A portable hard drive purchased online turned out to be a fake with a weight inside, but a refund was refused.
A 20TB portable hard drive purchased online for about $50 (about 7,200 yen) turned out to be just a plastic box with a weight and a circuit board. The person who was tricked into buying the fake portable hard drive requested a refund but was refused.
Shopper denied $51 refund for 20TB HDD that's mostly a weighted plastic box - Ars Technica
On the social news site Reddit, a post read, 'My dad brought me a new 20TB HDD and asked me to find out what the problem was,' along with an image. The image shows an iron plate being forcibly attached with glue inside what appears to be the HDD case.
Dad dropped off his new 20Tb HDD to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it…
by u/The__Unflushable in pcmasterrace
When Ars Technica contacted the person who posted the issue on Reddit, he said he was only named Martin and that his father had bought the portable hard drive for £38 (about 7,400 yen).
After receiving a broken portable hard drive from his father, Martin used a hammer to disassemble the case and discovered that the black plastic case contained a pair of steel wheel weights crudely attached with a large amount of glue, as well as a small PCB board with some sort of flash storage that could be connected to the system via USB-A.
Martin reported that when he connected the fake portable hard drive to his PC, Windows read the hard drive as a '19TB drive,' but when he tried to operate it, it froze and he couldn't use it as storage.
Programming the board's firmware to make the drive appear as a mass storage device in Windows is a neat trick to fool users, but Ars Technica noted that 'Windows savvy users will point out that Windows reports drive capacity in gibibytes or tebibytes, so an actual 20TB of storage should show up as about 18.2TB in Windows,' and that it's a mistake for the drive to show up as a 19TB drive in Windows.
Furthermore, Ars Technica said, 'Portable hard drives are getting cheaper every year, but 20TB hard drives are not cheap. They usually cost more than $200 (about 29,000 yen). Also, portable hard drives are usually much larger than portable solid state drives, but the one Martin's father bought is almost the size of a portable SSD,' pointing out that it is a counterfeit product that would not be fooled by anyone familiar with portable hard drives.
Martin reports that when he connected the portable hard drive to his PC, the device name (hard disk) appeared on his desktop in Chinese, so it appeared to be mounted. He tried copying files to the portable hard drive, and although the name did indeed appear on the hard disk, he said he had problems opening the files he copied from the hard disk. He told Ars Technica that no matter what he did, including reformatting the hard disk, he was unable to open the files.
Martin's father apparently bought the fake portable hard drive from a website called
Ars Technica has received a receipt from Martin for a 20TB portable hard drive purchased from UK.Chicntech, and online users have also reported seeing 20TB portable hard drives for sale on UK.Chicntech.
X (formerly Twitter) user also shared with Ars Technica a screenshot of a portable hard drive sold on UK.Chicntech. It should be noted that neither the receipt nor the screenshot from UK.Chicntech mentioned the brand name of the portable hard drive.
Martin's father says the portable hard drive arrived in a box from Toshiba's portable hard drive brand, CANVIO. There was also a Toshiba sticker on the back of the device, but CANVIO portable hard drives only come in capacities up to 4TB, and no 20TB drives are sold.
Martin says he received a fake portable hard drive that was inoperable, so he tried to return it to UK.Chicntech, but UK.Chicntech said they would not refund him. Despite Martin sending photos of the box and the inside of the portable hard drive, the support representative refused to acknowledge the problem and repeatedly asked him to send the information he had already sent.
In the end, UK.Chicntech offered a 30% refund, the return of the fake portable hard drive, and a 'free gift' that can be used with the UK version of cacogoga . Ars Technica wrote, 'We checked the websites of UK.Chicntech and cacogoga, but could not find any obvious connection between the two websites. Ars Technica has reached out to both companies for comment, but has not received a response.'
Ars Technica also points out that ' UK.Chicntech's return and exchange policy is full of confusing and unclear wording, which is a red flag in itself.'
'What Martin's father experienced is common when many users purchase home appliances online that they do not fully understand. Fraudulent storage devices are particularly prevalent,' Ars Technica wrote, pointing out that there are many fake portable hard drives like this one.
Ars Technica points out that counterfeit goods like this one have also been sold on well-known online shopping sites such as Walmart and Amazon, and that online marketplaces that allow individual sellers to easily sell counterfeit goods are particularly dangerous.
Amazon is making huge profits from selling banned, recalled and counterfeit products from third-party vendors - GIGAZINE
by Christian Wiediger
Martin's father is reportedly seeking a refund through his credit card company.
in Web Service, Posted by logu_ii