Fake counterfeits

[Screwdriver]

I'm saying your suspected option makes zero business sense and in all likelihood you thought you were getting a bargain but in fact were ripped off

Not some huge conspiracy by the manufacturer to sell cheap products then claim they are fake

Well then you are trusting the supply line without any evidence to support your claim.

"Counterfeit" items do exist
They are made in China
Chinese branded original equipment is also made in China
China is a state run communist country and the vast majority of large business enterprises are state owned (the ones that claim not to be state owned are themselves questionable)
Branded items are (I suggest) manufactured from among a conglomerate of smaller enterprises (you say conspiracy I say consortium)

As for the particular item I bought it is a relatively low value (£tens) but extremely high volume unit and the likelihood of it being counterfeit manufactured outside China is small. If it is being manufactured in China, it will be with the knowledge of the state or so called local district enterprise (i.e. also state controlled). I am merely suggesting that it does not beggar belief that the exact same factories and industrial producers are in fact making these erstwhile counterfeit items. It's just production and money, they really don't care what they are selling so long as they keep selling it and we keep buying.

It is much easier to turn the knob to 11 and crank out rubbish than it is to produce quality items and if people (yes, people like me ) are still "prepared" to pay good money for it, there is a profit to be made from it. So my premise is that if they can crank out high speed rubbish and sell it online for around the same price as the quality branded item, they will.

Makes perfect business sense to me and while quality generally has improved tremendously over the years, it wasn't so long ago that you would expect cheap Chinese products to be useless.

 

[Screwdriver]

I haven't seen what it si that you are complaining about but I can't see if would make financial viability for the original manufacture.
Almost all plastic parts will have marking from the tooling along with impression and tooling info, it would only need something like this to be able to tie the "fake" back to the original manufacture. Then the news is out and it's game over. It's not just a case to turn the speed of the machine up.

I would like that to be true but this particular item is most definitely not the real deal and it has definitely come from China. Secondly, unless you use a vaping device, you will never have heard of Smok. If this scam is real and word gets out (and is believed or at least considered) then yes, I would expect that brand to vanish.

But it will vanish only to be replaced by some other brand, also made in China, also made by exactly the same manufacturing enterprise. It is really as simple and brilliant as that. We in the west are fixated by brand loyalty and China can easily capitalise on that simple human frailty. How often do you hear the phrase, "they don't make 'em like they used to"? Those brands will fall by the wayside and it's not as if we haven't seen that happen. If you think about it.

As for tooling marks and forensic investigation, who's going to do that? Never mind how! Remember these are low price high volume items, not Versace and Rolex. Ultimately whoever is behind the brand "Smok" could say "nothing to do with us" and there's no way you would ever be able to prove otherwise.

Naturally I am not saying I am right but I have to say it does sound both plausible and profitable. People are always after the best possible price. People like me are anyway and if you're having to scrape the bottom of the barrel, you're always going to find dirt.

 

[Parm]

Is it a quiet day at screwdriver Towers today?

 

[WorkshopChris]

As for tooling marks and forensic investigation, who's going to do that? Never mind how! Remember these are low price high volume items, not Versace and Rolex. Ultimately whoever is behind the brand "Smok" could say "nothing to do with us" and there's no way you would ever be able to prove otherwise.

Take Go pro as another example some of the copy units vary from using a similar unit made to very similar standards but sold under a different brand to copy that are designed as fakes and of poor quality.
Bearings are an another copied unit, but the problem is until our governments start looking at products when the container lands and turns the fake products around at the border they will keep up the supply.

I would like that to be true but this particular item is most definitely not the real deal and it has definitely come from China.

Not saying it's not coming out of China, it will be but the odds of the same company and same production line are slim.

 

[Bladevane]

One of the things that tickled me was the amount of huge, and I mean massive, banners in the Silk Road store in Beijing declaring how serious a problem fake merchandise is and how the authorities are doing everything within their power to stamp it out. This was in a building of 7 floors full of fake, knock off cheap stuff.

