zhongel Ebay Fake Flash Seller Alert – China
Posted by KittyFireFlash on June 13, 2009
zhongel is an eBay seller of Counterfeit (Fake) Flash USB drives. Based in China zhongel is the spitting image of our dear haifter and of course is also selling 8 GB MP Players. zhongel is tip toeing through the fake flash tulips in hope of not being discovered. You will get a speedy refund to hush up as zhongel is attempting to be haifter successor. More than 1200+ fake flash items have been dumped so far and the fake flash assembly line is in full gear.
A recent comment at SOSFakeFlash said:
HAIFTER
I see there is a dramatic change in the listings by haifter too. Was it something we said?
haifter was/is the 10th life, zhongel the 11th. So the question is, How many lives can a fake flash seller have?
Is this cheeky? Does its not demonstrate who rules eBay? Fake Flash sellers rule and eBay is fast asleep, from eating a poisoned fake flash apple? Where is prince charming to wake eBay up! Unfortunately fake flash victims are not inclined toward giving eBay that magic kiss.
If you bought any flash based item from this seller test immediately for true capacity and do not use unless you can confirm you have the advertised capacity. Leave negative feedback immediately if you have a false capacity item. If you left postive, do follow up feedback. Under no circumstances should you revise feedback to get a refund. Contact everyone who left postive feedback for this seller and get them to test!
SOSFakeFlash usually puts the images of fake flash devices the continuation of an article, so has to save on people’s bandwidth. On occasion when we need to make a point we present the items before the continuation. Here are the items zhongel is offering. Comments anyone?
Sold by zhongel
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not yet investigated:
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Important Reading:
- eBay Victims do not leave postive Feedback or change FB to postive to get refunds!
- eBay – What To Do When Sellers Demands You Change Your Negative Feedback To Positive For A Refund Or Demands Positive As A Condition Of Refund – A Guide
- USB Flash Drives Best Price Bargains Fair Value To Sell Or Buy 8GB 16GB 32GB
- Why Leave Immediate Negative Feedback For an eBay Fake Flash Seller?
Report in to SOSFakeFlash if your testing confirms you have a false capacity device.
Don’t forget to leave the calling card of “SOSFakeFlash” and “H2testw” in your feedback to help others. Do not change your feedback to get a refund – you will only create more victims.
- PayPal Orders You To Return Fake MP Players, Fake MP Players , Fake USB Flash Drives, Fake Memory Cards To Get A Refund? Think Again!
- 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
To see zhongel’s negative feedback Please Click Here
June 11th, 2009 – we have 1 eBay listings confirmed fake.
The models sold under the eBay seller zhongel 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 items from zhongel, you should test immediately with the software H2testw 1.4 . Do not store any important information until you can confirm you have the advertised capacity (minus formatting overhead).
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 zhongel
- 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.
30 Responses to “zhongel Ebay Fake Flash Seller Alert – China”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
SOSFakeFlash 
Gordon Ellis said
This is a summary of feedback left for zhongel highlighting the problems encountered so far by customers. These should all be nice red negatives but unfortunately not, so harder to spot.
fake capacity drives. Show 16 Gb but are actually 2 GB drive. Beware of thief
Brand New 16GB USB DRIVE PEN STICK MEMORY ZXX (#260425758772)
Good seller bt not 100% satisfied with the item, very slow working
Brand New 16GB USB DRIVE PEN STICK MEMORY Z11 (#260418015661)
thanks for the refund
Brand New 16GB USB DRIVE PEN STICK MEMORY ZKK (#260422574361)
Isnt full 16gb only around 2gb then gives write error.
Brand New 16GB USB DRIVE PEN STICK MEMORY ZXX (#260418149459)
Counterfeit drive supplied (poss not their error) but full refund given
Brand New 16GB USB DRIVE PEN STICK MEMORY ZKK (#260418028225)
all good A+++++++
Follow-up (14-Jun-09 14:47):
FRAUD – FAKE CAPACITY – TEST WITH H2TESTW – SEE; SOSFAKEFLASH.WORDPRESS.COM
Brand New 16GB USB DRIVE PEN STICK MEMORY Z11 (#260418158289)
3.9 GB fake in 16GB pack. h2testw.exe (see neg below) shows data also corrupt.
Full refund given, thank you.
