Fake USB Drive Scam

I was dumb enough to fall into a scam. I bought a fake sony usb drive 32GB for $19. I tested it throughly and noticed that it was fake. Frankly I couldn't save anything on it. Everything got corrupted. I made a dispute in Paypal. And Paypal says that the seller agreed to refund if I send the drive back which I foolishly did. One thing to note is that the address he asked to ship to was different than the address from where the drive came. The thing is the drive never got anywhere. I don't know right now where the drive is, if it got lost or if it got to the scammer. Paypal decided to close the claim and I didn't get my money back. It's just $19 but I'm just ~Phrase removed~ because the way Paypal handled it shows that it was in favor to the scammer all the way. Sure the seller got banned from ebay. But that doesn't mean he can't open another account. After all there are still fake drives in Ebay. I think I should have stayed with the drive as evidence. Anyone had a similar issue?

 

oz-accessories are selling usb tv-tuners that don't work i'm about to report them i gave them til today to phone me i've heard nothing jim and betty both false names chinese scammers operating from sydney only $24 but still

 

It has never happened to me as I only buy from legit sources. (And I have purchased many, many drives.) But I have read of many such cases and oddly, quite a few involve the Sony brand name. Some of these drives can work but typically they are much smaller than what the purchaser thinks he is getting. An example, you bought a 32 GB, and the drive may actually be a 2 GB, or something like that.

My best advice is that if a price seems unbelievably low, it probably is too low and should be suspect. And stick to known, legit vendors.

 

The way Paypal and Ebay resolve things gives these type of sellers the advantage. It was my word against his. They didn't consider the sellers history or the history of fake drives in China. That way they're rewarding these people instead of punishing them. I should've reported the drive to the authorities or something instead.