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Fake Sandisk Extreme Cards from Adorama!


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<p> Yes! I just bought a fake Sandisk Extreme III 4GB card from Adorama. After

reading about fake cards on e-bay I decided to buy from Adorama (I some bought

other stuf from them in the past) - supposedly "a honest dealer". When the

card arrived I was surprised to see that the "SanDisk Extreme" text on the

front of the card had little yellow tint to it but otherwise it was of silver

color. By comparison my old Extreme III 1GB card had golden letters. Puzzled

by the difference, I have contacted Sandisk customer service. The serial

number was good, but I told them about the color... They asked me to send them

photos of the new card (4GB).</p>

<p>The answer from Sandisk is (I have removed their CR name):</p>

<p>"Dear Mihai,

 

Thank you for contacting Sandisk. We have received

your photos regarding your compactflash card.

Unfortunately the card in the photo is not an authentic

Sandisk card. Contact your vendor and let them know

what we have decided. If you have any further questions

regarding this matter, please feel free to contact us

at 866-san-disk

 

Thank you.

 

Best regards,

Customer rep. name (removed)

Rma dept."

</p>

 

<p>By the way, the card was sealed "blister-pack". In the blister pack I found

the travel case, recovery software miniCD v.3.2, "user manual" and some

commercial stuf from Sandisk. In the cardboard pack it contained the offer

from Capture-one. So, it looked perfect, including that I was able to register

this card with SanDisk.</p>

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Somehow I am not completely surprised, maybe 1/2 surprised. But the first thing to check is the actual read/write speed. Counterfeit cards will be written much slower. Some large chain stores might import grey market stuffs from unknown channels and being sold w/o knowing they were being conned. I once bought 2 ATP 60X SD 2GB from Futureshop.ca but both had 2MB/s write speed only, while those being bought 1.5 years earlier could write 6BM/s. Counterfeit? Or ATP started to scam? I don't know. But I know you cannot fully trust any retailers just because they are reputable. Watch, always watch carefully.
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<p>I called Adorama's Customer Service today but they are closed already. I will keep you informed about their response. I am attaching 3 pictures: first one shows that I was able to register the card on the sandisk's site; second one shows the 4GB (fake one) compared to 1GB (my old geniune card that I bought from B&H a long time ago) - see how rough and discolored is the printing on the fake card; third picture shows a comparison of the side views of the card - observe that the holes on the fake card are smaller than on the geniune one.</p>

<p>I took only 2 pictures with it. I will try to fill it to see if it has the right capacity. The camera (canon 30D) shows that it had 444 RAW images capacity when inserted into the camera.</p><div>00LQQf-36875384.jpg.2b5ee7a0bf5adddcf63bef25463157a7.jpg</div>

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<p>I forgot to add: pictures taken with custom white ballance using Kodak gray card. By the time I was taking the back side of the cards, the light may have changed slightly. Also, when assembling the composite pictures I forgot to convert from Canon RGB to IEEE... SRGB (hopefully not a big deal).</p>

<p>To Craig Gillette: the condition and appearance of the other insert goodies was good. The travel pouch <b>feels</b> slightly different from the original one but I will have to look at that more carefully to say something for sure. I will post a picture of the "goodies" tomorrow.</p>

<p>To Marika: I know. This tutorial helped me identify the fake card but, unfortunately, the fake serial number is good to SanDisk... As you can see from the first picture, I was able to register it with SanDisk.</p>

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As you read through the tutorials, yes, they mention that now the fakes are coming up with changing serial numbers that appear to be authentic. I guess the only way to be sure you're not buying a fake Sandisk card is to buy it direct from the manufacturer.
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<p>Marika Buchberger wrote: <i>"I'll bet the fakes and the real cards are even made in the same factory...LOL!"</i></p>

<p>I also thought about this. Or maybe, anothe factory producing for Lexar... It is hard to believe that the chinese equivalent of the "Joe" could make the fake cards in his garage. But who knows... in China anything is possible.</p>

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If you have someone on Ebay selling fakes it would be very time consuming and expensive for a company like Sandisk to track down the culprits. But when you have an internationally recognized store like Adorama selling fakes, this in my opinion is a perfect opportunity for Sandisk to track the culprits and find out who is supplying these cards. Let's see how Adorama and more importantly, how Sandisk handles this, I for one am very interested in seeing the results.
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Actually I have asked Sandisk (trhough their e-Box) how can a retailer (especially one listed on their website) like Adorama sell fakes and who should we trust then? No answer so far from Sandisk. Probably the safest thing would be to buy directly from Sandisk but that is quite expensive. I am sure they could afford selling at the Adorama price. When they will do this I will start buying from directly them.
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<p>Les Lammers wrote: <i>"It is quite possible that Adorama was duped too."</i></p>

<p>I would like to believe this too. That is, I hope that Adorama did not <b>knowingly</b> sold me a fake card. One thing remains to be answered though: do they get their cards from "Sandisk USA" or they get gray market cards (that turned out to be fake) from some 3rd world supplier. If they get gray market cards then they should sell them as such. That is, they should anounce on their website when an item is a gray market (or "imported") item.</p>