Brand New 16GB USB DRIVE PEN STICK MEMORY ZXX (#260418140785)
a bloody chinese 2gb fake drive. download “h2testw.exe” from google & test drive
Brand New 16GB USB DRIVE PEN STICK MEMORY ZKK (#260416736430)
Prompt delivery although memory corrupted so had to re-format – now works fine!
Brand New 16GB USB DRIVE PEN STICK MEMORY Z11 (#260416218138)
Had a problem with the item. Seller responded quickley and gave a refund. A+
Brand New 8GB MP3 Player Clip Design Metal Case Blue (#260414439199)
kittyfireflash said
fightflashfraud, you could not have said the truth more clearly!
fantastic price = fantastic fake
You have summarized the conclusions of the FrankenFlash Project based on 14 months of investigation – just a few words!
Gordon Ellis said
Zhongel has now been suspended.
I reported zhongel and haifter to Kingston for selling fake Kingston Data Travelers and a day later zhongel is removed from ebay, and haifter has removed all listings of the same fake Kingston.
Maybe next time I contact ebay I should provide them with link to sosfakeflash and toolhaus.org just to point out the obvious!
Naeem said
I recently purchased a 16 GB USB from zhongel, and just noticed that the eBay Item number has disappeared from my won list. I emailed zhongel but haven’t received a reply yet.
Will I be receiving my item? Or is it a scam? What should I do?
Please help! Thanks!
Randy said
In response to Gordon’s post, EBay is responsive to vendors complaints and Ebay provides them with special reporting phone numbers. EBay is concerned about the companies lawyers. Some companies are very agressive and EBay is quick to remove obvious fakes. There are very few Apple fakes available on EBay as they very aggressively protect their trademark rights.
How did you report it to Kingston, phone?
Gordon Ellis said
Reporting to Kingston
eu_infoservice@kingston-technology.com
Giulia Borracci
Customer Service Specialist
To be honest, I did not wish to run up a phone bill trying to get information to right place so went looking for e-mail address to contact. After sending an e-mail to several different Kingston e-mail adresses, I was answered by Guilia Boracci, Customer Service Specialist.
I must admit, I was pleasantly surprised to get a personalized response from such a big company. Giulia has been extremely helpful and courteous in all communications and has been very effective in having the fake Kingstons pulled off ebay in the cases of haifter and zhongel. If only ebay had the same approach.
The e-mail address mentioned above is the one I have been using to contact Giulia.
Gordon Ellis said
Naeem’s Dilemna
Not sure if this is of any help but, check your e-mail confirming purchase of usb drive from zhongel. It should have item number in description or alternatively , go to your paypal account for details.
Don’t waste your time contacting zhongel directly. I would suggest using ebay resolution centre to get results. It’s just the same as contacting zhongel directly but with notification being done through ebay and paypal. Only takes about 5 minutes from selecting Safety Centre, on to Resolve a Problem and so on. The message you leave gets forwarded to zhongel and he/she has opportunity to respond. I’m not entirely sure how you stand at moment as you may have to allow reasonable time for drive to arrive before proceeding. No harm in getting the ball rolling early. Your drive is fake before it arrives but you can not prove so until it arrives.
InspectorTech said
To Gordon comment #7
Yes we have seen very positive signs from Kingston. At the different sites in the project we are doing everything we can to expose sellers of counterfeit kingston usb flash drives. It is not fair to brand names. There is a lot of R&D costs associated with creating a usb flash drive and the real truth is, they don’t make hugh profits as a lot of people think.
FlashChipTutor wants to do more articles on nand technology and the costs but we need him at the moment to help us out.
