[HN Gopher] 30TB Portable SSD Hits Walmart for $39 but Stay Away...
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30TB Portable SSD Hits Walmart for $39 but Stay Away from It
Author : wslh
Score : 244 points
Date : 2022-08-28 13:51 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tomshardware.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tomshardware.com)
| Havoc wrote:
| Pretty wild that walmart rolled with this. Implies they've got
| literally nobody even vaguely competent & qualified involved
| their purchase decisions
|
| >limited to USB 2.0 speeds
|
| Nice.
| lazide wrote:
| Well, near as I can tell Newegg isn't much better.
|
| It's the 'trying to be the curated next gen shopping
| experience' but really being a digital flea market. Which,
| don't ever buy furniture at those, they got the name for a
| reason.
| cyral wrote:
| > digital flea market
|
| A great way of describing it. You can't trust any large
| online retailer these days. Every top result on Amazon is
| from a brand with random letters that has no accountability.
| Even Etsy is filled with tons of "Verified handmade" items
| that are obviously mass produced products from
| Alibaba/AliExpress (they don't even bother to use different
| pictures than the original listing). I ordered something off
| Wayfair this week and what I got was totally lower quality
| than the pictures.
| happyopossum wrote:
| As is mentioned several places, this isn't Walmart, it's a
| seller on the Walmart.com marketplace.
| kortilla wrote:
| It's a third party listing. Walmart didn't purchase it.
| noasaservice wrote:
| Wrong.
|
| If I buy something from walmart.com and it happens to be a
| 3rd party seller, MY MONEY STILL GOES THROUGH WALMART. Or at
| least that's what my credit card statement says.
|
| No matter how much contortions Walmart/Scamazon/Newegg want
| to distance away from 3rd party sellers, they are endorsing
| the 3rd parties when they allow them on the site.
| rolph wrote:
| this doesnt just scam you for capacity, it will overwrite files
| to maintain the illusion of large capacity so you will lose data
| until you catch on that they are going into a bit bucket.
| tomxor wrote:
| > The hacked firmware writes new data on top of the old data and
| keeps the directory. It appears to be working, but when you try
| to access your files, there's nothing there.
|
| Jeez, this last detail elevates it from scam to plain
| malicious... Overwriting files isn't likely to conceal the scam
| much longer for a drive that already missreports it's size and is
| limited to 60MB/s - but it is likely to lose data for someone who
| actually manages to reach that capacity.
|
| [edit]
|
| Not speculation, reality... following the link to similar drives
| on amazon by a sibling comment, first 1 start review shows story
| of data loss [0]:
|
| > They have figured out a way for it to tell the computer that
| it's a hard drive with 1 or 2TB, where it really is 128GB,
| according to the engineers who looked at it [...] I spent several
| hundred dollars to retrieve a few documents that were critical to
| me [...]
|
| These drives are costing non technical people data loss, not just
| money.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/product-
| reviews/B08SBHV3VT/ref=acr_dp...
| jedberg wrote:
| A lot of people use these kinds of drives for backup, so they
| might write a bunch of data and not go back to get it for
| years.
| LiberationUnion wrote:
| ec109685 wrote:
| Amazon let's the same thing happen in their store:
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=1+tb+flash+drive&crid=1XK7KPUOQ4X...
|
| It's horrible and they won't do anything about it despite
| contacting them via help requests and Twitter.
|
| 3 of the top 5 listings are total scams.
|
| And Amazon's choice for 1TB flash drive is a scam: USB Flash
| Drive 1TB, Flash Memory Stick for PC/Laptop, Ultra Large Storage
| USB Drive, Portable Thumb Drives (Black) https://a.co/d/cTi7XqZ
| Liquix wrote:
| The "Amazon's Choice" label seems to be almost as gameable as
| reviews - sellers somehow have a way of creating categories it
| would take very little work to be #1 in, such as "Amazon's
| Choice for <company name> flash drive"
| numpad0 wrote:
| Amazon's Choice seems like a dynamic labeling to me. The
| impression of it that there must be a list of Choice products
| is likely just a deliberate impression.
| gardenfelder wrote:
| Visit amazon in your usual browser, then visit it in a
| different one with a private window (no cookies). They give
| different messages.
| rolph wrote:
| i think it needs to talk to FTC ?
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Why would they do anything? They're still making their buck on
| every sale.
| kelp wrote:
| Because if the problem is bad enough, people will start
| looking for alternative places to buy things. It's like how
| people will avoid the bad neighborhoods in a city.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Oh right; if Amazon doesn't have what I want I'll get it on
| Walmart, the trustworthy online store!
| 0134340 wrote:
| But the once good, now bad neighborhoods can't buy the now
| good neighborhoods in monopolistic fashion; the analogy
| doesn't hold up with economics.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| For what it's worth, the "Amazon's Choice" for me is a
| legitimately 1TB USB Drive (from PNY).
| tyingq wrote:
| Click the "shop by price" tab in that Amazon's Choice area.
| There will probably be a fake product there.
| bsharitt wrote:
| I've had Amazon take down reviews that point out that a drive
| is a scam.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Amazon doesn't even take down products that give kids lead
| poisoning. If a foreign nation had imposed Amazon upon us,
| we'd consider it an act of war.
| badpun wrote:
| Sounds like it's a semi-legit area for blockchain
| applicability- a website/app which stores all reviews on
| blockchain so that people are 100% certain no one has
| tampered with them.
| NortySpock wrote:
| Step 2: Spam the blockchain with marketing, false stories,
| and smears against your competitors products. If the
| blockchain requires a fee to write to (most do), you win
| because you have a marketing budget and the average
| consumer does not.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Wow, they're even Prime.
| kennend3 wrote:
| Amazon is on a gradual decline and what is shocking is that
| people dont see it.
|
| I stopped using amazon around 2 years ago. If i want to buy
| "Chinesium" i use aliexpress and save a lot of middlemen in
| return for a long shipping time.
|
| I've been burned by fake products a few times and learned my
| lesson long ago. Sure, amazon does make it easy to return them,
| but going to a real store avoids it all-together.
|
| If you shop around for prices, it is rare that amazon's prices
| are even competitive vs an actual physical store these days.
|
| this makes little sense, the store has employees and high
| rents, what are amazon's reasons?
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| Amazon seem to pivot into a cloud giant with e-commerce as
| side biz.
| Kye wrote:
| AWS is their biggest profit center, so it makes sense.
| fragmede wrote:
| That just excuses their poor behavior on their own
| marketplace. Where they're making untold amounts of money.
| No, just like Comcast's customer support isn't worth
| spending more of Comcast's money on, so, too Amazon doesn't
| have the incentives to improve on the status quo. and why
| shouldn't they? they're making money hand over fist
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > Sure, amazon does make it easy to return them, but going to
| a real store avoids it all-together.
|
| Genuine question, what store is this that:
|
| 1) has inventory in store of items like this
|
| 2) doesn't also ever have fake merchandise on their shelves
|
| The problem isn't _just_ Amazon, Walmart, or other large
| online retailers, it's issues throughout the supply chain
| because of the lack of enforcement by all actors (retailers,
| distributors, shippers, manufacturers, customs agents,
| government agencies, etc).
| notsapiensatall wrote:
| MicroCenter is a good place to get 1TB USB drives, if you
| have one close to you.
|
| Fry's used to be good for that sort of thing on the West
| coast too, but they're long dead.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| I miss the days when Fry's was good... :(
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Target.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > Target
|
| So I'm not finding the news article at the moment on
| counterfeit electronics goods re: Target, but there's
| been a couple I remember.
|
| here's one on makeup that I found searching though:
|
| https://www.allure.com/story/counterfeit-beauty-products
| tedmiston wrote:
| > I've been burned by fake products a few times and learned
| my lesson long ago. Sure, amazon does make it easy to return
| them, but going to a real store avoids it all-together.
|
| What makes you trust a brick and mortar store's supply chain
| more than an online store? There are counterfeit items
| everywhere.
| bluedino wrote:
| I can't even get deals on books there anymore. The last three
| purchases I made were from eBay and _gasp_ Barnes and Noble
| antiterra wrote:
| I don't think Amazon's choice is the same for every one.
|
| I would guess it adjusts for shipping time and result relevance
| weighted by previous usage. For me, the choice 1TB flash drive
| is a PNY thumb drive.
