Z1 SD card issues..Often caused by FAKE SD cards, unbeknownst to the user and those trying to help?

Question

Hi All...
Well for the last month or so Ive had problems with my 64 gb SD card..losing data, getting corrupt and requiring non stop formatting..until eventually it just died totally.
Of course, throughout all this I was searching various forums for fixes and reasons why...and as far as I could see it was the fault of the Z1 'killing' SD cards ( I tried the card in other peoples phones and it did not work either..so I assumed it had been corrupted BY the phone!......since it HAD worked perfectly when i first got it)...
Well...Once it finally died totally this week., I decided to send it back to Samsung for an RMA. The card I had was a good quality,  64gb Samsung Evo SDXC class 10...Bear in mind I purchased it from an  Ebay seller that had  1000s of positive feedback (1 or 2 negs regards late postage only) and the card arrived in the post in packaging with hologram etc, and all appeared good quality....
Im actually pretty tech savvy..and indeed internet shopping savvy, and have never been ripped off or conned before.....I didnt buy a 64gb EVo that was ridiculously cheap or anything..I paid what they are worth (then about £27)
But Samsung took one look at it and informed me it was a fake...the issue I had come up against was that the card worked fine up until its ACTUAL (not listed) capacity was reached..which was 7 GIGS!!!..not 64!!!...it was at that point that it started corrupting files and failing in general....
Which in my case was a couple of weeks after installing it in my phone (and the day I got round to piling all my music on it!)......so I had a few weeks of actual use out of it while all seemd fine....enough time to leave positive feedback for the seller and all!.....DEVIOUS SWINES!!! : D.
Anyway,
Now Im wondering...since these symptoms (files vanishing, corrupting etc) have been talked about so many times on these forums and elsewhere...not only on the Xperia Z1, but on all phones and devices that use SD cards...I wonder just how many are REALLY down to fake SD cards.....They are VERY realistic looking fakes...they even work pretty well up to a point (though probs not as fast as a real class 10 if you were to actually test them)..
In future, when offering help to people with SD card issues..i think I will make an effort to ask them first about the provenance of their SD card, and maybe try and get images of it. (after the fact Ive found several websites that show the fake ones...I even found an image of the EXACT fake I have..same serial numbers, and same tiny printing error and all!....which was THIS site https://thecounterfeitreport.com/product/504/Samsung-micro-SDXC-Memory-Cards.html)
In all the threads I pored over, trying to find a fix for my SD card issues..I can not remember a single instance of someone asking if the card was definitely real or not..or anyone suspecting this to be the issue....(though Im sure there ARE, i didnt find one though..not that I would havee thought it was the case with mine,,,,since I had NO reason to think it WAS fake..what with the perfect packaging, and seller having no neg feedback after selling hundreds of them!).
Im not some sort of SD card expert..BUT I am pretty up to date with regards consumer tech.....and until Samsung revealed to me I had been conned...I had absolutely no INKLING that the cause of my issues wa a fake card...on no forums did anyone ask the person with the issue 'are you sure your card is real?'.....and I am really coming round to think that these fake cards are RIFE out there on the market....so realistic looking, package and all, that probably otherwise legitimate sellers are trading in them......the KILLER being the fact they do actually work...maybe for MONTHS if it takes you a while to reach its true capacity....and certainly long enough in many cases to mean the nefarious seller gets away scot free!
So watch out guys...I ceritanly will be in fuiture...Now I know that fake cards are a big thing.....its really easy to spot the fake ones (if the seller uses a REAL picture of the item on the listing!)...they are by no means identical to the real deal when you know what to look for (in the case of fake EVO 64gb like mine, just 'made in Taiwan' and the back being gloss black instead fo white, is enough to show it as fake.....but I did not know that at the time when an absolutely perfect lookng offical Samsung package turned up at my door!....
Anyone else have this yet? Im sure they have....also, anyone wonder now if the cause of their woes is a fake card? If you would like to post here, Im happy to have a look at it!
Thanks all!
(Here is my fake one for you all to see : D...apparently it is a VERY common fake....wish I had known! I also wish i still had the very realistic packaging too!)

Answer 1

Well to be honest I wasnt aware of such things myself until I got stung.....or  rather not aware that you could follow all the rules, and do everything right, like check for good feedback, (my seller had 1000s positve and 99% ratio....and not buy items that have a price that is 'too good to be true'...........and STILL get ripped off!
You live and you learn! Ive been shopping online for just about 10 years and this was the VERY FIRST time Ive had a problem of ANY kind!
I had gotten so confident shopping online, that I bought a pretty valuable watch online not a month ago..my first 'large' online purchase in fact.....a Casio GPW-1000 RAF edition... a quite rare '500 pieces in UK' item. Though it came from a large watch dealer, I realise now that it was still a risk (though I had the protection of paying by Credit Card..which I willl ALWAYS do from now on!)....as they may have sold a counterfiet item, and not actually realised it themselves...
Since I have had this experience of buying a counterfeit product,, I haev been reading into the phenomena..and it turns out that Casio G Shock watches (the type I spent a fari bit of money on...a legitimate one luckily!) are very heavily counterfeited...and are ALL OVER Ebay....who seems to do nothing about it!
I can understand (though not condone AT ALL) criminals counterfeiting a sought after watch design, or jewellery and things like that...because they have a market for them, in the shape of people that cant afford the real thing, and think its ok to buy a cheap and poor quality knock off, that only superficially appears to be real.......
...but I have to say its a big surprise to me that they would counterfeit something like an SD card, even if it is a quite highly regarded model.......and even go to such effort to copy the packaging perfectly......I think that the fact that so much effort went into faking a Samsung Evo 64gb sd card ..that it demonstrates that there are a LOT of them out there....hundreds of thousands for sure....but could there be millions?
Due to this prevelance, I think it might well be worth asking each person that comes on the forum with an SD card problem, in particular those with a'new' SD that is losing data, or needs to reformat all the time, or any of the 'giveaway' symptoms...to ask them for an image of the offending article as a starting point.....and to then compare it to images of the real ones that are online...
Im sure most of them will deny they own a fake....I certainly didnt think for one second my problems were due to a counterfeit card...as I said in my post...the first I knew of it was when Samsung themselves informed me!
Otherwise we end up going round in circles trying to 'fix the unfixable'..which is what happend to me : D
Anyway, I will keep an eye out for people on the forum, and a couple of other tech sites I frequent, and see if I can identify any more of these fakes, and hopefully can catch them soon enough that the customers can get their money back, since the problems often dont manifest themselves until the time for immediate refund is passed (once again, this happened to me, and Im having to claim through Paypal..though they are being very helpful...its only £22...but its the principle of the thing!)
Thanks all, and stay vigilant!