One of the biggest problems is that people think usb flash chips are inexpensive to create. Not so. Kingston has a program for authorized distributors and resellers. There is a reason for this – so consumers can get the genuine product and avoid a fake.
Sony had created a article on eBay, a guide to warn people. Can you contact Giulia to ask if Kingston would be interested in doing the same? Sony has a one stop email address that people can use to report fakes. Perhaps Kingston should do this as well. We would be very happy to promote the guide they would publish as we have done for Sony at our sites. Do you think they would be interested in putting a guide on eBay?
Jenny said
I already made my payment to zhongel and few days later the seller got removed from ebay. Will I still receive my item? What should I do? How can I contact ebay and let them know.
Randy said
Hi Everyone! Add me to the zhongel list…. I paid but haven’t received anything yet. No communication, no nothing.
I knew it smelled fishy from the start so I filed a claim with Paypal early.
I’ve been through this several times before with ebay sellers, and Paypal has always been good getting my money back to me.
Jenny said
I’ve opened my case with paypal. Now just wait for the seller zhongel to reply? If he doesn’t reply, i escalate my case?
Rob said
just received a fake 16gb kingston datatraveller from zhongel 14 days after ordering. tested with h2testw and proved to be fake. just filed a paypal claim.
Randy said
Jenny- don’t listen to any of this “appropriate” bologna. You can escalate a Paypal dispute to a claim any time you want. There is no time frame that has to be followed. No communication is a legit reason for a claim anyway.
Also, Paypal does NOTHING until your dispute case is escalated to a claim, then time limits and guidelines go into place that have to be followed by both involved parties.
I’ve been in this position several times and I can tell you all from experience – ebay will do NOTHING to assist except suspend the seller. Paypal. also owned by ebay, are the only ones you should be dealing with. Ask yourself, and this should be a no-brainer – who handled the money transaction? Paypal. Again, ignore any advice to deal with ebay, you’re just wasting your time. Immediately file with Paypal.
Gordon Ellis said
Mjlakin has just received a positive feedback for the sale of a fake kingston bought from either haifter or zhongel. He sold it on despite me informing him they were fakes. He had the opportunity to reclaim his money from zhongel and haifter but chose not to. I asked him to contact buyers to let them know. He replied saying he had not been aware. He carried on trying to sell the fakes until I reported it to Kingston and they had his listings removed.
It would be of great help if someone could let the buyer of the fake kingston, ybaneza, know that he has just been purposefully ripped off by mjlakin to the tune of £18.00. I am not able to contact members at this time.
Gordon Ellis said
Mjlakin in the money.
Mjlakin has probably already got his refund from haifter and zhongel as well as extra from selling these fakes on. I advised him in detail at the time about how to claim his money back and also explained he would not have to return fake drives.
KittyFireFlash said
Grrrr! The only thing worse then a fake flash seller is a fake flash victim who turns around to palm his fake flash purchases on another eBay member. We have had a number of cases like this.
If you have the correspondance, please send in to sosfakeflashdrive for investigation. We do stories on this sort of thing. Such behavior is beyond low.
He sold three, two are the kingston fakes… There is a buyer out there….
Gordon Ellis said
I contacted mjlakin initially after he had left positive feedback for haifter, zhongel and pandachinchin on fake 16gb drives bought from all three sellers.
This was the message that eventually got a response from mjlakin despite about 4 previous messages advising him his drives were fakes from haifter and zhongel and not to try to sell them on.
“Dear mjlakin,
Can I please buy both these dodgy fake Kingstons and get us both arrested for committing criminal offences. I am a rich arab king and I will give you a million pounds for both if you send me a tenner and the dodgy kingstons. You have won the spanish lottery and I will give you millions of pounds if you send me another tenner. Just put in my paypal account and I will get back to you with further instructions. If you send me another tenner I can keep you out of jail. I will just say you are from Arabia too (let me do the talking)and we will get diplomatic immunity but this time Mel Gibson will not be there so we will get away. If we phone the A-Team they could help because the triads made you buy those dodgy kingstons to fund organised crime. They just want you to sell them to our corrupt politicians to make massive profit from them putting the costs on their expenses claims funded by the tax paying public. They will just lose them on buses and trains anyway and want to buy more”.
