i bought a 'Genuine' Sandisk Extreme III SD card a few months ago from an ebay power seller based in the UK, but when it arrived, it was obviously a fake with a sandisk sticker on it.

I did various speed tests in multiple machines and the results were actually consistently worse than with a generic card I had bought on ebay months before.

i contacted the seller and he claimed it must have been a one off 'accident' from his supplier and if i sent it back he would refund me.

I tried to make a stand as it was obvious that he was only interested in covering it up and would just keep selling fake cards, so I contacted ebay and they refused to do anything about it and kept telling me to resolve the issue with the seller.

I actually work 100 yards away from the ebay offices in Dublin and offered to bring it in to them and show them but they had no interest in stopping one of their power sellers from selling fakes goods.

Paris cos she doesn't need to fake it.

As a user trying to spot the better fakes, I feel sorry for eBay in this case.

Have you tried finding out what makes a card genuine?

Most of the time the £$%^ing manufacturers won't tell you, as it "makes it easier for the counterfeiters".

http://kb.sandisk.com/cgi-bin/sandisk_en.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1953

I bought a pair of laughable fake Nike trainers from a powerseller. Im no expert in spotting dodgy goods but when I received a pair of nasty plastic trainers with paper mache cushioning inside I knew something was not right. I knew I was taking a risk buying from ebay and I took great pleasure in using the returns policy from the seller for 100% refund inc return postage.

Ofcourse I contacted ebay and got no human response, and would you beleive it the seller is still selling today. Although he is not selling nike trainers anymore after I sent photos of the trainers to nike with all the sellers details. Suprisingly I was contacted by nike and they asked if I would appear in court to dish out some justice, but as the seller had my home address I backed out like a pussy. I didnt fancy a 3am petrol bomb trough the letter box.

All I use ebay for now is cheap tat. Things like cables and the occasional dvd.

Anybody buying any type of pharmacuticals needs there head looking at.

Oh, I dunno. Sometimes eBay is the only way that you can get certain things.

I obtained a Transcend 4Gb SD card the other day (yes, SD, not SDHC) as the latest maps* for my satnav take more than 2 gigs, the thing doesn't support the HC cards and I can't be arsed to monkey about loading maps as required.

That's the one that Transcend's own website refuses to admit exists, yet is well known in the satnav forums. eBay was the only place** that I could find one. It's kosher (I've tested it through repeated read / write cycles with both large and small files to 4 gigs) and works a treat.

Caveat emptor indeed. Do the research, take your time and pick the vendor carefully. There are bargains to be had.

*Aaarhaaar me hearties!

**Okay, not strictly true, Amazon had 'em too (showing as available but out of stock). But they wanted over 50 sodding quid for the privilege(!) I figured that the thick end of a tenner including postage was worth a punt......

To be honest Ebay doesnt have any real resposibility or capilbility to verify if any product sold by a seller is counterfeit, fake or grey market, thats the responsibilty of the seller, as would be if a store in a mall was selling fake nike's, the mall is just the landlord providing a space for the seller at a cost to sell thier product in a place easy for buyers to come to.

They also are NOT in anyway beholden to the buyer to go after sellers that do any of the above.

They ARE however beholden to the manufactuer of the product being faked etc in that case the best deal to do would be contact the true manufactuer and give them the details of the seller and the product recieved and provide a link to the item that was fraudulent you purchased, then it will be up to manufactuer to ask ebay to have the seller to remove that specific good from thier listings.

Ive purchased many items from ebay, but it is a very caveat empour place, i know that going in and do alot a research before buying or bid on items that it wouldnt matter if there was an issue with, I bought an hp refurbished laser printer w/o toner carts for $10 US + shipping ($10 starting price no bids 1 hr to go), i figured even if it was just used or not refurbed by hp etc $10 + a small shipping fee wasnt much to lose, when i recieved it i called hp with the serial number, sure enough hp confirmed it had been refurbished by them. course it cost me another $142 for good carts from monoprice but still a $100 cheaper than anywhwere else for a brand new one and higher capacity carts to boot. that was 2 years ago and that printer is still running strong.