The fake sellers must buy them by the crate for cheap to see any real profits.
1. Buy a new pair off Amazon.
2. Return the fake and get a refund from Amazon.
So they made some? Spent time/energy for science of course ...
I heard that there are fake airpods that will connect and behave just like a normal airpod to iphones, as if they have a fake H1 chip or something. Can anyone confirm?
Seems like that level of functionality with (fake) Apple products is super rare.
I’ve heard that Apple drives such a hard bargain with some of their suppliers that selling ghost shift parts and the parts that fail QC to counterfeiters and repair shops is the only way they make any profit. The Apple contract pays for the factory and the bills but they make the real money on the side.
A good will gesture to reduce the chance of you reporting them as selling fakes, and tarnishing their carefully manicured feedback scores, if they were in the business of doing this regularly.
Someone wants ear buds, they want to signal wealth so choose expensive brand, but they want knockoffs because they're actually poor[er].
The main risk with knock-offs is they arrive broken, or just don't arrive, or... basically it's a scam of some sort.
So, you took on the risk of buying, assessed the earphones as working, the earphones are now probably worth more as they've been QC-ed (by you), moreover the buyer can actually see them working and refuse them if they wish.
Within the context the buyer seems relatively rational.
>$100 product
It really boggles my mind that this works on anyone. We all see the commercials for financing. We all see teenagers with no jobs having them.
I'm a bit mind boggled that Apple was able to turn <$1000 tech products into 'luxury' products. Maybe it makes more sense if you didn't get screwed by iTunes DRM and were more open minded during iphone Era.
I’m wondering whether you have to live through in world of plenty during formative years before you have that realization.
So I'd say the main risk of putting those things in your ears is suffering the horrible audio quality.
We're dealing with tiny batteries in the 100mWh range here, which is less than 1/100th of phones famous for their... combustibility. Ejection of hot gas requires there to be quite a bit of energy present during the failure so that a certain extreme temperature can be reached. Below that, you'll just get a warm earbud.
> hot gas and flames
flames are hot gas
And yes, flames are hot gas, but not all hot gas is flames.
Samsung is a huge brand, and had significant issues with battery fires. The bigger the brand, the less they lose because they swim in money and have specialists dedicated to PR damage control.
In fact, brands seem more likely to be the ones that manage to stuff more battery capacity in there, increasing risk and scope of damage.
The big companies cannot lose anything that matters to them, as they're too big and powerful, brushing off even the worst publicity. A small company collapses under pressure, and can be killed by even a viral meme going against them, with the owners suffering personal financial losses as a result.
Suing a big company like Samsung is an almost guaranteed loss with you thoroughly crushed and case precedent set so others have no reason to try. Suing a small company is a much more likely win, with reasonable damages.
What convinced me that they were originals - packaging looked genuine - paired out of the box without much hassle - showed up as air pods with serial number
Lesson learned and bought the new ones and these were the differences:
- print inside the lid was 20% larger in original
- packaging of original was not shrink wrapped
- slight off-colour white of the packaging
- the lightning port of the fake was not feeling right
- the button on the case did not click distinctly
- the button on the case did not enter the special mode after 10 seconds like original
- ANC of original light years ahead. More modes displayed on the menu.
With hindsight the biggest give-away probably were the
- shrink-wrap plastic around the package
- lightning port feel
- much, much lower microphone quality. But since I never checked that out myself as I don't use them much for talking and so complaints from others were not so frequent.
- imperfect find-my performance but since I did not care about this feature much I suspected I mis-clicked somewhere and gave up.
- transitions from case to ear to case with sometimes not registering that it was back in case (contact issues in the case?) not so reliable with impact on battery.
- battery erratic behaviour
I guess if I would have been in the market for them and then bought them I may have found out immediately but so I just started feeling Apple starts slipping on quality with new products more complex but worse. As I got them as a replacement and just wanted to get on with listening during my walks they were able to fool me. They are certainly good enough to fool casual buyers and they are certainly bad enough to hurt Apple's reputation for quality products.
Another pro tip for buying used stuff online... request a photo of the sn#. Even a partial will get you a match in google.
The pods themselves looked exactly the same. The case was the real sign. It was clearly not the same as an original case. They actually worked, but they were essentially just generic bluetooth headphones.
We ended up listing them on FB Marketplace. Clearly marked them as fake. Person came and picked them up and I said again that they were fake. Got the same amount we paid for them. I don't understand this world sometimes.
The fake sellers must make enough off of people who don't realize that they are fake that they can just write off the few that do.