Beware! Fake MicroSD cards...

SanDISK is really good about them. I had a 32GB microSD go bad, and they asked me for that serial number. I was honest and told them "I can't read it" (I'd lost my mangifying glass) and they just had me send it in and they sent a new one.

I bought a 64GB card for $29.95 form Ebay last week , the Card mounted and reported correct capacity. My videos would copy to SD card with no problem, but when I tried to play some videos I would get the error message that this video can not be played. I researched a lot on the net to find a solution, mostly what I found was related to video format and codec. what was sinister about it was the same video that played before if it was reloaded again would not play. After a lot of tries to find a pattern, I noticed that anything written to card after 4GB capacity was passed did
not exist on the card. I found a software called H2testW that test SD cards, the software confirmed my suspicion that was indeed a 4GB card see the report posted here. I contacted the Ebay merchant to return the card , he immediately refunded my money and did not even ask me to send the card back. I bought a real 64GB card locally then all my problems went away. I guess these scammers have found a way to change the FAT on a cheap and slow 4GB card to report itself as 64GB card, and not report error when the card is full this allowed the card to be written to in phantom memory addresses . The H2testw is slow I just ran it pass 4GB. Buy your SD card from reputable dealer, otherwise the chances are you will get fake card.


Warning: Only 4377 of 63960 MByte tested.
The media is likely to be defective.
3.5 GByte OK (7537991 sectors)
696.3 MByte DATA LOST (1426105 sectors)
Details:0 KByte overwritten (0 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors)
696.3 MByte corrupted (1426105 sectors)
0 KByte aliased memory (0 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x00000000e60a8e00
Expected: 0x00000000e60a8e00
Found: 0x0000000000000000
H2testw version 1.3
Reading speed: 14.3 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

Just don't buy cards from EBay, they're almost ALL fake. with the right software it's relatively easy to make a card report whatever size you want it to.

I prefer shopping from Amazon, or you may get quite handy SD cards from Olx as well in a cheap rates, plenty of genuine people offer 64GB SD cards for less than $10

Thanks Davi, I guess I was late to party, this been going on for a long time, I think we need to make this as public as possible. Ebay does not care what these scammers are doing. Companies like Sandisk have given up going after these people, so we have nobody to turn to but to let other fellow members know what is going on. These are softwares that can check SD's

1- USB Flash H2testw 1.40, download - filecloud.io -It's the classic utility, but for 64 Gb, it takes ~ 4 hours.
2- USB Flash FakeTest 1.09, download - filecloud.io -It's similar, but has a quick option, and takes minutes.
3- USB Flash ChipGenius 4.00, download - filecloud.io -All internal data, of your UFD.

The same thing just happened to me. Bought on the 26th, received on the 29th, fast shipping. I've spent 3 days trying to load to the card and cannot past 4gb. I thought it was something I had done but everything worked on my 16gb up to 16gb before buying this 64gb microsd card. The card came in a nice blister package with Samsung labeling. The seller was on eBay with over 1400 positive feedbacks and no negative feedbacks. I left positive before finding out it was fake. Opened a case with eBay. What a mess....

Yeah, I can't do anything but reiterate Davdi's advice: just don't buy SD cards from eBay, full stop. It's just not worth the risk.

The same scam has indeed been going on for many years now. The only thing that's changed is that you are now getting 4GB cards hacked to describe themselves as 64GB, while 4 years ago it was 1GB cards being sold as 16GB. And the names of the eBay sellers will keep changing, of course.

As the old saying goes, if it looks too good to be true then it probably is.

M-CMAN,
The package looked great with one minor problem, sandisk never had a package that looked like that. These people use a buckshot approach, they are very fast in shipping but give you very limited time to return, so buyers get impressed and give positive feedback, later to find out they been taken. In my case I found out early and the seller kaciw2010 refunded me immediately, and did not ask me to return the card , this is great I have the card for evidance. I did not left him feedback neither has he, but he has marked my account as unpaid, I don't know what is his game , but I paid through paypal. He has stopped selling these cards but I am sure he will be back soon. Please let me know how your case proceeds with ebay, from what I have heard they don't really care. It took me three painful days to find out the damn thing is fake.

Mine was a Samsung package, not Sandisk. A gray package with Samsung 64gb MicroSDXC, Class 10 labeling. Just looked on eBay and a bunch of sellers have the same picture like the one I received. Mine only had the MicroSD card but an adaptor was included along with 5 styluses. Many of the other look-alikes have the adaptor in the package. Often the same seller uses different account names so they can close one if it gets too much negative feedback. I thought over 1400 feedbacks with no negatives would have been safe.

c-CMAN'
The package does looks right to me, I compared it to my 32GB Samsung, not even close. Get the SD test report with one of software I mentioned in previous posts and a picture of real package, it should come in handy with your Ebay case. I found him on ebay, you are right it looks like legit to me.

I opened a case with eBay and the seller is supposed to be refunding my money. He did ask for the card to be returned which cost me $2.32 plus a padded envelope. Guess that gets rid of the evidence.... Cost me time and money for a scam. eBay has to know about this but I guess it is too hard to police with the number of sellers involved.

Anyone know of a place with a good price on a legitimate 64gb MicroSDXC card? There appears to be a similar problem with some Amazon sellers.

m-cman said:

I opened a case with eBay and the seller is supposed to be refunding my money. He did ask for the card to be returned which cost me $2.32 plus a padded envelope. Guess that gets rid of the evidence.... Cost me time and money for a scam. eBay has to know about this but I guess it is too hard to police with the number of sellers involved.

Anyone know of a place with a good price on a legitimate 64gb MicroSDXC card? There appears to be a similar problem with some Amazon sellers.

Click to expand...

If you're in the US probably Best Buy or similar reputable retailer. They don't sell fakes. Anything online and cheap is very likely to be counterfeit, and usually comes from China, including Amazon vendors.

CMAN,
The major retailers like Staples and Walmart, or Bestbuy are safe to buy,but prices are on high side, your other option is www.bhphotovideo.com/
great prices and they been in business for along time and for some professional it is the only place they shop. For ebay, if you get your money back is great, just a lesson learned. Like you said they so many fake sellers to police, my intention was to get word out so other members know what is going on.
http://http://www.bhphotovideo.com/

I got mine directly from Sony on Amazon and I was fine