apealy Ebay Fake Flash Seller Alert – China
Posted by KittyFireFlash on April 27, 2009
apealy is an eBay seller of Counterfeit (Fake) Flash USB drives and MP Players. Based in China apealy is currently estimated to have sold more than 1700+ items.
Important Reading:
- USB Flash Drives Best Price Bargains Fair Value To Sell Or Buy 8GB 16GB 32GB
- Genuine Verses Fake Counterfeit USB Flash Drives – A Guide – USB Flash Chips Used – Grades A B C D
- What Are The Real Costs For Flash Chips In China? Guide 2009
Report in to SOSFakeFlash if your testing confirms you have a false capacity device.
To see apealy’s negative feedback Please Click Here
April 20th, 2009 – we have 4 eBay listings confirmed fake.
These are the models sold under the eBay seller apealy All are confirmed as Counterfeit, recorded with eBayer ID and eBay Item Number – Standard Procedure. Presented as listed at auction. Counterfeit items tied to criminal activity enjoy no protection. If you bought one of these usb fake flash drives from apealy, you should test immediately with the software H2testw 1.4 . Do not store any important data or music on the devices until you can confirm you have the advertised capacity (minus formatting overhead).
The models sold by apealy:
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Not yet confirmed:
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Should your device not report the true advertised capacity:
- Immediately attempt to move any data you have stored on it to another source. Be advised if you have stored more than the reported size from H2testw 1.4, you will not be able to recover it all – you can expect to see errors in the copy back.
- Immediately report to eBay and PayPal to add your voice against this seller.
If the eBay Item number has disappeared from your won list. Please go to PayPal and search through your transactions for the approximate time frame of your purchase. You will find the details of your transaction and ebay item number. PayPal keeps this information for a long time. Use the email address:
complaint-response@paypal.com
Please include:
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PayPal Transaction Number
- Ebay Item Number
- Date Of PayPal Transaction
- Date Of eBay Item Listing
- Your eBayer Id
- Cite eBay Seller apealy
- The results from your testing with H2testw 1.4
- Any information concerning data loss and it’s value to you
You are to inform them you wish to be part of the investigation against this seller and are adding yourself to the evidence. You expect to be fully refunded for the purchase and shipping and if you can prove data loss compensation for it as well. Furthermore, it is a fact that PayPal and eBay are aware of cases pouring in. You are invited to copy:
SOSFakeFlashDrive@gmail.com
on your correspondence.
SOSFakeFlash 
Brenda said
The flash drive at the bottom right is an obvious fake – looks like a re-programmed and re-labled 2GB Kingston. Why does ebay alow such obvious fraud on their site? Don’t they have eyes in their heads?
Blarney jon said
I bought one of these drives specifically to highlight that it was a fake and you can read my story on my Ebay page (blarney-jon) as a guide to being conned. I buy memory and my contacts in the Far East told me that you could not buy memory at that price even in China from the factories. I reported it 3 times to Ebay, I e-mailed people who had purchased and the saddest thing of all is that most people who had purchased still thought their drives were genuine. It will take some time and some heartache before they realise the truth. My money was refunded the same day of applying for it, but this could have been stopped earlier.
Peter said
I paid for one of these memory sticks from apealy, never got it, no answer to email. He seems to be gone from e-bay but re-appeared as opdoam selling the same fake items using the same fake pictures.
kittyfireflash said
To Peter
You need to file a claim with paypal immediately. As you did not receive you should not have any trouble with a refund. A quick inspection of the two ids, shows that they are not the same. Not exactly. What they have in common is their “birthday” when they started on ebay, both in december 2008. Fake Flash sellers often generate a lot of ids in a few months. Then they let them sleep. When one id is brought down by ebay members, they just pull a new one out of the hat to carry on.
It is why we need to have more ebay patrols. They spring up like weeds. We can box them into a corner and have them removed but it needs people to spot them. The prices opdoam is selling at, means either this is a person who likes to lose money or is selling fakes. There is only one way to find out.
Everyone
Contact those who bought from opdoam and ask them to test their items to be sure they got the true capacity. If not – file a claim immediately and…Leave follow up feedback immediately – indicating that they got a fake
Fake flash sellers are brought down with three things:
1) negative feedback
2) disputes at paypal
3) complaints to ebay
We just had a recent comment from someone who sells usb flash drives. He reports that prices are rising in cost, just as FlashChipTutor predicted at http://flashdrivefacts.wordpress.com/ in the article
The manufacturers known as “fabs” have cut production to reduce existing inventory.
Two things determine fakes:
1) general pricing guidelines for chips that are used in the devices
2) Testing!
Please help all! Shoulders to the wheel and push those fake flash sellers off the cliff.
One of our members suffering from exhaustion on fake flash duty wrote a jingle. Taking the words of an old song and changing it for fake flash. It’s kind of funny but not so funny. It reflects what we are up against and have seen in the last year but for new victims they would not appreciate the humour. For old victims, who keep on fighting we do need to lighten up a bit as this work does tire.
Buyers from opdoam should be contacted to test their items.
Blarney jon said
I have been in contact with my suppliers today regarding 8, 16 and 32Gb memory, they tell me that it is IMPOSSIBLE to buy memory less than certain commodity prices at the moment. The price today and for the next 5 days is as follows: 8Gb €14.25, 16Gb €22.50, 32Gb €48.50, these are the ex VAT prices from the Far East. No buyer in the UK or Ireland can buy product significantly lower than that at the moment, even if you were to order 10,000 pieces, you would only save a few cents. Therefore, to a degree spotting a fake is very very easy, if it costs much less than these wholesale prices, it’s fake. You will not get a 16Gb memory pen for €10, €15 or even €20 unless it is not what it says it is.
Sellers like Apealy have traded on the greed of buyers, if you go into a large UK retailer and a 16Gb pen is €49.99 how on earth can anyone really think they are going to get it for £5.50 with free delivery from China, which is what some of these went for.
To finish up, an interesting development from the price increases is the return of the 2Gb memory, now costing €4.95 + VAT, go figure that one, some of the 16Gb fakes that are actually 2Gb are turning out to be priced about right, for 2Gb!
Verified news from China is that memory will continue to increase, factors for this include dollar rate, production decreases, factory closures, shipping costs and good old supply and demand. There used to be a larger supply than demand about 12 months ago and the prices were nearly half what they are today, everybody was clearing stock, many retailers had bought in stock and saw the value drop like a stone, this year with less chip manufacturers and less product coming out of China and retailers reluctant to place large orders for fear of being ‘hung out to dry’ like last year, the prices are rising. The factories that are still in existence have a captive audience, I believe there may be a bit of Cartelism going on as well.
The way to stop these fraudsters is to not buy their product, people must ask themselves, why is it so cheap? How many fake cars are sold on Ebay? none of course, because nobody is stupid enough to pay $20,000 for a $50,000 Mercedes without checking the car out, so you see my point, some of the blame must lie with the buyers.