|
| At the very least, it seems brave to assign your company's
| endorsement automatically based on an algorithm.
| tedmiston wrote:
| > I don't think Amazon's choice is the same for every one.
|
| I believe it is the same for all users for a given keyword
| search, but it is also dynamically changing.
|
| From [1], the algorithm itself is a black box though:
|
| > One innovation the company devised is "Amazon's Choice," a
| distinctive black badge typically bestowed on a single
| product per search term. The company says the award is given
| to "highly rated, well-priced products available to ship
| immediately." But for many categories, dozens of options fit
| that description. How does Amazon choose its choices? Do
| humans have a hand in the decisions, or are they governed by
| an algorithm?
|
| > The company won't say. "Amazon's Choice is just our
| recommendation, and customers can always ask for specific
| brands or products if they choose," an Amazon spokesperson
| said in a statement.
|
| [1]: https://www.wired.com/story/what-does-amazons-choice-
| mean/
| chmod600 wrote:
| Are you saying the SanDisk listings are scams, or are those the
| two non-scam listings?
| mattm wrote:
| Pretty sure the SanDisk one would be legit. Look at the price
| difference between that one and the other ones to tell.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I used to buy a lot of stuff from Newegg. Unfortunately some
| years ago they decided to follow the Amazon model and went to
| hell.
| zekrioca wrote:
| The tactic is always the same: hack the firmware. I remember 15
| years ago when I got one of these "Portable MP4 Players" (exactly
| like an iPod, but for 10% of the price), and it would say "8 GB"
| on it. When trying to upload my music into it, at some point it'd
| return an random storage error.
|
| I didn't understand, so I decided to format it. What was my
| surprise when the 8 GB disk turned into 1 GB? I researched like
| crazy, and then found out in some forum that they would tweak the
| firmware to tell the OS about its fake size, though I'm not sure
| how formatting it would 'fix' this. After formatting it, it
| worked normally and for many years.
|
| In the end, it is the same stupid technique, 15 years later. I'm
| not sure why wouldn't they just sell it with proper
| specifications and profit over the okay quality of the device..
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Sounds like a bytes vs bits hack.
| zekrioca wrote:
| Yes, but how has formatting fixed it? It wrote something I
| the partition table that corrected the issue?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| The drive controller lied.
| stjo wrote:
| They probably changed the partition table to say that the
| partition is 8GB. No complex firmware shenanigans needed. See
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record. Tools like
| fdisk will allow you to "hack" it in 10 seconds.
|
| When you reparationed your OS probably read the true disk size
| (correctly reported by firmware) and made a brand new partition
| table, partition and file system on top of it.
| dam_broke_it wrote:
| I'll get downvoted to oblivion, but one should use ebay....
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > The hacked firmware writes new data on top of the old data and
| keeps the directory. It appears to be working, but when you try
| to access your files, there's nothing there.
|
| I don't understand why someone would release fake products like
| this. If you're going to sell a fake product, wouldn't you be
| better off sending like a functioning 0.5TB HDD, or sending a
| literal brick? Why would you send a fake product that causes data
| loss?
| [deleted]
| Karunamon wrote:
| Because it increases the length of time between your fake
| product being sold and the return claims/consumers calling
| shenanigans get you kicked off of the platform. If they opened
| the box and see a brick, or plug it in and only see half a
| terabyte of capacity, they will immediately start a return.
|
| Unless you are the rare type who thoroughly tests all storage
| you buy before you use it, it is likely you would be backing up
| data to this and be blissfully unaware of what it is doing
| until much later, and even then it's likely you'll think of the
| drive as defective, rather than intentionally sold as
| fraudulent.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| This is a good explanation. Thank you.
| numpad0 wrote:
| This type of devices are supposed to be sold in cash to
| tourists, not online where victims could issue chargebacks.
|
| But I suppose the sellers has their scheme to avoid repayment
| anyway so it works anyway. It's also a calculated and managed
| risk, so the marketplace don't care anyway, either. It's a cash
| wheelbarrow of moral.
| pwg wrote:
| Because as the scammer once you have the payment from the
| purchaser, you don't care. And a 0.5TB disk would cut into your
| 'margins' on something like this.
| dymk wrote:
| Going through the effort of hacking the firmware cuts into
| their margins. Why go through the effort when they already
| have your money at that point?
| sokoloff wrote:
| You have to minimize the customer returns in the first 30
| days. Sending a brick gets lots of immediate returns and
| probably the device pulled from the shop.
|
| Making it look like it mostly works, enough to pass a
| 5-minute "is this a scam?" test probably even gets some
| legitimate users to write a 5-star "I can't believe it's
| true, but it is!" review.
| charcircuit wrote:
| The goal is to increase the amount of time before the customer
| notices what they got is not what you claimed. If the drive's
| capacity immediately shows something different they will start
| whatever refund process within the window where that is
| allowed.
| rdtsc wrote:
| It keeps overwriting the file data but keeps the folder
| structure. So it may take months to find out it was fake and by
| that point too late to return or get a refund.
|
| So the answer to "why?" then is to make money with their scam
| and get as few refunds and returns as possible.
| Aeolun wrote:
| More people buy 30TB fake disks than 0.5TB real ones.
|
| You also automatically filter out the people that'd be smart
| enough to notice something was off.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > More people buy 30TB fake disks than 0.5TB real ones.
|
| I wasn't suggesting "sell a 0.5TB device honestly as a 0.5TB
| device", I was suggesting "sell a 0.5TB device claiming it is
| a 30TB device".
|
| > You also automatically filter out the people that'd be
| smart enough to notice something was off.
|
| You won't find a single "smart" person in the world that will
| buy a "30TB" disk for $30. So the smart people have _already_
| been filtered out in any case.
| eCa wrote:
| > If something sounds too good to be true, then it isn't.
|
| That doesn't sound right.
| copperx wrote:
| > That doesn't sound right.
|
| It doesn't sound right indeed because it should read "it is,"
| not "it isn't." Regardless, "something sounding too good to be
| true" is how you determine that tech innovation has happened.
| The Retina screen sounded too good to be true back in 2012; the
| M1 sounded too good to be true; etc.
| CalRobert wrote:
| The writing is strange in general - "The drive is far from
| being one of the best SSDs, but it deserves a spot on
| everyone's blocklist." is an odd one to parse too.
| felurx wrote:
| I think that one's mostly just to put in that link to
| their(?) list of best SSDs, probably full of referral links
| and paraphrased Amazon descriptions...
| sokoloff wrote:
| Inadvertently accurate advice, perhaps?
| copperx wrote:
| Accurate? It reads like, "this drive is not too bad, but
| don't buy it anyway."
| sokoloff wrote:
| I read the first clause as "this drive is not very good",
| rather than "not too bad".
| copperx wrote:
| Both are equally inaccurate because the drive is an
| information blackhole.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Sounds far from being one of the best SSDs...
| geocrasher wrote:
| It's incorrect. The correct phrase would be "If something seems
| too good to be true, it usually is." which can be extrapolated
| to "If something seems too good to be true, it usually _is_ too
| good to be true. "
| rgoulter wrote:
| The reading of that phrase is "if something seems to good to
| be true, then it isn't [true]".
|
| It seems unhelpful that both "it is" and "it isn't" can be
| used to convey "it's not as good as it appears", though.
| wongarsu wrote:
| That is the intended reading, but it just seems wrong. The
| sentence parses to me to the components "[if] [something]
| [seems] [too good to be true], [it] [isn't]", so [isn't]
| has to apply to [too good to be true].
