I bought an 8Tb disk on AliExpress for 21 dollars and I will explain the result to you.

I bought an 8Tb disk on AliExpress for 21 dollars and I will explain the result to you.
I bought this disk at: https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005005075517208.html


The disk took a week to arrive from China to Spain and I paid for it using Paypal. I was able to copy a maximum of 15Gb before the drive went offline. I have tried to open it to see what is inside but it is impossible because it is designed so that you cannot see inside. There are no screws and there is only a tiny hole through which I have inserted a specialized tool to be able to pull and try to slide the contents out, but pulling hard I have not achieved anything.

I have opened a dispute on Paypal so that they do not get paid and the result is that the Chinese company demands that the product be returned to China to return the money.

Then Paypal sent me a message saying that I am the one who has to pay the return costs and I have to present a return number, indicate the name of the courier company and provide an image of a receipt. Once it is proven that the product has arrived at the manufacturer in China, that is when they would refund my money.

Paypal gives me a deadline to provide proof before paying the manufacturer in full.

I have spoken with a large courier company that is next to my house and they have told me that they ship everywhere except China due to the difficulty of customs procedures and they have told me that returning the product would be more expensive than the amount of the product.

Reading a little on the internet, people say that they returned the product at their own expense but the manufacturer did not assume that it had arrived and they lost the product, the money for the product and the return.

So the result is that the Chinese company keeps 100% of the money for a product that does not work and is surely a scam. I wouldn't be surprised to find a 16Gb MicroSd memory inside.

That is, if you buy on AliExpress from a Chinese company and the product does not work, you have to lose money. So the Chinese company sends garbage and you keep it and nobody does anything. The police do not rush into your business to check what you are selling.

I won't buy anything in China again.

zequion said:

So the Chinese company sends garbage and you keep it and nobody does anything

Click to expand...

This is a well known occurrence.
If it seems too good to be true, assume it IS too good to be true.

I highly recommend you use PCPartpicker for your computer hardware purchases.
They find the lowest prices for "reliable" parts, from reliable companies.
You can choose your country at the top right of the webpage.



Even if you choose not to buy from one of the retailers at PCPartpicker, you can use the site as an accurate price guide.
Personally, I've used PCPartpicker for over 10 years, and never had a problem.

For example, here is a list of external SSDs, available in Spain, sorted by price... lowest to highest.
You can choose other filters on the left hand side....

You should done some research somewhere else regarding external SSDs. Legitimate external SSDs go for about $50-100 US per TB. Anything much less is always a scam. For example, if you look on Amazon you will see external 4TB SSDs from legitimate manufacturers for about $240.

If you want to see how prevalent the fakes are do a search on YouTube for "Fake SSD". You will be shocked.

You used to only see fake SSDs on places like Wish and AliExpress. However, I have seen some on Walmart and Amazon. Hopefully, those will disappear as the fraudulent sellers are exposed. Unfortunately, the fakes still persist on Wish and AliExpress. That alone is a good reason to avoid sites like that.

zequion said:

I won't buy anything in China again.

Click to expand...

I very, very, seriously doubt that. Here in the U.S. that would be like saying I won't buy anything that causes cancer in California. You have to live here to understand that.

The Chinese load containers and it costs almost nothing to export their products that are frauds, copies or poor quality products. They sink companies from all countries in the world because they cannot compete, since in China they do not pay social security, there are no contracts and they do not pay taxes.

On the other hand, a company that specializes in exporting that is next to my house says that they do not export products to China due to the difficulty of customs procedures. So we can't sell them anything.

Our politicians are in their favor and they are bringing us down.

Coulda told you that about 6 years ago LOL

Me and my friends are going to buy some baseball bats from them but we are going to ask them to deliver them to us by hand.

Be very glad you have only $21 invested. Those fraudulent sellers know buyers won't return a piece of trash that will cost the buyer more to return it than the item is worth. That's why all their products do not cost much.
It's a lucrative scam any way you look at it. My husband learned a $27.33 lesson from ordering off of that same site, except after waiting a month he had never received an item.
In that case Paypal was very quick to return the money.
Now, he won't order anything until he checks with me first. LOL

Even if they were 100% legitimate I wouldn't buy from them. We have more than enough China junk in our own stores.

And yet this website is legal everywhere...
Should be banned from selling anything, especially in the UK where we have strict consumer laws, which they are clearly breaching

If you search for "SSD 8Tb" you will see that 42 product pages appear from companies offering SSD drives up to 512Tb when it is assumed that this technology does not exist.

That is to say, it is a massive scam and the Chinese authorities do nothing to prevent it, AliExpress allows it, Paypal allows it and the European and American authorities allow it. Nobody does anything.I don't know what happens with many other products on AliExpress. I have bought 3 products for the first time and one was not the product I ordered and another is a scam.

zequion said:

I bought an 8Tb disk on AliExpress for 21 dollars and I will explain the result to you.
I won't buy anything in China again.

Click to expand...

