

All fun and games until you understand they've been caught black-marketing engine fan blades. Enjoy your flight.

Got a pair of Shoes that was counterfeit before.   Did some research.

Say the "Xing Bing Bong" electronics factory in China is a contractor for Apple.
Apple says 'Make me 10,000 Pairs of AirPods'.  
Xing Bing Bong makes 10k pairs and ships them to Apple.

However, there's a good bit of leftover material.

So Xing Bing Bong's factory manager calls his workers back in (or doesn't let them leave), and says 'make whatever AirPods you can with this stuff'.   He makes another 3k 'AirPods' and ships them out to the black market.  He's only out labor.   If he's a bit short on gold plated contacts, he'll get in lead soldered contacts, etc. if he can hide it well enough.    That's often why it's almost indistinguishable from the real thing.   As long as he doesn't get caught and lose the contract (and lose his life if he makes the CCP look bad), why not?

I was watching something last year that was about an American that lives in China and is married to a Chinese woman.
The long and short of it is he said that the "cultural revolutions" and purges that have occurred over the years have left them with basically 3 kinds of people
1. The power mad government class
2. The idiots
3. The shady as fuck business class

Basically most Chinese people are without morals, stupid, corrupt or some combination thereof. Most of the intellectuals and higher IQ folks got purged, leaving them with what basically amounts to the authoritarian communist version of Idiocracy.

What'll really cook your noodle is when you realize the real LV purse and the fake one both come outta the same factory. The fake one just gets funneled into the gray market distribution pathway

Why not contact the seller first?  Chances are it's a drop shipped item that he never even sees and with 15,000 positive feedback, he probably wants to know if a distributor is playing fast and loose with him.

I've had two different counterfeit Samsung USB-C fast charging plugs advertised as OEM originals, one delivered from a U.S. seller on ebay and one from a U.S. seller on Amazon.  They were pretty convincing, except there were minor detail errors, like the wording on the product side was different from the verified original I have or the finish and text quality was slightly different.  I finally had to go through Best Buy to get a genuine OEM.

Short of fellatio, eBay will do whatever it takes to make the buyer happy. It's the seller that they tend to fuck over.

Come tomorrow all the brick and mortar stores except WalMart and Home Depot will be ordered closed.

Couldn't, by the time I discovered they were fake and went back to eBay they pulled the listing and disabled his account and my ability to contact him. That was my first path but eBay cut it off. PayPal was the next option after I exhausted eBay. Ever try to find a phone number for eBay? You'll get the virtual runaround. PayPal I had a person in less than 2 minutes. Just kept saying "representative" at all the prompts. And either this was the best Delhi Americanized English ever, or I actually got ahold of a person in the US. Polite, professional, resolved.

Made in the same factory, by the same people, on the same equipment.