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| The best defense is a good defense
| mmh0000 wrote:
| Anytime I buy a "new" storage device, it gets runs through F3[0]
| first. Several storage devices I've got off Amazon have been
| fake, even when buying from known name brands.
|
| [0] https://fight-flash-
| fraud.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introduct...
| sneak wrote:
| There are hundreds of these on Amazon. Amazon could have some
| person spend a few hours a day nuking the clearly fraudulent
| products, but they dgaf and do not.
| vidarh wrote:
| They won't care unless there are regulations making it possible
| to cost them money if they don't act. E.g. if they were
| required to pay a reasonably small statutory fee on top of the
| refund when refunding a fraudulent product they'd need to start
| addressing it, or lists of products would quickly spread online
| and cause them massive losses.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Although a lot of people want smaller government and less
| regulation. Enforcement would require more bureaucracy in
| spending. Feels like an uphill battle.
| vidarh wrote:
| All it requires is the court system.
| rufusroflpunch wrote:
| > If something sounds too good to be true, then it isn't.
|
| This one threw me for a loop, at first. Wouldn't one normally say
| "then it is" instead of "then it isn't"?
| compressedgas wrote:
| "then it is 'too good to be true'" vs "then it isn't 'true'"
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| Buyer beware - my wife hates Amazon and goes out of her way to
| not purchase from them. She has encountered several vendors on
| Walmart marketplace that simply place orders with Amazon at 100%
| markup - the packages arrive in Amazon boxes w/ a receipt showing
| the actual cost paid at Amazon. Total rip-off.
|
| When ordering electronics from Walmart Marketplace, particularly
| TVs, I've found that the marketplace sellers freely substitute
| makes and models. Maybe nobody notices if you are shipping a gift
| to someone else, but since I need specific models from specific
| manufacturers for development it gets noticed when I order LG
| model XYZ and get a no-name tv instead. I stopped ordering from
| Walmart altogether after the second time (out of two,
| consecutive) that happened.
|
| So my advice is anything you buy online at Walmart, make sure it
| is not a marketplace seller, just save yourself the trouble.
|
| In all cases Wal-Mart refunded my money after waiting for a week
| for the vendor to respond, though I had to lug the stuff to the
| UPS store to return it. Amazon usually suggests I donate stuff
| rather then return it.
|
| I've not had any issues with the items sold by Wal-mart actual,
| those you can buy with confidence.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Awesome, Walmart managed to copy Amazon's total lack of control
| over their inventory.
| agilob wrote:
| >Buyer beware - my wife hates Amazon and goes out of her way to
| not purchase from them. She has encountered several vendors on
| Walmart marketplace that simply place orders with Amazon at
| 100% markup
|
| ebay sellers do the same. I pay using paypal on ebay, just to
| get a gift package from amazon prime. Stopped using ebay and
| every scammer like that got negatives from me. They are still
| cheaper than non-amazon sellers
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| How is it a scam though? Seems just like regular business,
| i.e. selling something for more than you bought it for.
| busyant wrote:
| About 5 years ago, one of my sons wanted a drone for xmas.
|
| In mid-November, Walmart.com warned me to "Order soon to
| guarantee that you'll get <x> for Christmas."
|
| So, I did the "responsible" thing and ordered the drone before
| Thanksgiving and it arrived around Nov 25.
|
| Wrap it up. Son opens it on Christmas, aaaaand it's broken out
| of the box. One of the rotors was bent and wouldn't rotate.
|
| Brought it to Walmart probably on the 27th of December and
| Walmart tells me, "This was sold by one of our 3rd party
| vendors. You have to take it up with them."
|
| 3rd party vendor tells me to pound sand because there's a 30
| day return policy. Remember how I was responsible and got the
| drone a month ahead of time?
|
| In retrospect, I should have disputed the charge, but it didn't
| occur to me at the time.
|
| Still makes me angry.
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| phpisthebest wrote:
| One thing I have never understood is why parents do not
| inspect, open, etc the products before wrapping them?
|
| I am mean this is a decades old problem from not having the
| correct batteries, to missing parts, etc etc. Alot of
| Christmas day disappointments could be avoided by just
| inspecting the toys before wrapping them.....
| NortySpock wrote:
| Yeah, sure, maybe one day I'll have time during the
| holidays not allocated to "family" and "unplugging from the
| stress of dealing with family" and can do things like
| "inspect everything I'm about to give away as a gift"...
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I pretty clearly did not say inspect everything... I
| limited clearly to children toys, and it could even be
| limited to the "main" present like this clearly was.
|
| Every kid has the "one thing" they really want that year,
| I always see posts by parents that they "one thing" was
| missing a part, or did not have batteries, or like this
| case was damaged.
| fragmede wrote:
| There's a stupid negative stigma around regifting and
| getting used things, so there's desirability in the gift
| being presented being brand new, never taken out of the
| box. Which means you spend Xmas day waiting for your Xbox
| to download the latest firmware instead and hoping Xbox
| live doesn't go down instead of being able to play it.
| scrollaway wrote:
| > _There 's a stupid negative stigma around regifting_
|
| Which, we should stress, is toxic nonsensical shit.
|
| Consumerist crap which promotes an always-buying culture
| of throwing away things instead of reduce+reuse.
| mikodin wrote:
| Not a parent, but for me when gift giving and receiving -
| there is a lot of joy in opening the completely 100%
| unopened thing.
|
| And opening many children toys is usually pretty difficult
| without scissors and or destroying the packaging. The
| amount of time consuming precision tape peeling without
| removing the graphic layer of cardboard may be a little
| untenable around Christmas.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Well as a child I dont think I would have even noticed if
| the box was opened, or if it even came in a box, if my
| Sega Genesis or my new Bike, or what ever was completely
| out of the box I would not have cared (and pretty sure I
| got more than a few presents completely pre-assembled),
| hell if the Genesis already hooked up to the TV ready to
| play I probably would have preferred that...
|
| Of course now as an adult I hate gifts, I buy what I
| need/want when I need/want it. I do not want other people
| to spend money on me at all.. Most holidays have become
| soo commercialized that the consumerism of it all puts me
| off
| busyant wrote:
| I can't tell you precisely what I was thinking 5 years
| ago, but your explanation (joy of opening something that
| clearly has not been opened) is probably closest to my
| motivations.
| bluedino wrote:
| Some stores will allow anything purchased during the holiday
| season to be returned up to a certain point in January
| fma wrote:
| Everytime I buy anything from Walmart I check the "Walmart.com"
| retailer box. I wish there was a way to make it permanent.
|
| Having said that there was one time I had this same issue...I
| bought from Walmart's marketplace and the product wasn't what I
| ordered. I had no issue with returning it.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>I stopped ordering from Walmart altogether after the second
| time (out of two, consecutive) that happened.
|
| or stop ordering from the marketplace sellers. I like ordering
| directly from websites for vendors i do business with. This is
| why I do not shop on ebay.
|
| From Amazon I rarely order anything that is not "shipped and
| sold by amazon", on walmart I only order Walmart Stock, on
| newegg I only order newegg stock, etc etc
|
| Personally I am not sure what the appeal is of all these bigger
| sites adding "marketplace" sellers.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| > Personally I am not sure what the appeal is of all these
| bigger sites adding "marketplace" sellers.
|
| It's the long tail. Need an unbranded under-desk treadmill
| manufactured by Xiaomi? Amazon marketplace has ever color of
| the rainbow at prices only reasonable for dropshippers.
|
| There's ofc downsides to that, but certain consumers don't
| mind.
| Animats wrote:
| > Personally I am not sure what the appeal is of all these
| bigger sites adding "marketplace" sellers.
|
| Digi-Key, an electronic parts distributor which used to have
| a good reputation for supply chain quality, added
| "marketplace" sellers. Before this, when you ordered from
| Digi-Key, you were assured that the product went directly
| from the manufacturer to Digi-Key in Minnesota and then to
| you. You got exactly what you ordered. Now, it's much iffier.
| SargeDebian wrote:
| > Personally I am not sure what the appeal is of all these
| bigger sites adding "marketplace" sellers.
|
| Money. No inventory (i.e. capital), no COGS, no returns
| (depending on the model), no assortment optimization. Just a
| share of what someone else does.
| monksy wrote:
| This happens on Newegg market place as well.
| zrail wrote:
| I've been making a point to order electronics from Best Buy
| whenever possible. I can trust that Beat Buy doesn't have third
| party sellers, at least for now.
| tempest_ wrote:
| If you use best buy's website it has the same problem as
| Amazon et al since it is a "marketplace" it is just the same
| sellers listing on both sites.
| nightski wrote:
| I wonder if that is specific to a country? Because in the
| U.S. I have never seen a marketplace seller on the best buy
| website.
| tedmiston wrote:
| Looks like it might be a Canadian thing?
|
| https://blog.bestbuy.ca/best-buy/what-is-best-buy-
| marketplac...
| tempest_ wrote:
| Huh, it never would have crossed my mind they would do it
| only in Canada.
|
| Odd.
| nirvdrum wrote:
| It used to be a US thing as well, but that was shut down
| several years ago (2016 based on a cursory search).