 

[Screwdriver]

Is it a quiet day at screwdriver Towers today?

Started trying to fix my shelving and it started tipping it down. I do my grinding outside so....

 

[Parm]

Started trying to fix my shelving and it started tipping it down. I do my grinding outside so....

I get changed to go play. Rain is happening now, so plan aborted

Got an interesting book to read, “The Secret Barrister”

Been quite a long time since I’ve read a physical book

 

[Screwdriver]

Take Go pro as another example some of the copy units vary from using a similar unit made to very similar standards but sold under a different brand to copy that are designed as fakes and of poor quality.
Bearings are an another copied unit, but the problem is until our governments start looking at products when the container lands and turns the fake products around at the border they will keep up the supply.

Not saying it's not coming out of China, it will be but the odds of the same company and same production line are slim.

The GoPro example is an interesting one. Clearly it is a popular product with massive brand appeal but equally clearly some of the Chinese "knockoff" copies are actually pretty damned good! I'd be surprised if there are that many literal counterfeit GoPro's out there though. Could be wrong... Then again I would never bung that sort of money at a random seller off eBay. Psst, wanna buy a GoPro for £100.... err no thanks.

When you say "the odds of the same company being involved are slim", why is that? There are possibly/probably dozens (??) of actual factories making this stuff in gigantic quantities. I doubt if any of those factories are dedicated to any one specific product line, I suspect (as I keep saying) they work as a conglomerate or lit. consortium and the parts only come together at some dedicated assembly plant.

What's the state of play with bearings? I guess a lot of the name brand suppliers are actually subcontracting production to China??

Whatever it is that China are doing, they're doing it better than anyone else at the moment and it is shocking just how exposed we are in the so called civilised world, in relying on this communist dictatorship.

 

[Screwdriver]

I get changed to go play. Rain is happening now, so plan aborted

Got an interesting book to read, “The Secret Barrister”

Been quite a long time since I’ve read a physical book

Well, if you run out of bog roll...

 

[Parm]

Have you got things mixed up perhaps?

Reading bog roll instead of books?

 

[Screwdriver]

Have you got things mixed up perhaps?

Reading bog roll instead of books?

No but it made a right mess of my Kindle.

 

[minimutly]

Yes maybe, it might happen - ultimately though, anything that comes on a slow boat from China is going to be suspect, use it at your peril if it is a safety impact item. wheel bearings, track rod ends, anything that you want to fit once - should be banned at the docks IMHO.
Life is too short to be spent looking over stuff to decide if it is what it pretends to be, but that's where we are.

 

[Kayos]

While not necessarily agreeing with the OP. There are plenty of examples where highend branded goods are sold out the back door. Since the Brand owner doesn't see any revenue from these sales they are branded Fake. The relevant authorities impound and destroy, protecting the brand and keeping prices high

I completely agree, but the notion a manufacturer would produce a fake version of it's own product to be sold at lower cost is just nonsense

 

[maz0]

Why do you think blockchain will become inevitable?

The banking sector wont go near it and its currently associated with scams and the dark web, it's also nowhere near as secure as its reported to be, yes it cant be cracked (yet) but a good old fashioned armed raid will get you the keys to whatever data you want

Who wants the banking sector go near it, its a competitor, a solution to corrupt establishment that is the banking sector. There are multiple hedge funds involved in it already regardless.

There are a few methods around your armed raid, multi-key/secret sharing, as many individuals as you like can hold part of a key which requires X number present to decrypt, can be kept across continents/jurisdictions. Time based decryption would defeat your armed raid also. Blockchain could solve a lot of the worlds problems, but the powers that be wont let it and most of society prefer the conveniency of cash/cardless etc

 

[Screwdriver]

I completely agree, but the notion a manufacturer would produce a fake version of it's own product to be sold at lower cost is just nonsense

And I would also agree that "a manufacturer" wouldn't do it. But I don't think "a manufacturer" is involved, I think it is a conglomerate of state owned industry. Are you suggesting is that "China" would never do such a thing?

