I just bought a fake Sandisk Extreme III 4GB card from Adorama. After reading about fake cards on e-bay I decided to buy from Adorama (I some bought other stuf from them in the past) - supposedly 'a honest dealer'. When the card arrived I was surprised to see that the 'SanDisk Extreme' text on the front of the card had little yellow tint to it but otherwise it was of silver color.
The best way to ensure you are purchasing an authentic SanDisk product is to buy from an authorized SanDisk reseller. View our distributor/reseller list to locate an authorized SanDisk reseller in your area. If you are concern about the authenticity of your SanDisk product, you may contact SanDisk.
By comparison my old Extreme III 1GB card had golden letters. Puzzled by the difference, I have contacted Sandisk customer service. The serial number was good, but I told them about the color. They asked me to send them photos of the new card (4GB). The answer from Sandisk is (I have removed their CR name): 'Dear Mihai, Thank you for contacting Sandisk.
We have received your photos regarding your compactflash card. Unfortunately the card in the photo is not an authentic Sandisk card. Contact your vendor and let them know what we have decided. If you have any further questions regarding this matter, please feel free to contact us at 866-san-disk Thank you. Best regards, Customer rep.
Name (removed) Rma dept.' By the way, the card was sealed 'blister-pack'. In the blister pack I found the travel case, recovery software miniCD v.3.2, 'user manual' and some commercial stuf from Sandisk. In the cardboard pack it contained the offer from Capture-one. So, it looked perfect, including that I was able to register this card with SanDisk.
Somehow I am not completely surprised, maybe 1/2 surprised. But the first thing to check is the actual read/write speed. Counterfeit cards will be written much slower. Some large chain stores might import grey market stuffs from unknown channels and being sold w/o knowing they were being conned. I once bought 2 ATP 60X SD 2GB from Futureshop.ca but both had 2MB/s write speed only, while those being bought 1.5 years earlier could write 6BM/s. Or ATP started to scam?
I don't know. But I know you cannot fully trust any retailers just because they are reputable. Watch, always watch carefully.
I called Adorama's Customer Service today but they are closed already. I will keep you informed about their response. I am attaching 3 pictures: first one shows that I was able to register the card on the sandisk's site; second one shows the 4GB (fake one) compared to 1GB (my old geniune card that I bought from B&H a long time ago) - see how rough and discolored is the printing on the fake card; third picture shows a comparison of the side views of the card - observe that the holes on the fake card are smaller than on the geniune one. I took only 2 pictures with it. I will try to fill it to see if it has the right capacity.
The camera (canon 30D) shows that it had 444 RAW images capacity when inserted into the camera. I forgot to add: pictures taken with custom white ballance using Kodak gray card. By the time I was taking the back side of the cards, the light may have changed slightly. Also, when assembling the composite pictures I forgot to convert from Canon RGB to IEEE. SRGB (hopefully not a big deal). Free download for nokia 6600 themes.
To Craig Gillette: the condition and appearance of the other insert goodies was good. The travel pouch feels slightly different from the original one but I will have to look at that more carefully to say something for sure. I will post a picture of the 'goodies' tomorrow. To Marika: I know. This tutorial helped me identify the fake card but, unfortunately, the fake serial number is good to SanDisk.
As you can see from the first picture, I was able to register it with SanDisk. Les Lammers wrote: 'It is quite possible that Adorama was duped too.' I would like to believe this too.
That is, I hope that Adorama did not knowingly sold me a fake card. One thing remains to be answered though: do they get their cards from 'Sandisk USA' or they get gray market cards (that turned out to be fake) from some 3rd world supplier. If they get gray market cards then they should sell them as such. That is, they should anounce on their website when an item is a gray market (or 'imported') item. Had I known that they do not get their cards from a USA official distributor (I would guess that would be Sandisk USA), I would not have bought from them. Daniel Smith wrote: Could have given Adorama a chance to take care of it first, just the nice thing to do. Regardless of wether or not they will fix this issue, the main purpose of this posting was to let people know that even when buying from 'reputable dealers' they can get fake memory cards.