| nirvdrum wrote:
| I had been doing the same, but Best Buy (US) reduced its
| return period to 14 days unless you shell out $200/year for
| their Totaltech membership. I should do a better job about
| inspecting orders as they arrive, but I think 14 days just
| isn't enough. I've been burned by it a couple of times now
| due to work travel.
|
| So, now I'm back to trying to find a reputable retailer that
| sells authentic products.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| When I bought a Motorola cable modem from Best Buy it stopped
| working within 24 hours. At least I could return it and only
| lose time. Name brands and branded stores aren't safe either,
| though one would hope they're better on average.
| surfpel wrote:
| I've had this happen with an Amazon vendor drop shipping
| another Amazon product. They were able to do this because the
| original product wasn't listed in the correct department and
| couldn't be found easily.
| pronlover723 wrote:
| I had that issue. I ordered something from Walmart (a vacuum
| cleaner) and it arrived in a new box from amazon. I called
| their customer service and the claimed they never shipped
| anything from amazon. I guess that was a lie.
| AmVess wrote:
| I ordered a few things last fall from Wal Mart. Each time, they
| charged once but delivered multiples of the same item. One
| other time, they shipped it to some store who said they never
| got it.
|
| There is no real reason why they have it so wrong.
|
| Also, I buy expensive things direct from the manufacturer if I
| buy online. No chance for counterfeit items that way.
|
| Wal Mart and Amazon are nothing more than digital flea markets
| at this point.
| dewey wrote:
| I sometimes intentionally do that here as the IKEA online store
| has very high shipping costs (They probably want people to come
| to the store and pick up a bunch of other things on the way).
| There's sellers that sell IKEA things on Amazon with a markup
| but it's still cheaper than IKEA's shipping. I'm assuming it's
| just people buying a cart full of the same product and re-
| selling it on Amazon.
| gazby wrote:
| Genuinely interested, because I hate Amazon also but spend much
| of my online shopping dollars with them, what makes Walmart
| preferable to Amazon for your family?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I know people who believe that giving dollars to Amazon will
| cement their monopoly like control over ecommerce, leading to
| worse behavior in the future. Others object to the well-
| publicized (although I doubt unique) poor conditions for
| their drivers and warehouse employees in their fulfillment
| system.
| somethingwitty1 wrote:
| This goes both ways. Numerous people (companies?) have setup
| arbitrage businesses. They post products on Amazon at a markup
| over Walmart and vice-versa. They leverage the APIs to
| dynamically adjust their prices based on how the prices move on
| each store. It technically isn't a rip-off, when you think
| about it. They are taking advantage of people not searching for
| the best deal. You get what you ordered, they make money from
| scouting prices and putting at a price you are willing to pay
| for said product (I assume otherwise you wouldn't order).
|
| Don't get me wrong, when this happens, I get that feeling of
| rip off, but the reality is, I didn't price shop. And someone
| did some work to get it to show up for me where I was looking.
| patrick451 wrote:
| When I was an undergrad, me and buddy had what amounted to an
| arbitrage scheme (I didn't realize that was the name for it
| back then)selling laptops on campus. We would buy them from
| ebay, and sell them to local students with posters on
| physical bulletin boards around campus. At some point, the
| market flipped, and we could no longer turn a profit this
| way. So we started buying student's laptops on campus and
| selling them on ebay.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > You get what you ordered
|
| Not if you're trying to avoid Amazon for moral boycott
| reasons (as the OP was). In that case, people are willing to
| knowingly pay an additional fee to avoid Amazon, but that
| money is just being pocketed and the rest of the money is
| being turned over to Amazon on their behalf.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Boycotting Amazon and buying at Walmart seems strange. The
| moral reasons are there in both cases.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Amazon is the biggest eCommerce retailer, so trying to
| prevent a monopoly is a moral reason.
|
| Amazon also has a lot of famous worker safety/treatment
| issues for their delivery drivers and warehouse workers.
| I doubt they are unique in the fulfillment space, but
| they are extremely well publicized. Walmart has issues as
| well, but their publicized issues were in stores. Walmart
| online avoids the worst publicized worker treatment
| issues.
| Klinky wrote:
| It's fine if you think markets are intended to be hostile to
| consumers instead of bettering people's lives. I don't think
| incentivizing deceptive middlemen is really a net benefit to
| society.
| fragmede wrote:
| Personally I don't think it is either, but people need
| money to exist in this world, and we can't all be
| researching the cure for cancer.
| Klinky wrote:
| Perhaps not everyone can research cures for cancer, but
| that's not a good reason to then become the "cancer".
| Just because it's how it is now, doesn't mean that's how
| it has to be. Ideally Amazon, Walmart, Google, etc..
| should manage their marketplaces better to provide a
| optimal consumer experience, but it seems so long as they
| get their cut, they couldn't care less. The continued
| consolidation of competition leaves fewer options for
| consumers to even "vote with their wallets".
| rbanffy wrote:
| Just noting that's a very profitable business.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Welcome to capitalism, where everyone is trying to rip off
| everyone else and everyone has to defend themselves against
| everyone else.
|
| Definitely don't recommend.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| I remember this also being a thing with eBay as well. Not
| sure why someone would go to eBay first and not check Amazon,
| but then again some people still pay for AOL.
| klondike_ wrote:
| So they don't have to pay for prime
| tedmiston wrote:
| I have noticed a number of inexpensive small items (say <
| ~$7) being cheaper including shipping on eBay compared to
| Amazon.
| fragmede wrote:
| ebay's cheaper than Amazon, that's why.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| I was going to say "arbitrage." I thought of the pizza place
| guy who discovered that DoorDash or GrubHub was charging
| customers less than they paid him. Promoting the delivery
| business, you know.
|
| So he'd just order pizzas for himself, and pocket the
| difference.
| somat wrote:
| I buy a lot of stuff from newegg and when they made the shift
| from newegg(the store) to newegg(the marketplace) it was the
| same, the experience started to suck. Thankfully newegg has as
| a filter option, "only show items from newegg(the store)"
|
| In fact that is one of my biggest beefs with amazon, the way
| they have it set up it is very hard, if not impossible to
| figure out who you are buying stuff from.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| The good thing about the old brick an mortar system was that
| there were experienced buyers between the manufacturer and
| the brick and mortar store. Suppliers had to submit
| production samples to the buyers to evaluate. So everything
| you bought was vetted.
| agumonkey wrote:
| It's staggering how the web is devolving into long forgotten
| shittiest practice. All that 'compute power' only to end up
| like this.
| willnonya wrote:
| Hard not to long for the days when the internet was only for
| geeks and porn eh.
| realce wrote:
| Computers only empower human nature, so it goes.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Yes, society rebase itself on any layer it can; I'm just
| surprised nobody saw it coming earlier.
| swayvil wrote:
| That's all empowerment. Time, money, even self-improvement
| meditationy stuff.
|
| It's invariably no taste and petty power struggles,
| magnified. Like one of those 1950s giant insect monster
| movies.
|
| Power needs to be coupled to cultivation or something.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Trust and reputation don't scale well. An uncurated global
| marketplace means the most underhanded players win out.
| randcraw wrote:
| Bricks and mortar retailers have long been prosecuted for
| fraud by law enforcement, local or federal. But "marketplace"
| e-resellers circumvent enforcement because their e-tail hosts
| (Amazon, Walmart, Alibaba...) don't hold them responsible and
| are not held responsible themselves for abuse of their
| service by others, no matter that the level of fraud has
| risen to become the norm. The cause for this is, of course,
| we, the willing victims. And it won't change until we insist
| that government NOT be just another reality show.
| agumonkey wrote:
| And the added benefit that Amazon is by large the heaviest
| player so masses are sucked into the habits of ordering
| there. It's a sad waste.
| yalogin wrote:
| This is almost impossible to control. The amount of staffing and
| expertise needed to do this at scale across all product styles
| and segments is just impossible to maintain. There are no laws or
| any repercussions at all to allowing fake items on their stores,
| so Amazon and Walmart will not do anything about them. Problem is
| if someone does the right thing and weeds out all the scams from
| their site they will not have enough products and because of
| economies of scale they can't offer the price Amazon or Walmart
| can offer. So essentially these scam items are giving them market
| pricing power. It's almost impossible to beat, and I am sure that
| is why Walmart jumped into the game themselves.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > The amount of staffing and expertise needed to do this at
| scale across all product styles and segments is just impossible
| to maintain.