<p>Had I known that they do not get their cards from a USA official distributor (I would guess that would be Sandisk USA), I would not have bought from them.</p>

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<p>Daniel Smith wrote:<i>Could have given Adorama a chance to take care of it first, just the nice thing to do.</i> Maybe. Regardless of wether or not they will fix this issue, the main purpose of this posting was to let people know that even when buying from "reputable dealers" they can get fake memory cards. Also, people deserve to know that something fishy is going on at Adorama. That is why we use sites like www.resellerratings.com before we are buying online.</p>

<p>I searched the web to see if this happened before to anyone else. I could not find any precedent. Am I the <b>only one</b> Adorama customer who got duped or there are more? If I am the only one than that means that some bad guy got a job at Adorama and, let's say, he shipped to me a fake card and he kept the original one. If not, it means that they get their stuff from wrong suppliers and that they keep quiet about this. Buy posting here I learned that similar things happened before (see Alan Chan's post) though with different merchants.</p>

<p>Daniel Smith wrote:<i>Over 30 years photographing and I never got a fake roll or box of Kodak, Ilford or Fuji film.</i> How would you know that? Did you try to register those rolls on the Kodak/Ilford/Fuji's websites? And, where did you buy those rolls from? (local shops, Adorama, ...?)</p>

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<i>I searched the web to see if this happened before to anyone else. I could not find any precedent.</i><p>That should tell you something.<p><i> Am I the only one Adorama customer who got duped or there are more?</i><p>"Duped" means something was done intentionally. Given that you appear to be the only one, it is probably something that got dropped into the box at the source. As someone else pointed out, the fake ones are probably made in the same place as the real ones.<p><i>If I am the only one than that means that some bad guy got a job at Adorama and, let's say, he shipped to me a fake card and he kept the original one. </i><p>Seriously unlikely, the financial gain would be miniscule. If someone actually thinks about it for more than three seconds, it's obviously one of the least profitable scams to run if you get a job at a company.<p><i>If not, it means that they get their stuff from wrong suppliers and that they keep quiet about this.</i><p>Given that you are the only one, it doesn't sound like that. It's highly possible that a legitimate supplier had something happen somewhere in the delivery chain, or maybe at the factory.<p>Really, Adorama has always been a trusted supplier for a lot of people, and this would be a ridiculous way for them to realize a completely irrelevant boost in profit, especially given that you seem to be the only one. The way you are writing here makes it sound like you are a competitor and not a customer.
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<p>Jeff Spirer wrote: <i>"The way you are writing here makes it sound like you are a competitor and not a customer."</i> Particularly, what did I say to make you believe that? Also, trust me, I cannot be a competitor to anyone in the USA. Immigrations laws here forbid me this.</p>

<p>Jeff Spirer wrote: <i>""Duped" means something was done intentionally."</i> I am not a native English speaker, so please forgive me for not knowing these kind of nuances.</p>

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Note that the link above is for identifying fake Sandisk Ultra II cards, not Extreme III cards.

 

There is one on eBay for identifying fake Extreme III cards which you can find with google

searches for 'fake sandisk extreme III', but note that in both cases, these are 'reviews'

written by third parties, not by SanDisk. This makes them less than authoritative! It may be

that in some cases these guides are only differentiating between cards from different

markets or cards from different batches, and as they are from private sellers they could

actually be false information themselves.

 

I can't find anything from SanDisk themselves identifying anything to do with fakes. Has

anyone else?

 

As an aside, I don't see anything obvious in the edge view photos above that indicates that

the 'smaller' holes (in fact they just have a smaller entrance scoop) are necessarily out of

spec, or that there's any clear indication that a change in the design of this aspect is

necessarily an indication of a fake.

 

Going through the guide to spotting fake Extreme III cards that is mentioned on eBay, your

'fake' does not seem to register as one under their guidelines, but I would urge others not

to assume a card is fake until you've seen SanDisk's own authoritative information on the

subject.

 

I have to say I am concerned that this is like the 'Red Bull is poisonous' hoax we saw a few

years ago. Does it not trouble anyone that:

 

- a private seller on eBay is claiming to list a set of 'authorized' eBay dealers.

- who claims 'millions' have been deceived, but this hasn't been in the news anywhere.

- there is no information from Sandisk on their website.

- if you google 'fake sandisk extreme III' you essentially only see forum comments, ebay

comments. No press releases, nothing.

 

Further, there is this thread (with the usual caveats that any or all of it could be nonsense):

 

http://www.dcresource.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-16012.html

 

Which infers that in at least that one case, SanDisk has subsequently validated a card they

have initially said is fake.

 

Mihai, can you post the full details of the representative you talked to at SanDisk so we

can follow this up? This forum could really do with official information from the source.

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I find it extremely unlikely that there are fake Sandisk III cards out there, packaged in San Disk boxes, including the travel case, recovery software miniCD v.3.2, and the free software offer from Capture-one. I just got a Sandisk III Extreme 4 GB card from Adorama too, so I'm interested in the thread, but I think it's incredibly improbable.
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