USB mounting problem

Question

I have done my best to research this, but have not found a solution.
After a new Arch installation on a new machine (Dell Precision T3400) I am unable to change the permissions (even as root!) on files once they are transferred to the usbstick (a Code 1 error message is returned). Other operations, such as copying, moving and deleting occur as usual. I have also noticed that as soon as files are transferred to the USB stick, the permissions get changed (but not the ownership), as if whatever is reading the stick is also changing the permissions.
It is not the stick -- the same stick performs normally on every other computer I use it on.
fstab: /dev/sdc1   /mnt/usbstick  vfat   rw,user,auto,sync  0    0
(basically the same as on 3 other Linux machines I use, all running Arch).
When mounted, sdc1 has ownership  root:disk.  I have added myself to the disk group. /mnt/usbstick has myself as the owner.
Not a major problem, just slightly irritating.
Thea

Answer 1

Thanks, Pheon --
I just noticed I made a mistake in giving my fstab line, it should be:
/dev/sdc1   /mnt/usbstick   vfat   rw,user,noauto,sync   0   0
(so "noauto" instead of "auto" in the mount options)
As I indicated, this is not a USB stick problem (same stick works just fine on other machines) -- also, in my attempts to troubleshoot this, I changed the filesystem on the USB stick to VFAT -- previously, it was whatever the default is when it comes out of the factory, and at that time the fstab line looked like:
/dev/sdc1   /mnt/usbstick   auto   rw,user,noauto,sync   0   0
Same situation, i.e. changing the filesystem did not affect the problem in any way.
Any other ideas?