 

[Kayos]

And I would also agree that "a manufacturer" wouldn't do it. But I don't think "a manufacturer" is involved, I think it is a conglomerate of state owned industry. Are you suggesting is that "China" would never do such a thing?

No, but you said it's the manufacturer, anyone else doing it and it doesn't fit your original description and it is just a regular fake

 

[pedrobedro]

The relevant authorities impound and destroy, protecting the brand and keeping prices high

This happened years ago with B&D Workmate benches, some were so good B&D put their own stickers on them and sold them as genuine.

 

[Screwdriver]

Who wants the banking sector go near it, its a competitor, a solution to corrupt establishment that is the banking sector. There are multiple hedge funds involved in it already regardless.

There are a few methods around your armed raid, multi-key/secret sharing, as many individuals as you like can hold part of a key which requires X number present to decrypt, can be kept across continents/jurisdictions. Time based decryption would defeat your armed raid also. Blockchain could solve a lot of the worlds problems, but the powers that be wont let it and most of society prefer the conveniency of cash/cardless etc

I think blockchain is an inevitable solution to capitalism but in the longer term. I'm thinking 20 - 30 years maybe. Reason for that is that quantum computing (when it finally gets here) will render online transactions unprotected. Passwords will no longer work. Secondly the entire capitalist system currently revolves around the price of oil which America is determined to keep locked to the dollar. When oil consumption is no longer the major driving force for capitalism, the system will have to change.

On top of that we really ought to start thinking about not chopping down any more of the worlds forests. The current rate at which the environment is being destroyed to grow palm oils and cows is going to have to stop and that means there has to be an unbreakable chain of provenance which tells everyone exactly where a product has come from. Currently Borneo is being raized to the ground, we all know the Amazon rainforests too are also being flattened. In Screwdrivers utopia, when you pop into MacDonalds for a burger, it will have metadata associated with the purchase which lists every single product and process relating to that individual burger. We've got quantum computer driven A.I. remember, he (or she) can sort out the details.

Before that burger gets to me any "red flag" on a product or service relating to its existence will have been tracked down and eradicated. You can't just clear a patch of rainforest and grow a cow anymore because you're in a regulated process which keeps track of your output to the last drop of precious water. If you're not in the blockchain, the World Authority won't allow the product to be sold.

I just hope they're not Chinese...

 

[pedrobedro]

So before you eat the burger you have to read through all the metadata to be sure it's kosher, like that's going to happen. Will the wrapper be included in all this so I can track down the litter lout who drops his bag over our front wall when he has finished his wappy meal.

 

[Screwdriver]

No, but you said it's the manufacturer, anyone else doing it and it doesn't fit your original description and it is just a regular fake

Ah, good call, that was imprecise. And here was I thinking I might have gone into a little too much detail!

Calling it "fake" when it's nominally the same item rolling out of the same factory is a grey area though. I still think the "cranking up the handle" fake counterfeit route is plausible. "Smok" orders a million widgets at a certain price which get delivered to a number of assembly plants and once the order is fulfilled, they bang out another million at high speed/no QA or re-sell a million parts which failed inspection. Makes me wonder sometimes if all those millions of Chinese sellers aren't all huddled together in some huge warehouse cranking out eBay ads for the black market

I think the Apple spare parts supply trade has the same or similar issues surrounding whether or not unbranded items are "genuine". Big business (like Apple) are very keen to stop any spares at all from coming out of China. They failed and along with other Global Corporations are supporting a new law which would make repairing your own thing illegal. That tells me Global Corp. Inc. can't stop China from doing whatever the hell it wants when it comes to selling stuff, even if that stuff is made for them under license.

That scenario is definitely a "thing" and is almost identical to the fake counterfeit scenario except the parts aren't being made under license for export, they're being made nominally for a China brand product.