|
| Stopping all comingling would be a good start. Known good
| products from known good sellers with known good supplier lines
| would allow buyers to drastically reduce the chance of getting
| a fake product.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Judging from the fact that the scams persist, you seem to be
| right.
|
| But anyone with sense can immediately spot the patterns that
| show these to be scams (e.g. prices that are too good to be
| true and recent reviews that say these are scams). Therefore,
| it seems like automated scanning could eventually be tuned to
| catch and ban these sellers.
|
| I think they also get away with this (and receive some good
| reviews) because the drives are too slow to ever fill up.
| slivanes wrote:
| The old adage is "The only way to win is to not play the game".
|
| I wish these large retailers didn't allow these 3rd party
| sellers to pollute their listings.
| amelius wrote:
| > This is almost impossible to control.
|
| I bet some Apple fans are giggling now.
| kemayo wrote:
| Even Apple's walled garden does a so-so job of stopping
| scams. Given their app review process, they've got rather
| less of an excuse -- you'd really think they'd give close
| scrutiny to any app charging above-the-norm subscription
| prices, but apparently not...
|
| E.g. from this week: https://9to5mac.com/2022/08/22/app-
| store-review-process-auth...
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| > This is almost impossible to control. The amount of staffing
| and expertise needed to do this at scale across all product
| styles and segments is just impossible to maintain.
|
| I'll try this excuse next time I break a law, and see how far
| it gets me. "Your honor, keeping track of so many laws is just
| impossible to maintain!"
| yalogin wrote:
| Which law is Walmart or Amazon breaking here?
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Items have to do what they're supposed to. So for example
| you can't sell a "TV" that doesn't do 'TV stuff.' Here's
| one description of that law, from Investopedia:
|
| > The law automatically provides the second type of
| warranty, the implied warranty. Implied warranties are a
| part of all retail sales of new and used consumer goods.
| The retailer of an item implies that the item will work
| properly and be of average grade and quality, as long as it
| is used for the purpose it was sold. For example, a
| refrigerator will keep stuff cool as long as you are not
| trying to cool the entire room, and a blender will blend as
| long as you are not blending rocks.
|
| If you're selling a "30 TB Portable SSD" it has to store 30
| TB of data, be portable, actually be an SSD, etc.
| LegitShady wrote:
| selling items not as described
| rvr_ wrote:
| This should be a crime, like selling spoiled food.
| flipbrad wrote:
| It's fraud, of course it's a crime
| jasongill wrote:
| other than baby food/formula, it's not a crime to sell spoiled
| food (at least not in the USA)
| amelius wrote:
| Even in restaurants?
| noasaservice wrote:
| If they're knowingly selling fraudulent merchandise, that's
| interstate commerce fraud.
| dbingham wrote:
| So if NewEgg has gone the way of garbage as well, where do people
| go for trustworthy parts these days? I haven't built my own
| machine in about a decade, but thinking about building a new one
| soon...
| numpad0 wrote:
| What I always wonder about fake SD cards and USB drives is, if
| they could "run DOOM" - can a microSD card be used as an
| extremely cost effective, low endurance general purpose computers
| with single level storage?
|
| Bottom of the barrel microSD is about $2.50, I don't smoke but a
| pack of cigarette is over twice as that. So microSD-based devices
| should be able to be distributed in a similar affordability and
| scale, with computing resource of perhaps late 80s PC. What could
| it do, for the good or for fun?
| jstanley wrote:
| > can a microSD card be used as an extremely cost effective,
| low endurance general purpose computers with single level
| storage?
|
| This is exactly what Raspberry Pi's use, so the answer is yes.
| frostburg wrote:
| I think that the parent post means to use the onboard
| controller as a CPU and the flash memory as virtual memory
| (with no ram) and mass storage. I don't think this is
| actually viable with sd cards but it might work with
| different memory formats.
| 0134340 wrote:
| After a quick search, looking at one such controller [0], it
| has a 24mhz CPU w/ 16KB RAM and another I came across that has
| 32mhz CPU and per doom minimum requirements @ 66mhz CPU and 8MB
| RAM[1], good luck on that. It's been ported to some pretty weak
| embedded systems before but maybe someone will eventually prove
| me wrong.
|
| 0: https://www.globalspec.com/Industrial-
| Directory/nand_flash_c...
|
| 1: https://www.sysrequirements.com/game/doom
| wiml wrote:
| Yes indeed! I've seen a couple hacks along these lines. Bunnie
| has blogged about it:
| https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554
| Extigy wrote:
| Probably not DOOM, but apparently some microSD cards have
| microcontrollers that can be exploited to run arbitrary code:
| https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=3592
| hot_gril wrote:
| Despite being solid state, SD cards have horrible random read
| and write speeds, worse even than HDDs. They're made for
| storing media from cameras, so it doesn't matter.
|
| Maybe RPis do OK cause they just load the system once, maybe
| even sequentially. I also keep a card in my MBP. It takes
| forever to write directories, but it's good enough to store
| Xcode etc only cause the RAM caches things. Torrenting Ubuntu
| onto it was unusably slow. I expect it'd be unusable as single-
| level storage.
| no_wizard wrote:
| is NewEgg / TigerDirect still the place to buy from if you want
| to get some level of authenticity in your shopping for
| electronics?
|
| I find I only trust things from the Apple store anymore myself.
| Markup and all.
| computerfriend wrote:
| I bought a 512 GB SanDisk SD card in Shenzhen several years ago
| that was similarly fake. I think what happened here is they just
| incorporated these off-the-shelf fake SD cards into their
| product, rather than hacking the firmware of the SD cards
| themselves.
| neilv wrote:
| Flash drives with hacked firmware to pretend to be bigger
| capacity than they were (along with other evildoing, like
| counterfeits targeting people paying a premium to get Sandisk
| quality) were already rampant on eBay IIRC 15+ years ago.
|
| I was still seething over some of the storage ones when, a few
| years ago, I joined an anti-counterfeiting startup. (Sadly, our
| successful MVP launch integrated into a high-end factory
| production line happened just as Covid was breaking out, which
| spooked our flagship customer, and impacted followthrough we
| needed, then we ran out of runway while pivoting.)
|
| As a consumer, I can imagine a lot of things that the
| marketplaces like Amazon.com and Walmart.com could do to improve
| trustworthiness. I don't know whether those make business sense.
| I'd love to see consumers reward a marketplace that conspicuously
| kept out the scammers.
|
| Ideally, the solution would protect integrity of all brands, not
| only house brands.
| 14 wrote:
| In order to sell on those platforms companies should have to
| place $5 million in escrow and Amazon promises to test at
| random a certain percentage of your products and if failed you
| lose your money. I laughed at a client when he told me he
| bought a 1TB hard drive off of Wish. I told him well good luck
| with that hope you didn't just get scammed. Saw him a week
| later and he told me the drive wouldn't work on his new PS5. I
| told him I would bet him the cost of the drive it was a fake
| and probably couldn't hold even half of what it is reporting
| and told him to use the tools to see it's actual size. He
| didn't take the bet so I will never be sure but no way in hell
| I would be a $25 storage from Wish.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Like bonds for construction work. The usual way that small
| companies do that is insurance; the insurance companies look
| into how likely a company is to be able to perform and charge
| appropriately. The risk assessment function rides on them
| with commercial incentives instead of corruptible government.
| In theory.
| 14 wrote:
| HN likes to believe that any sort of monetary entry barrier
| automatically equals big player monopoly and that it will
| prevent the smaller guys from entering but as in your
| example this is just not true. In fact like you say has
| sprung up secondary markets like insurance companies.
| silvestrov wrote:
| > $5 million in escrow
|
| Nestle have no problem putting up $5M, but most good small
| companies just can't.
|
| So the end effect is that you enable big monopolies.
|
| You need to invent some kind of reputation system. Small
| towns (and communities) have this builtin as everybody knows
| almost everybody. Amazon is missing the ability to say "this
| is a new seller without solid reputation".
|
| But I'm guessing this would be bad for short-term thinking,
| the wish for "the everything store".
|
| You can't be quality store and "everything store". Everything
| is mostly junk (Sturgeon's law).
| rlpb wrote:
| I think a key thing is that a marketplace should be held liable
| if the actual seller cannot be held to account. They shouldn't
| be able to use "just a marketplace" as a shield to avoid
| liability when they're the only ones in a position to have
| vetted the real seller.