That’s just generalising China. Why do people do that? We have Chinese members in here that might possibly take offence.

If you did your research you’d of found out that company is a scam. 8TB for $21 is laughable. $21 for a 250GB disk is even laughable. A few of us warned you of this in here, but you went ahead regardless. No harm done I suppose, $21.00
This is just stupid.

The other option is to buy a mechanical disc for 230 euros and that is also a scam. I had to choose between the 21 scam or the 230 scam.

I have Facebook full of hard drives like this, supposedly from the HP and Toshiba companys. They have detected that I am stupid. Since no one does anything, they have grown. This is a plague and no one cares. And Alibaba.com is a degenerate AliExpress. Anyone can have a secretary in China offering invented products, collecting orders and depositing money.

Link (Hp SSD 20Tb 60euros):【2000MB/s】Disco duro portátil HP de alta capacidad de 20 TB【Admite conectividad Bluetooth】
Link (Toshiba 20Tb 39 euros): https://www.domaintl.top/detail?id=...iKX1CVKIv3wiaXTiX58S6l61zYyEq8IHKg5CZCkUofZcA

I don't know if you can escalate this claim with PayPal (who's pleading ignorance) and carefully break open the drive and taking images of the stages to point out exactly what the scam drive is. You've nothing to lose anyway. I would do it just to be a tiny thorn in greedy PayPal's side.
By the way it's not only Ali Express that have these fake drives listed.

@antspants I really don't think anything that has been said here was meant to disrespect the Chinese people but as a response to the lack of any enforced laws regarding the quality of exported Chinese products. At least I know my remark wasn't meant to be taken that way. It's not the people. It's the Chinese government who allows these companies to basically enslave their workers, including children, to work long hours for little pay to produce these sub-par cheap products which are pushed onto unsuspecting buyers all over the world. We've all been bitten more than once.

It's also a response to the United States and other democratic governments around the world who don't put enough pressure on China to shut down Ali Express (and other companies like it) from marketing such products despite the fact that in 2022 the Office of United States Trade added AliExpress to its list of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy. What has my government done other than put words on a paper....nothing.

Fabler2 said:

No sé si se puede escalar este reclamo con PayPal (que alega ignorancia) y abrir con cuidado el disco y tomar imágenes de las etapas para señalar exactamente cuál es el disco fraudulento. De todos modos no tienes nada que perder. Lo haría sólo para ser una pequeña espina en el costado del codicioso PayPal.
Por cierto, no sólo Ali Express tiene estas unidades falsas en la lista.

Click to expand...

This video is very good. I have exactly the same disk. I will add the video to the request to PayPal. Now I can't open it because it seems that the only way is to damage the box, but if I have to keep it I will open it and hope to show here what is there.

glasskuter said:

@antspants I really don't think anything that has been said here was meant to disrespect the Chinese people but as a response to the lack of any enforced laws regarding the quality of exported Chinese products. At least I know my remark wasn't meant to be taken that way. It's not the people. It's the Chinese government who allows these companies to basically enslave their workers, including children, to work long hours for little pay to produce these sub-par cheap products which are pushed onto unsuspecting buyers all over the world. We've all been bitten more than once.

It's also a response to the United States and other democratic governments around the world who don't put enough pressure on China to shut down Ali Express (and other companies like it) from marketing such products despite the fact that in 2022 the Office of United States Trade added AliExpress to its list of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy. What has my government done other than put words on a paper....nothing.

Click to expand...

I respect everything you said. The language we use is important. And I know I am no saint.

If one buys an 8TB drive for around €20 especially from dubious sources then I'm afraid it's the buyer who is ultimately responsible. No customers and then these sites don't survive, One can't really expect a govt to control 100% of everything a citizen does or buys. And in a democratic society who would want it to.

In any case how does a country shut down a site not hosted in that country --it's not so easy -- just look at the UK that probably blocks (or tries to) more sites than N.Korea to prevent UK people from accessing places like TPB or sites streaming Sat. Afternoon 15.00 Premier League football (Round ball version). Totally ineffective as this is so easily by-passable with even the tiniest bit of computer skills so how are you going to shut down a website probably backed with the latest technology and "Triad" profits of organised crime money. Just educate the users on avoiding these sites.

I've bought loads of things from China without any issues at all -- with a bit of due diligence it's not hard to buy safely. If a price is totally out of kilter with typical prices for that product then do check -- a "give away" from say Ms is OK but unlikely to happen or "Black Friday" discounted deals from recognized retailers - but from other sites !!!!! Caveat Emptor. !!

Places like 'OZ or the UK trying to put pressure on the PRC is about as effective as a mosquito on the skin of an elephant. The USA might have a bit more influence but "they aren't without sin" themselves either. That country to me seems to have far more serious internal problems to deal with at the present time - apart from the nonsense going on both in Israel and Ukraine.

Cheers
jimbo

I've mentioned on this forum about fake drives on Amazon as well, they actively encourage it with sponsored links