Well, I wrote to one of the sellers at Ebay regarding the 128GB Kingston flash drive. (The 256 GB flash is new enough that it really isn’t listed more than once there or on Amazon.com yet.) Anyway, I asked this seller if he would be willing to sell me one or two of these. The list price was approximately $380.00 elsewhere, so Ebay seemed like a place where I could save a bit of cash. The seller wrote back and told me he could ship two of them to me for $49.00 each! When I asked him if these sticks were ‘the real deal,’ his response left me a bit concerned as to whether these were genuine or fakes. So I decided not to purchase any of the 128GB flash drives from him. Now I have my eyes on the 256 GB.

To be clear – any fakes that may appear on my site through the WordBay plugin are not meant as endorsements and should not be seen that way. If you disagree with this Im sorry but then I challenge you to manage an affiliate website that actually is able to block all frauds and link only to real deals – from any retail site. Are you able to do that? The only thing that I can still do is to take off all Kingston DT variations from the WordBay keywords for this page. (I have reluctantly done so now) Thats as much responsibility I can exercise as an affiliate. The other responsibilities are up to the sellers and buyers.

As for your statistic of 70% fakes – do you have a reputable source for this? Because to me that’s utterly ridiculous and sounds like pure, scare-mongering Ebay bashing. 70% of sold 128GB flash drives maybe, but not “70% of sold USB flash drives”. Please dont let one bad Ebay experience (or more) cloud your judgment. Naturally, in a huge marketplace like that you’re bound to have rotten apples but the good apples usually prevail (which means the majority). So again, I kindly submit that your statement isn’t fair due to being so generalizing. You see, caution needs to be exercised with these things too – but I guess you only offered that statement as an option to consider and not as an endorsement, huh?

A big number of positive feedback does not mean a thing. I bought a proven fake 16GB stick from Ebay seller “mamaseller2009″.

Th seller was in operation for a bit more than 5 months only (in 2009) until suspended.

In that short time he sold a lot and collected 4337 positive replies and “only” 51 neutral and 34 negative which still ends with 99.2% positive feedback.

Also at the time I bought, which was some time before suspension, there were almost no negative feedback. That means that the number of positive feedback doesn’t mean a thing.

It also means that those Ebay sellers have big business. In this example there are 4337 positive feedback in only 5 months, that means at least 4337 sold items in 5 months, that in turn means big money!!

Some people estimate that around 70% of sold USB flash drives on Ebay are fakes. I personally think this is not far from the truth and my advice is to be extremely cautions when buying flash drives from Ebay or better not buy any flash drives from Ebay.

And I still find it very objectionable that you link to Ebay auctions on your site which, in my opinion, are also offering fake flash drives. This is objectionable because you write about fake flash drives, how to detect them and about the danger of buying them on Ebay, so people trust links made from this site to Ebay auctions.

Collection of seller answers:

Thank you for the question, Dennis. I do not see this as a fake product. I tested mine out today and they and the last one that I tested showed it to have 134.18gb storage capacity. I purchased it as genuine. It was sold to me as genuine. My supplier told me that it was genuine. I believe it to be genuine. It tests out as genuine. The packaging tells me that it is genuine. The serial number on the outside indicates that it is
genuine.

I hope this helps. I do not feel comfortable however, sharing the price that I paid for these with you. Sorry…

- bigcrosshoss

After a follow-up I got the following reply:

Thank you for the feedback. I’ll test per your recommendations.

- bigcrosshoss

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Hi there

Thanks for your help and advice

- usb-mania

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I will check into it. Thanks for the info!

- ermark2010

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THANK U VERY MUCH ..I REALLY APPRECIATE THAT AND I WILL OPEN ONE AND TRY IT BEFORE SEND IT TO ANY CUSTOMER..I PROMISE IF I FOUND IT FAKE I WILL NOT SELL..BEFORE I GET AFRAID ABOUT MY SELLER STAUTS I’M AFRAID FROM GOD..AFTER I TRY IT I CAN TELL BUT TO BE HONEST I DIDN’T TRY IT YET.AGAIN THANK U

- rephone09
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first of, no flash drive nor hard drive actually comes with the advertised space on it… and second i bought mines from china… i have two that works. i also heard that some of them kingston flash drive crashes… i’ve always knew that. i had some of mines that crashed too. i will not lie to you about that. i paid a $100 piece. i just want to make some money back thats all. i can care less how much i spent.

- gadorecords

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este produto nao e genuino Sony. Mas este produto e genuino 128gb com real 125gb livre. aonde eu comprei isto nao e dos seus negocios. Estes produtos tem garantia por mim se qualquer comprador tiver qualquer problema com o produto, eu envio outro de volta novo. Se voce esta achando muito barato. voce pode comprar de mim e revender e tenha bons negocios..

– juniofarma100

This seller replied to me in Portuguese though my question was in English, across the board. Google translates it as following:
This product is not genuine Sony. But this product and genuine 128GB with real 125gb free. where I bought it and not their business. These products are guaranteed by me if any buyer has any problem with the product, I send another back again. If you’re finding very cheap. you can buy me and sell and have good business ..

————

LOL

- knightchina

If she wants to make up for the loss to her friend, then why dont you buy a real Sony disk with authentic capacity? You can check out the following post for an overview and where to buy.

However, if you want to maintain the illusion of a 128GB Sony disk towards your daughter’s friend all you have to do is go to Ebay and search for “Sony 128GB USB”. Though I have to wonder why you’d wanna do that and if that would be considered “doing your friend a favor”.

I have contacted some of these sellers to see if I can somewhat verify this. Of course it would be better if the buyers were to comment about their experiences here. Some of theses sellers have 100% positive feedback for over 200 entries or more so it seems to be the real thing, unless they are being duped by the wholesellers themselves. Other sellers have a feedback of less than 10, some even 0, so its pretty obvious to stay away from these.

Also, entries such as “1,5 MB/s transfer speed”, or “i was recently told that Kingston flash drives are not good… i was told that they crash… so far any of mines haven’t. so i doubt that the ones I’m selling will crash. If it so happens (god forbids it does) crash… please forgive me. i bought them wholesale.” are dead giveaways. LOL. I also would be suspect of any Asian stickers on the packaging regardless of the selling location. Just use common sense, folks.

Thanks for the additional (Ebay and other) information.

Interestingly, I saw about six items on Ebay for the DT128 yesterday, including two or three ‘buy it now’ entries. But when I enlarged the image on two of them, the box read: DT 100! I’m guessing that this had to be a fake.

If I purchase one of these, I feel as though I should do so through Kingston. The good news is that I would be getting the genuine item; the bad news is that it costs quite a bit more there than it does via Amazon.com.

the DataTraveler 200 (128GB) I refer to in reply 18.
ended with US $86.74 on Ebay Belgium. It is highly unlikely that this is a genuine flash drive as DataTraveler 200 (128GB) retail online for US $350.
Nobody would sell it for 25% of the normal price. So it is a fake.

What I find disturbing is that you write on you web site about high capacity flash drives and also have articles about faked flash drives and at the same time link to Ebay auctions with faked flash drives.

Interesting information about the DT300. Previously, Kingston’s website stated that this model could be directly ordered from them, strictly on demand. I guess one reason the US market isnt targeted at this time is the economy. The good thing about ebay is that you can get your hands on products worldwide and so far I’ve seen genuine listings for the DT300 from Germany and Australia.

Update: Kingston is now releasing the DT310, which is a 256GB flash drive just for the US market.