|
| This is how it works with credit card companies where I live.
| The credit card company is jointly liable with the supplier. It
| works fine and the consumer is protected. "Marketplaces" are
| still in the relative wild west when it comes to liability
| here.
| merely-unlikely wrote:
| The flip side is then it becomes much harder for small
| companies to get their products approved on such marketplaces
| (to the benefit of larger competitors). There's a tradeoff
| and, like most things, some middle ground is probably best.
| wtallis wrote:
| > There's a tradeoff and, like most things, some middle
| ground is probably best.
|
| This is a question of whether there should be any real
| accountability _at all_. We 're currently at one extreme
| and debating whether to take the smallest step away from
| that; a real middle ground is a long ways off.
| mbreese wrote:
| _> The flip side is then it becomes much harder for small
| companies to get their products approved on such
| marketplaces_
|
| So long as the marketplace can confirm that someone will
| take responsibility for product quality, I don't see an
| issue. Smaller companies will be able to be more hands on
| with a marketplace. As in, actually having a person to
| communicate with customers and/or the marketplace.
|
| The problem only is an issue for fly by night sellers that
| just generate new identities when a marketplace delists
| them. Having a little bit of due diligence added to the
| marketplace is a good thing for both buyers and sellers.
| logifail wrote:
| > when they're the only ones in a position to have vetted the
| real seller
|
| I've yet to see any evidence that marketplaces are actually
| interested in vetting sellers ... or buyers, for that matter.
|
| Marketplaces are basically all about taking their % of the
| sale, yet getting to shrug and walk away if the transaction
| goes south.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| I wish there was some kind of builtin tool in mainstream
| operating system to validate the real capacity of an external
| storage.
|
| Right now I use h2testw on all storage I purchase, but you
| kinda need to know this is a thing.
| mort96 wrote:
| I suppose the issue is that the only real way of doing that
| is to write as much random garbage as the drive supports and
| then verify that you can read it all back again. That should
| probably be a thing, but it would be incredibly slow and
| waste your limited write cycles.
|
| The combination of regulations and buying from reputable
| sellers should be enough IMO... though most people would
| probably view Walmart as a reputable seller, so that clearly
| doesn't work.
| unwind wrote:
| Yeah, and it's not enough to do e.g. d =
| random_block() for block in capacity:
| block.write(d) if block.read() != d:
| fail("fake disk")
|
| Since that would be fooled by a device mapping all reported
| blocks to the same actual storage. I guess you basically
| have to write unique data to all reported blocks first,
| then read them all back to verify.
|
| Since storage devices are often bigger than RAM, the data
| is probably best to generate procedurally (but
| deterministically) from the block number.
|
| That sounds like fun!
| pronoiac wrote:
| Ooh, I just did something with this, and I should finish
| the draft blog post for it:
|
| * write encrypted zeroes
|
| * decrypt it and count the zeroes
|
| I _think_ cbc mode is enough. I see a possible
| computational loophole, which I want to check before I
| post.
| mort96 wrote:
| You could do that, but doesn't it seem easier to: 1)
| initialize a CSPRNG to a known seed; 2) generate random
| numbers and write them sequentially; 3) initialize a new
| RNG to the same seed and compare numbers you generate to
| numbers you read from the storage? That way, you even get
| to point at the exact byte where the first divergence
| happens, which might let you say, "this drive which
| claims to be 30TB seems to be 1GB".
| pronoiac wrote:
| I think that would avoid the potential loophole I was
| worried about! I'd be careful with the periodicity of the
| RNG though.
|
| I was on a machine with limited user space. I used
| OpenSSL, no new binaries, reading and writing at close-
| to-wire speeds. "Counting zeroes" would track down where
| they don't match, doesn't it?
| NavinF wrote:
| CSPRNGs don't have that issue.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Once you find the exact byte where you know the storage
| ends, you can actually format the drive it's completely
| usable. F3 can do this with f3probe and f3fix.
|
| https://fight-flash-
| fraud.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage.htm...
|
| I've used it on a 2GB microSD that came with a 3d printer
| that turned out to be 100MB. I continued to use it to
| transport files to my 3d printer for a bit with this.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| I believe f3 (Fight Flash Fraud) already does random
| numbers with a preset seed: https://github.com/AltraMayor
| /f3/blob/master/f3read.c#L144
| robocat wrote:
| So they put that code on the drive controller, detect
| when f3 is being used, and generate the pattern
| dynamically in the drive controller.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Yes, that would be possible, but that would require
| effort on the counterfeiter's part. Any additional
| hardware in the drive controller is going to reduce the
| counterfeiter's profits. So why would they bother?
| H2testw, which f3's algorithm is based upon, is more than
| a decade old at this point with the same RNG generator
| and no one has made such a drive controller to trick it.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| I've been using f3probe rather than full f3: https://fight-
| flash-fraud.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage.htm...
|
| The documentation does mention it is possible for more
| advanced fake firmware to bypass this, but I don't think
| anyone has bothered yet. It's labelled experimental because
| of that, but I believe that was at least 5 years ago.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Yesterday I read another analysis of what seems to be the
| same drive which tried to verify the real capacity, but the
| issue was that the drive was throttled to a low-speed
| connection so that validating it by writing and re-reading
| the full volume of data would take something like 250 days.
| So it's kind of obvious that it was bad, but you can't easily
| prove it in a reasonable time.
| greggh wrote:
| This has been going on for awhile. But my question for the crowd
| here: I actually need a bunch more storage soon, and can't afford
| to spend much. So while this is an obvious scam, what isn't? Got
| any links to the best price for the most space?
| synack wrote:
| I run https://diskprices.com/ which indexes Amazon. I do my
| best to filter out the obvious scams.
| staindk wrote:
| Not sure on exact products but I'd probably trust B&H [1] over
| Amazon and Newegg for something like this - if you're worried
| about getting fake products etc.
|
| In my experience they run a great store. I also don't think
| they have the kind of third-party seller BS that Amazon and
| Walmart do.
|
| [1] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/
| wishfish wrote:
| B&H are great. I've had good luck with them. My main supplier
| these days is Best Buy. No 3rd party sellers. Never heard of
| any scam or inauthentic products from them. They ship from
| the local store or warehouse so I get things faster than
| Prime. And maybe they treat their workers better than Amazon?
| I guess that's a low bar to clear but I haven't heard any
| complaints.
|
| It's a little funny to me because as recently as the early
| 2010s, Best Buy felt like a joke. I don't know that they've
| changed much from then to now, but Amazon and Newegg are
| shadows of what they used to be. Best Buy seems like a
| paragon of reliability in comparison.
| toastedwedge wrote:
| I second B&H. Adorama[0] is a nice counterpart as well.
|
| [0] https://www.adorama.com/
| jewel wrote:
| I use the hard drive category on pcpartpicker.com, sorted by
| price per GB. You can then filter by seller and total size if
| you have other constraints.
|
| https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#sort=...
|
| Also be sure to check external drives. Sometimes it's cheaper
| to buy one of those and then discard the enclosure.
|
| https://pcpartpicker.com/products/external-hard-drive/#sort=...
| mjrpes wrote:
| If shopping on Amazon, the trick is to view only products sold
| by Amazon, not 3rd party sellers. Sometimes this is a little
| tricky to do. When you search for "1TB USB Flash Drive", you
| won't see a filter for seller. But if you click "USB Flash
| Drives" under the department filter, you'll now be able to show
| only items sold by "amazon.com". Results are the legit brands:
| SanDisk, Kingston, HP, PNY.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _If shopping on Amazon, the trick is to view only products
| sold by Amazon, not 3rd party sellers._
|
| My understanding is that "ships from and sold by Amazon.com"
| is not safe, since those items are often commingled into the
| general FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) stock.
| mjrpes wrote:
| I've seen reports of that but never had an issue myself. If
| there is a problem you can return it, and I find Amazon's
| "drop item at UPS store without packaging it" very
| convenient. If you still want to avoid the chance, B&H is
| probably best for electronic items.
| quartz wrote:
| Depends pretty wildly on your specific needs, but Best Buy has
| had consistently low prices on SSDs for a few years now.
|
| You can pick up a 2TB PNY NVMe SSD for $129 right now:
| https://www.bestbuy.com/site/pny-xlr8-cs3030-2tb-internal-pc...
