Keep Diggin' Globalsources.com

The following is an email sent to globalsources.com and few of their less trustworthy sellers.

I am sure you must get hundreds of similar emails on a daily basis with regards to fake products and fraudulent companies.

I have been searching b2b sites for honest and trustworthy sellers and manufactures of sd and micro sdhc cards. Needless to say I have hit a brick wall. Every site including your own is writhe with fraudulent companies selling fake goods and whats worse faking their company certificates and you allow them to post fakes, leading to honest buyers being mislead and cheated.

Case in point;

Shenzhen ZhengLiXing Technology Co.Ltd

http://zlx.manufacturer.globalsources.com/si/6008831369239/Certifications.htm

This company has posted viewable scans of "their" ISO 9001:2000 certificate. It is a clear fake. I show you what I mean;

Below is the copy of the certificate. It looks fine at first glance, but something doesn't look quite right. The company's name is too clear compared to the rest of the text. On closer inspection we see why. The company has photo-shopped the scan. Zooming in you can see the circled red text is a little blurred whereas the company name and address are far clearer. This is just one company I have found to be cheating like this is an attempt to gain consumer confidence.

This is by far not the worse case of an obvious fake certificate. But it is one of the highest trust listed companies on your site.

ShenZhen Aterlin Electronics Limited

http://akamai.globalsources.com.edgesuite.net/f/593/3445/5d/static.globalsources.com/IMAGES/CERT/090/C0203166090.jpg

This is probably the worse fake I have seen to date. Even at first glance the scan looks wrong. The company name has clearly been added and the address. How could you let this fake through. There are clearly no quality checks in place for allowing companies to post certificate scans. I could knock together a certificate in a matter of 5 minutes that would look good enough to fool your average buyer. We the buyer are relying on you to weed out these frauds and you obviously don't.

Shortly after finding this fake scan I found something even more damning;

http://akamai.globalsources.com.edgesuite.net/f/593/3445/5d/static.globalsources.com/IMAGES/CERT/086/C0202618086.jpg

Look familiar, perhaps too familiar. Well it should. It is the EXACT same certificate as the above example. Perhaps we should play a little game;

So what plans are in place to fix this obvious fakes and cheats???? I am guessing none. Which is exactly why I will be posting this on a HUGE number of forums and sending it to a number of media groups. I am sick and tired of cheats. I am trying to earn an honest buck and I do not want to cheat anyone but time and time again myself and others are swindled.

Oh and this will also be emailed to the offending companies. and just in case they retract their scans I have saved them all for future reference.

Searching Begins

I started my search with a quick googling session. Searching for b2b sites. Of course alibaba and aliexpress where amoung the first links.

Having spent 3 or 4 hours browsing the various companies offering "high quality" and "full capacity" micro sd hards I started to get the feeling that everyone was offering exactly the same product. But decided small trial and error was the best way to find a good supplier.


Aliexpress, works in much the same way as ebay. Giving sellers a rating. Allbeit an extremely tailored rating.

From what I found sellers seem able to hide or delete customer reviews. How true this is I dont know and I doubt aliexpress staff with comment. But the evidence is plain to see. Just take a look at the below;

The seller in question has a relatively high rating "95.7%". Great. But look closer. She has only 23 feed backs from the past 6 months. But 181 transactions for this product and upon closer inspection of buyer feedback for her product you can see she has sold many more than 23 in the past 6 months. Which makes me question the validity of the ranking system.

Nevertheless, this is all in hidesight of my reccent dealings. Wish I had noticed this prior to buying my cards from the above seller.

Needless to say the cards I bought were advertised aas 16gb but struggled to hold more than 1gb before corrupting all data. But...... and it is a good but. I filed a complaint with the seller and directly with aliexpress and received more than 50% of money back within hours of filing the complaint and the to be fair to the seller the postage was amazing and she was fast to communicate.

My personal interactions with this seller and product only served to solidfy hints of a biased rating system. Afterall if I had been sold a second rate fraudulant product, then how many other people has this seller conned and where have their negative reviews gone.

I was roped into buying these cards under the impression the sellers goods as described by reviews were/are "top quality". Perhaps I was unlucky. But even if that was the case it only goes to prove the seller does not have access to a supplier of consistant quality.

After this I wrote off alibaba and aliexpress. Afterall, I was being careful and ended up picking a seller that was highly ranked via their ebay style review system. I suppose I could have chosen a gold star seller. But gold stars only represent sellers that have enough money to buy a higher ranking. Possibly due to selling more scam cards. Eitherway, gold stars do not ensure a good quality product.

Next I moved onto deeper research into b2b scams and background history and news of the b2b industry, in an attempt to weed out fraud riddled sites.

Finding Trustworthy Sources of Micro Sd

Ebay is becoming a hot selling point for micro sd cards. Despite numerous warnings of fake and hacked cards. So I thought I would see if I could find a trustworthy supplier and wiggle my way into this growing market with a good honest product.

Most ebay ads are selling 16gb cards for £15.99. And almost all sellers are selling these cards.

Of course every seller promises their cards are perfect working cards. But mostly they are advertised at 16gb and actually most struggle to save >2gb before corrupting all data.

If you spend even 2 minutes searching import sites for micro sd cards you will see the above packaging type in 90% of sellers ads. Indicating one supplier or multiple similar suppliers manufacturing tons of fake cards or packaging that is readily available. So be wary if you see this. DO NOT BUY.

You will also find ALOT of sellers who claim to be selling authentic kingston, sandisk and other brand name and trusted name cards. Most of the time these are also fake. Best rule of thumb. If the deal seems to good to be true, it most certainly is.

With this in mind I set out to find a honest and quality product.

It is proving difficult.

My aim; find a good wholesaler for 16gb and 32gb micro sd cards.

Price; <$15 / 16gb card and <$30/ 32gb card (most sites and companies deal in USD$)