This was the first response received from mjlakin
“the item number for my usb pens and the number your after dont match up,”
I replied with further advice and warnings of consequences and got this response:
“oh right i didnt realised”
I further mentioned about removing the other fakes for sale and about contacting his buyers to refund them and got this response:
“ok thank you letting me know i hope it all get sorted soon”
Despite all this, he carried on with listings until they were removed by ebay through pressure from Kingston. He obviously never bothered to contact buyers either. I made sure the first two were contacted and advised.
FlashChips said
I remember this one in the staff meeting!
Better than Kitty’s mistake about “BRIDES” instead of bribes in a post. So funny. LOL!
We are serious about our work, deadly serious. Humor is good – this is a dark subject. The fraud is unbelievable. Nobody expected it to be so deep. mjlakin seems to be short on grey cells and strong on making money. Don’t think he was a convert to the dark side, but a natural.
Gordon Ellis said
Inspector Tech/ Kingston Guide Request
I contacted Giulia about a guide but Kingston are not prepared to share their secrets with the counterfeiters. They are happy enough with their present system of detecting fakes.
I am waiting on word back from Giulia about the best place to report Kingston fakes.
Gordon Ellis said
hadi fayad
A friend of zhongel, haifter, opdoam possibly?
InspectorTech said
To Gordon:
Advise Giulia, we understand. The last thing Kingston needs is for these counterfeitors to have get the inside scoop. This problem has be worked from many different angles.
We are please they monitor our sites. If we goof or get something wrong they can leave those “comments” or have them contact you directly.
It would be a good idea, though for a centralized email or contact for people to report to them. Globally. Every lead matters.
http://www.kingstonusbcf.com/ is a site that really has the project’s knickers in a twist!
If you search on: kingstonusbcf in google, you see our articles. Then if you click on one of them for wordpress.com you get this inserted:
Ads by Google
Kingston 64GB 32GB $49
64GB 32GB 16GB USB CF SD Card $39 discount wholesale Freeshipping 40%
http://www.kingstonusbcf.com
This site sells counterfeits, in particular DT150 64GB DataTraveler usb flash drives!
Kingston reported that they know this site is bad and even mentioned that they can not get at it because it operated in China. Can they use the clout they had on eBay to contact Google to have those ad inserts stopped on the internet? Use their legal arm? While it will not shut them down it will choke their sales potential. Google is THE search engine. If Google allows them to continue, then they unwittingly promote the counterfeiting and distribution of these items.
If there is a legal angle they can pursue, to stop these ad’s that show in sponsered mode in google and in many blogs discussing usb flash drives, it would starve their sales. Reduce their profit.
The goal of this site reads: “Toward A Fake Flash Drive Free World – No More Counterfeits – No More Data Loss”
We will continue to do our best to fight the issue and help people and that also included brand name companies and generic honest sellers.
lol said
haogooding( 15)
Feedback: 94.1 % Positive
selling 2gb drives first then will sell fake 16gb flash drives.
Gordon Ellis said
HAOGOODING
No doubt the mass of mp3 players this seller will shift will make up the feedback. Unfortunately not too many people worry about the mp3 players as they get them so cheap. These are the same 1.8gb hacked players sold by our other notorious sellers. It is so much harder to get negative feedback or follow up on these and the seller is aware of this. So, if this is haifter/zhongel again,they have obviously read their own previous feedback and are adjusting sales accordingly.
lol said
well well well, i have purchased item number: Item number: 250454894607 8gb mp3 player for a knocked down price of £1.04, wow!!! most like a 2gb will test and will sting with a neg!!