| mindslight wrote:
| You need to be more specific about your requirements. What size
| is a bunch? Internal or external? Flash or spinning rust?
|
| In general stick to well known brands of whatever you're
| looking at. If you want to save money, then expand your
| knowledge of the lesser tier brands based on what people are
| talking about (eg r/buildapc r/buildapcsales). Make a
| spreadsheet of models across vendors, rather than trusting an
| individual vendor's search functionality. That's just a good
| idea anyway, to make sure you're not getting gouged by a
| vendor.
|
| The scam listing under discussion doesn't even purport to have
| a brand name, not even a GENSYM brand. The only way you're
| going to get there is to search for capacity and sort by price.
| Don't do that.
| mathgeek wrote:
| Stick with the name brands, look at SlickDeals or r/pcdeals for
| daily deals, and assume any off-brand hardware is a scam.
| boppo1 wrote:
| I think newegg is still honest.
| robbs wrote:
| Newegg has the same problem as all the other big online
| retailers, third party sellers.
| lazide wrote:
| Newegg is a shitshow. Same problem.
|
| I won't buy from them anymore. It's just worse Amazon.
| Dwedit wrote:
| Newegg has actual product categorization, Amazon doesn't.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Sadly no, they have the "marketplace" problem that Amazon
| does where you never know who actually provided the widget
| you are buying, and they have a an even worse problem where
| they scam people out of returns.
|
| https://www.gamespot.com/articles/after-allegations-of-
| knowi...
| LegitShady wrote:
| newegg is extremely shady. back when GPUs were still hard to
| find they were bundling them with defective gigabyte power
| supplies (as revealed by gamer's nexus), reselling returned
| defective items and blaming the customer (as revealed by
| gamer's nexus, etc.
|
| I wouldn't give them my money, personally. Their willingness
| to sell garbage to customers and blame the customers is not
| the mark of a good business.
| bergenty wrote:
| This article is missing the only piece of useful information I
| was looking for. What is the true capacity of the drive?
| axiolite wrote:
| "two 512MB Flash drives"
|
| https://nitter.net/RayRedacted/status/1563021492157579264?re...
| bergenty wrote:
| Holy shit, how is this good enough for Walmart?
| Cyberdog wrote:
| In case you missed the other subthreads... This isn't being
| sold by Walmart themselves; they're just acting as the
| storefront for a third-party seller, as Amazon and NewEgg
| do.
| mathgeek wrote:
| The Ars article that Tom's referenced from has that info:
|
| > Scammer gets two 512MB Flash drives. Or 1 gigabyte, or
| whatever. They then add hacked firmware that makes it misreport
| its size.
| ryanschneider wrote:
| I'm curious why they bothered to add two microSD cards, but I
| wonder if that somehow actually makes the hack easier? Like
| maybe the firmware only needs to be patched in one spot to
| report a fake size when running in "RAID" mode?
| prmoustache wrote:
| Because they count on the fact that transfer rate is so
| slow people will really realize this too late. I guess this
| kind of business create an account on amazon, aliexpress
| and others, scam thousands of users for a month or two,
| close their accounts, create a new one before they get
| annoyed by disputes and everything.
| jetbalsa wrote:
| and might be able to get the boards cheaper, if they are
| old stock left over and easy to hack. then why not
| numpad0 wrote:
| Maybe this is built on an existing, legitimate product that
| require both slots to be populated to work?
| sys_64738 wrote:
| I browsed the twitter comments and appears the FW is hacked to
| report this incredible amount but when it writes then it's
| overwriting multiple times. It's also USB 2.0.
| j-bos wrote:
| This is why I buy all my electronics from B&H, they have a more
| personal narrowly-scoped, and good reputation at stake.
|
| So I trust them, atm.
| brundolf wrote:
| Wow, I have to be impressed though with the lengths they go to to
| keep up the charade. Hacking the firmware and creating fake files
| if you go over the real limit. Many people might never find out
| it's a fake (how many people who don't immediately know this is a
| scam are actually going to fill up that much space and find out?)
| netsharc wrote:
| The firmware hacking to fake the size isn't new in the whole
| fake USB drive scene, the new part of it is that it's being
| sold on Walmart.com . Some commenters have said it's a
| marketplace product, but I visited the page and I can't even
| spot an indicator to say so.
| bombcar wrote:
| Apparently the indicator only appears when it is in stock.
| Which kind of makes sense but is still annoying.
|
| It's getting harder and harder to find non marketplace
| sellers at both Amazon and Walmart. Starting to default to
| target and Home Depot and Best Buy for now.
| [deleted]
| mindslight wrote:
| That's the standard way of making fake memory cards. The
| "innovation" of this scam is the nice enclosure.
|
| The firmware is actually not much of a hack, but quite in line
| with how flash memory operates. Flash memory can't be modified,
| but rather needs to be bulk erased and then written. Thus an
| address doesn't indicate a physical place but rather goes
| through some indirection data structure. The hacked firmware
| just reports a larger capacity, and silently discards older
| blocks it's supposed to be hanging onto.
| rep_lodsb wrote:
| Presumably it'll fail quickly if you use full disk encryption.
| Or any filesystem other than NTFS, if it somehow interprets
| that in order to not overwrite directory blocks.
| Sakos wrote:
| This has always been a thing, but I think it's insane that a
| retailer is carrying a scam product like this. Amazon has the
| excuse that third-party sellers are usually the ones selling them
| (which is of course still bullshit). What's Walmart's excuse?
| powerhour wrote:
| Amazon _claims_ the excuse that their third-party sellers they
| rely on and contract with to provide goods to attract
| customers, but I 'm not convinced it's valid (as you can
| probably surmise). Amazon ought to be required to verify the
| authenticity of products on their site, if only in the first
| batch.
| hot_gril wrote:
| They need to at least police the fake reviews better.
| copperx wrote:
| I don't care if Amazon keeps doing it, but please give me an
| option in the settings to hide all third-party sellers.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| On an Amazon search results or category page, look in the
| options in the left column for a "Seller" section, and
| select "Amazon Warehouse."
|
| That option is actually not always available for some
| reason (maybe if all of the options on the current page
| will be shipped from Amazon anyway)... but I always check
| it when it is and I don't want any shady sellers to be
| included.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'd like that. But I know Amazon commingles inventory with
| third-party sellers. I'd like to be able to shop just
| Amazon-sold items, and Amazon-only inventory. Without that,
| I find the whole experience devalued significantly.
| wombat-man wrote:
| Walmart recently started doing the whole "sold by x, fulfulled
| by Walmart" thing that amazon does. So they're taking inventory
| from random sellers and selling it just as Amazon does. Which
| is kind of annoying. I think Target still doesn't do this.
| Lately though I'm finding BestBuy to be a good option for when
| I am trying to avoid counterfeits or rinky dink random brands.
| They usually ship free too.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I think Target still doesn't do this.
|
| They do. Search target.com for some suitably generic thing
| like 'portable hard drive' and you'll see some are labeled
| like this: "Sold and shipped by Mega Retail Store a Target
| Plus(tm) partner"
| mdasen wrote:
| Walmart isn't carrying it. It's being sold by a third party on
| Walmart.com. Walmart allows third parties to sell on
| Walmart.com just as Amazon allows third parties to sell on
| their website.
| somehnguy wrote:
| It annoys me to no end that Walmart.com defaults to mostly
| 3rd party junk when you search. Every single time I have to
| adjust search settings to 'in-store' only, which isn't a 1
| second fix when you're on mobile just due to network latency.
|
| The only reason I ever buy from Walmart is when I want the
| product the same day and am willing to drive 10 min to my
| local store. If that isn't the case, I have the entire
| internet of sellers to choose from and it surely isn't going
| to be Walmart that I pick.
| pengaru wrote:
| Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined people
| would be upset about not having access to what wal-mart
| stocks in-store vs. its web site. The shelves are largely
| stocked with cheaply made chinesium junk as it is!
|
| Try buy a can opener that doesn't bend on first use or a
| wooden spoon in your local wal-mart, I dare you. It's just
| one step above DOLLAR GENERAL from where I'm sitting.
| jefftk wrote:
| The Walmart stores will sell items that make cost-quality
| trade-offs you wouldn't, but they don't sell outright
| frauds like this HD.
