> You mean you're reporting them without buying them and testing them, based on what you think the capacity and price-point should be?
Yes. If someone's offering an impossibly too good to be true deal in an area that's rife with data-destroying counterfeiting [1], they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. This is a very well known and prevalent type of fraud.
Personally, I think Amazon is negligent for not very tightly controlling the vendors that are allowed to sell SD cards on its site. They're not doing enough to keep fraud out of their store.
> Tests by the Counterfeit Report found that the cards will work at first, but generally speaking, buyers are purchasing what they think are cards with capacities of 32GB and up. Instead they are getting are cards with 7GB capacity. Counterfeiters simply overwrite the real memory capacity with a false capacity to match any capacity and model they print on the counterfeit packaging and card, Crosby explained. Users can’t determine the actual memory capacity of a counterfeit memory card by simply plugging it into their computer, phone, or camera. When the user hits the limit, the phony card starts overwriting files, which leads to lost data.
> The Counterfeit Report often comes across cards in capacities that don’t exist in any product line, and the cards it purchases and tests that are 32GB and up are usually always fake. The counterfeiters make a great profit on the fake cards, and there’s no consequence.
> But reporting them not because their product is impossible, but simply because you think they’re selling it too cheaply?
I'm talking about stuff like a supposed 1TB generic MicroSD card going for $50, when a legit item would sell for ten times that. Here are some examples:
There's a 99-100% chance these are fake, and I don't have to buy one to tell.
It took two minutes for me to find them, by the way. A company as rich as Amazon should easily be able to pay someone to search for fakes like that full time, and even purchase cards to verify their fakeness.
> Seems abusive. I could report my competitors for selling cheaper than I do and hope they get banned.
Offering these things for sale is abusive, reporting them as fake is a public service.
I can see what you're getting at, but I hope you're not one of these people reporting it as a scam by posting reviews. I think it may actually be against Amazon's terms and conditions to 'review' a product you have not purchased.
What they say is
> [you are] able to review any product on Amazon.co.uk regardless of where you purchased that product
Which implies you must have purchased it somewhere.
> I can see what you're getting at, but I hope you're not one of these people reporting it as a scam by posting reviews. I think it may actually be against Amazon's terms and conditions to 'review' a product you have not purchased.
I don't post reviews like that, but I totally approve of people who do. I'm not going to fret over the precise meaning of Amazon's terms and conditions if doing so means that innocent people will be more likely to be suckered by scammers.
It's perfectly reasonable to do this for egregious cases, such as if somebody is advertising something for 6¢/GB when the cheapest legitimate entry-level products are at 10¢/GB. The market for flash storage devices is efficient enough that it really is possible to know when prices are too good to be true.
You mean you're reporting them without buying them and testing them, based on what you think the capacity and price-point should be?