Gordon Ellis said
HAOGOODING, SELLER OF FAKES
Now please remember Lol not to put any more than 1.8gb on your player or you will find some music tracks will not play.
After leaving the appropriate NEGATIVE feedback, please remember to use FOLLOW UP FEEDBACK to re-inforce the warning for others. I would suggest the following:
FRAUD – fake capacity – test with h2testw – see: sosfakeflash.wordpress.com
KittyFireFlash said
HAOGOODING perfect match to:
appolly
caipemz
dengkimz
guople
haifter
lxmei98
mdongdisk119
pangoal
wusimz
yeweijie_store
zhongel
with the “tell”. Sorry but we can not reveal what this sort of thing is.
HAOGOODING is not listing anything, unless you dig deeper there is a buy now: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Brand-New-2GB-USB-DRIVE-PEN-STICK-MEMORY-C11_W0QQitemZ250452886937QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_FlashDrives_SM?hash=item3a5027c599&_trksid=p3911.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12%7C66%3A2%7C39%3A1%7C72%3A1683%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50
There are about 20 MP Player victims in the wind…
But even more intrigueing, guess who was just born to day?
songmzhao
Just stuck his head out of the fake flash nest…with a few of the typical start up listings.
The seller id’s mentioned did a lot of harm and damage to people. HAOGOODING seems to have gotten whacked with an early unexpected neg and so guess who suddenly appears?
songmzhao
They just don’t give up. Be on patrol, this id needs an early whack as soon as MP Players start followed by the famous 16GB fakes. The sooner it is zapped by negs the sooner damage will stop. HAOGOODING seems to have been caught unusually quickly, mainly because of a virus on the usb flash drive.
We really need a name for this gang of id’s. Anybody have one?
lol said
To Gordon Ellis and KittyFireFlash
the only reason why i bought this fake was to leave a negative feedback, i new it was going to be a fake, i tried to purchase another but you can only purhase 1 item in 15 days. what a joke.
Gordon Ellis said
Haogooding
It’s ok Lol, we were aware of your intention. Very honourable and much appreciated. I would have loved to have done the same myself but had doubts I would ever receive the goods after my run in with opdoam. With the likelihood of the different ID’s being same seller I decided against it.
It was the same with opdoam with multiple sales, 10 days between purchases if I recall. In ways this protects the buyer at times. I was glad at the time when I bought my fake that I had not been allowed to buy more. I would have happily bought several more without realising until too late.
It would be very handy to have loads of buyers doing the same but gets harder as values of goods increase, eg. Kingston Data Travelr 150 64GB at £50 Buy It Now. Below is the cheapest I have found so far and is without a doubt,possibly a wee bit dodgy. It ‘s almost worth buying to leave a negative and to do a feature on.
http://cgi.ebay.it/PEN-DRIVE-64GB-KINGSTON-DATA-TRAVEL-150_W0QQitemZ220442608339QQcmdZViewItemQQptZMemorie_USB_e_Pen_Drive?hash=item33536742d3&_trksid=p3911.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12%7C66%3A2%7C39%3A1%7C72%3A1229%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50
lol said
to gordan ellis
£50 is a lot to spend on a fake, although i no i can get my money back with paypal, but i cannot be asked with the stress and hours on the phone to paypal, i was also a seller of flash drives on ebay once, until i found out i was selling fakes i withdrew all my listings, i had over 200 fake kingston 64gb (lime green model) and the famous 16gb black and brown (100 of them) all in all i lost over £2000. didnt get my money back, had to refund buyers. And destroy all the flash drives, what a waste of money. i should have done my research before i bought them, i new they are fake clothes, trainers etc but fake flash drives? i was shocked when i found out. i got in touch with seller, but he kept of telling me they are real, so i just couldnt be bothered.
Gordon Ellis said
lovedave0345
I contacted this seller who claims his 16gb Data Traveler G2 drives are 100% genuine. I personally have doubts. Anyone who has bought a drive off this seller should get in touch with sosfakeflash with h2testw results to confirm.