| blincoln wrote:
| I generally go out of my way to avoid Walmart, but the
| one recent datapoint I have was a flour sifter bought
| there. It didn't work even when brand new. The design was
| physically flawed, not a one-off defective item.[1] It
| was essentially a film prop. It looked like a flour
| sifter, and AFAICT it was really made from stainless
| steel, but one couldn't use it to sift more than maybe a
| handful of flour before it became permanently useless.
| Didn't do anything to change my opinion about buying
| things from them, and seems like "outright fraud", just
| not at the level of a fake 30TB SSD.
| jefftk wrote:
| It seems like you intended to link the item but didn't?
| Cyberdog wrote:
| ...and after that can opener bends on first use, I can
| take it straight to the same Walmart and get a
| replacement or refund. No wait, no mailing stuff back and
| forth. This is on top of the immediate gratification (for
| lack of a better term when it comes to can openers) of
| getting the opener immediately in the first place, as
| should I ever find myself in need of a new can opener, it
| will almost certainly be because my current one broke or
| got lost and I have a can I need to open _right now._
|
| I don't find buying stuff online instead of in person
| nearly as attractive a proposition as I used to. Whether
| that's just because of the negative experiences or just
| because of priority rebalancing after growing older, I
| have no way of knowing, but whenever I need to buy
| something I almost always look for it at several local
| stores first, either in-person or via the "pick up in
| store" option on their sites.
| copperx wrote:
| > The shelves are largely stocked with cheaply made
| chinesium junk as it is!
|
| I don't understand this complaint in this day and age.
| Can you point me to a brick-and-mortar store that has
| mostly high-quality long-lasting items?
| tcmart14 wrote:
| Not only that, I've also been bitten by cheaply made junk
| stamped "made in the USA." As another commenter said, at
| least with going in the store, there is usually some
| company attached to the product I can contact if really
| needed. Regardless of the cheaply made stuff's origin.
| Third party online retailers, much of the time end up
| ghosted or someone trying to play off as being
| incompetent.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Never heard of Best Buy selling fake stuff, at least not
| yet. For spoons and such, there are dedicated stores like
| Sur La Table, which of course cost a lot more.
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| The only time I shop in a physical Walmart store is when
| I need something I can't wait for, on which case I check
| In-Store on the website first and it is indeed clunky.
| somehnguy wrote:
| Walmart does indeed sell a lot of dollar store quality
| items like you're describing. But for most items they
| have a higher quality (not high quality- just higher)
| sitting right next to the cheapest one on the shelf.
|
| The kitchen equipment aisle is what comes to mind here -
| you can buy the cheap spoon for $.99 or you can buy the
| better one that doesn't have the issues you describe for
| a few dollars more. Which one you buy is up to you.
|
| We just bought a midrange quality ice cream scoop from
| Target locally, the thought process being that Target
| usually has higher quality items. Then later that same
| day we went to Walmart for some low quality disposable
| items and saw that exact ice cream scoop for a dollar
| less than Target. Oops.
| delusional wrote:
| I'd rather buy crap from a namebrand that has an address
| I can send a complaint to, than some anonymous
| dropshipper that's just going to fold and reopen within a
| week.
| MereInterest wrote:
| If I'm going to Walmart.com, giving my credit card
| information to Walmart, on a page with Walmart's logo
| prominently displayed, then it feels more like a business
| relation with Walmart that they subcontract out. Like if I
| buy a t-shirt from a dropseller, and it's defective, I can
| take it up with the dropseller and don't need to argue with
| the manufacturer.
|
| Granted, a similar argument could be made about eBay, so I
| think history plays a huge role. When Walmart puts up a
| marketplace for 3rd-parties without clearly disclaiming it as
| being from not-Walmart, Walmart's history and reputation as a
| direct seller customers lets a reasonable customer conclude
| that they are buying it directly from Walmart. eBay was never
| a seller themselves, and doesn't have Walmart's reputation,
| so products listed on eBay don't cause the same customer
| confusion.
| mdasen wrote:
| I don't disagree, but Amazon and other sites are operating
| the same model. Walmart and Amazon provide similar
| prominence about whether a product is being sold by them or
| by a third party. I agree that eBay doesn't cause that
| confusion because they were never a first party seller.
|
| I think the issue is that we'd need a regulation and one
| that clearly stipulates what the situation is. For example,
| one could propose that when a retailer that sells goods as
| a first party also provides a marketplace for third party
| goods, 10% of the page's size above the fold must be the
| third party's branding and that branding must be larger
| than the branding of the retailer. That would make it very
| obvious.
|
| One of the issues that we're facing is that our regulations
| often don't specify enough of how something must be
| implemented. For example, sites must label their ads.
| Google used to make the ads have a different color
| background that made it easy to visually filter ads from
| organic results. Now they just write "Ad" in light grey
| (#aaadb2) against a gray background (#202124) with much
| less prominence and contrast than the title of the link.
| Twitter puts "Promoted" below the tweet rather than at the
| top of the tweet so that when you're scrolling you'll read
| the tweet before seeing that it's an ad (and it's rgb(113,
| 118, 123) (light gray) on black while the regular text is
| rgb(231, 233, 234) (nearly white) on black). The FTC does
| require that ads and sponsored content be clearly labeled,
| but doesn't really specify or enforce standards. I think if
| I labeled something as "Ad" as #aaadb2 on a #aaadb1
| background, that clearly wouldn't pass muster. There'd be
| almost zero contrast. How much contrast is needed? How
| prominent should we require messages that clarify important
| things like this?
|
| As you note, you're going to Walmart.com and giving your
| information to Walmart on a page where Walmart's logo and
| branding is basically all that you see - except for a tiny
| "Sold by XYZ" note. I don't know what the solution is
| entirely, but it's going to take regulatory action if we
| want to deal with this. If Amazon is doing it, Walmart will
| do it. If Google is limiting the contrast on how it marks
| ads, Twitter will also limit the contrast.
| MereInterest wrote:
| I definitely agree, this is an industry-wide issue. As
| much as it explains Walmart's actions, I don't think it
| absolves any of the actors.
|
| So many of our regulations and laws are designed under
| the assumption that time and attention are unlimited.
| Under such an assumption, misrepresenting the seller for
| 95% of the page is fine, because you'll notice the 5%
| that gives accurate information. Advertising designed to
| give false impressions are fine, because of course you'll
| notice that nothing was specifically claimed about a
| product. Terms of service and privacy policies are
| binding no matter how unnecessarily long they are,
| because you have unlimited time to sift through them.
|
| But those assumptions are all clearly and blatantly
| untrue.
| Sakos wrote:
| Where do you see that it's a third-party seller? I'm not
| seeing it.
|
| edit: Reading through the text and looking at the pictures,
| it's obvious that it's a third-party, but nothing on the site
| explicitly says "this is a seller not associated with
| Walmart".
|
| Comparison:
|
| Amazon: https://i.imgur.com/rGdTkM4.png
|
| Walmart: https://i.imgur.com/JRwhzBy.png
|
| Edit: Ahhh, of course. You're right, thanks guys.
| anamexis wrote:
| I think it's not obvious because it is out of stock, so _no
| one_ is selling it. If you find an in-stock item from a
| third party, it 's pretty straightforward.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/tqjlPui
| MereInterest wrote:
| It's pretty straightforward once you know what to look
| for, but I don't think I'd call it straightforward
| overall. It's halfway down the page, sandwiched between
| shipping and return policy, and doesn't show up at all on
| the search results.
| [deleted]
| tomxor wrote:
| > If something sounds too good to be true, then it isn't.
|
| Is this an American version of the idiom? I've always heard it as
| "then it is", referring to the predicate... which I think sounds
| natural but now I'm wondering if that was just cultural.
| miloignis wrote:
| I don't think so, your version is correct to my American ears!
| sfvegandude wrote:
| herf wrote:
| You can check spot prices for NAND chips (Gigabits not GB) which
| explains the margins for end-user products. (This one is <2% of
| the TLC chip cost, obviously fake.)
|
| https://www.trendforce.com/price/flash
| Macha wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32611021
| avip3d wrote:
| If it is too good to be true... it definitely is... I stay away
| from buying storage devices from aliexpress for the same reason.
| frozenport wrote:
| Watching Walmart destroy its competitive advantage.
| libpcap wrote:
| https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/quality-fade-chi...
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