Hi there,

I have bought a hacked 4Gb (really 1Gb) player on ebay from user blown_z. The seller could not be contacted by any means, including phone number. I have left negative feedback, and requested full refund from Paypal.

Since I got the seller contact details from eBay, including real name, city/state and phone number, and since I am pissed off, I am filing a report to his city local police (Blaine, MN). Therefore if anybody personally had bought a hacked player from this seller, and would like to help me to stop this fraudster - please contact me through private messaging ASAP.

If you want to help me, please also prepare the appropriate evidence that:
- you bought a player from this seller, and paid for it (e-mails from ebay/paypal are enough);
- you found it hacked. Pictures of player and diagnostic window would be great, but the paypal/ebay resolution log where the seller agreed to issue refund may be enough as well.
- save them to a directory, and pack with zip. Include your contact information, and send it to me.

Please check the evidence twice, as I will send it to the police department, and we want to provide them with real facts to make their job easier.

Also please inform me whether you reported the item as fraudulent to ebay, and when (date). If there is enough people who have done it, and ebay has not reacted yet, I will inform local District Attorney office (I live in Santa Clara county, where ebay is), and the press about it. Ebay is becoming a heaven for fraudsters; there should be a (case?) law which would make them liable for this.

oldnemesis,
I think it is time that eBay was held accountable for it's lack of action on this matter.

I strongly encourage all members who have purchased hacked players on eBay to support "oldnemesis" in this matter by lodging fraud complaints against their supplier with ebay and then passing the information on to him.

tadad1 wrote (View Post): › I think it is time that eBay was held accountable for it's lack of action on this matter.

I am going to write a request to ebay showing how many fake players are sold on ebay right now, and request that ebay put an appropriate notice in this category, and informed all 1-2-4Gb MP4 player auction winners to check the real player size. The request will be sent through the postal mail, and if they ignore it, I will try to get an appropriate court order.
Is there an official information available that there are no 4Gb MP4 players manufactured?

oldnemesis,

Some of our members have contacts with reputable player manufacturers that report that 2GB is the largest capacity currently possible in chiPods.

Certainly if there were true 4 & 8 GB players being manufactured someone would have posted details either here or s1mp3.org.

While true 4GB (2x2GB chips) players are currently produced by the likes of Meizu and Teclast they are 2 to 3 times the price of chiPods and use a completely differrent architecture than these cheaper Chinese manufactured players.

I bought one. I demanded a 50% refund as mine was 1GB advertised and 512MB in reality. I would do this -- email EVERYONE you can who you see leave him positive feedback and let them know how to check their mp4 player and to file a dispute.

Ok, here is what I sent to Blaine,MN police department:

Dear sir or madam,
I am writing to report a fraud attempt committed against me, and against other people by a company, which was reported to me to be a Blaine, MN resident.

On Nov 09, 2006 I have bought an 4GB MP4/MP3 player on www.ebay.com from the seller with username blown-z, who represents the Supreme Solutions company (see the message in evidence/The item is won.msg). The item was paid (evidence/The item is paid.msg), and received on Monday, Nov 13, 2006.

The item was tested after receiving. The item worked, and showed that it has 4Gb of memory. However, being aware that some players are hacked to show more memory that they have, I ran a special test to reveal the true player memory capacity. As a result, the real amount of memory in this player was only 1Gb. This was not a malfunction - the item flash memory was intentionally modified
to show higher amount of available memory that the device really has.

There are several things that make me believe that the company which sells those players on eBay knows that they are selling 1Gb players as 4Gb, and getting much higher price. I was not the first customer complaining about the received player was hacked, and has much less memory that advertised. The company feedback page on www.ebay.com shows that several people reported the
same problem just this month. Since the company started getting complains, they did not try to fix the pissue - instead they made their auctions private, making it much difficult to contact the buyer, who did not complain. There are no other reason to make auction private to sell cheap MP3 players - private auctions are mostly used to sell sensitive items, like adult toys, so the buyer does not want himself to be listed as a buyer. Clearly not a case for this player.

I have got the company contact details from ebay, contacted the company, and explained all the details about the fake player they sent to me. The company silently ignored me, no reply. And they still selling the same players on ebay, deceiving their customers, who may not have enough technical knowledge to check that the player has really as much memory as they paid for. Therefore I can only attempt to stop this fraud by reporting it to law enforcement.

Here is the contact information for Supreme Solutions I got from ebay (evidence/User blown-z contact information request.msg):

<provided>

The player I bought is still in my posession. I am going to ship it back, but if you need it for your investigation, let me know, and I ship it to the Blaine police department with all the evidence you request.

I can be contacted by e-mail, phone number or via regular mail.
<provided>

I certify that the facts I have reported are true to the best of my knowledge.
<signature>

And that is what I sent to Meg Whitman, eBay CEO:

Dear Meg,

At November 9, 2006 I have bought a 4Gb MP3/MP4 player on eBay auction from the seller blown-z. After I receive this item, I was happy – but not so long, because the files stored on the player become corrupted. Searching the Internet, I found the www.mympxplayer.org, and the article how to check the real memory size. No wonder that files became corrupted – the player has only 1Gb of memory, and was hacked to show the 4Gb disk space available. Worse, the seller definitely knew that he is selling hacked players, because he had made all his auctions private, and hid his feedback and winning users, so nobody can warn them that they bought a hacked player.

Now here is the problem. I have talked to several people, who also bought a hacked player from eBay, and even from the same seller. Most of them had reported this and other sellers of hacked players to eBay. So far nobody of us saw any reaction from eBay, the hacked players are still there, and those sellers are still selling them every day. People are saying that the real reason is that eBay gets money from those sellers who sell fraudulent items, and when the customer returns the item, the customer is paying for return shipping, but eBay still holds the money from auction fees. Then the seller sells the item again, and eBay gets another auction fee, therefore directly benefiting from illegal seller activity. The customers, including me, are losing money because of what we consider eBay negligence. This hurts the people trust in eBay, and when the people lost the trust in vendor effectiveness, usually they turn to government, and the government creates a new law. Usually those laws are so strict that most businesses wish they fixed all the problems with all those customers instead. But at that time it is always too late.

I left negative feedback, and reported this seller to PayPal, and to his local police in Minnesota, but I cannot report it to eBay yet – see below why. However I am unable to report all the sellers of all the fraudulent items. Neither I can warn all the users about those hacked players they probably bought. In order to do at least something to stop this mass fraud, I ask eBay to consider doing the following:

1. Post a warning in at least in audio/mp3 players category, to inform the buyers about the hacked players, and ask them to check the real memory size of the player they just bought from any seller – not only eBay seller. There are good guides on eBay, like “BEWARE of FAKE 1GB/2GB/4GB/8GB USB Flash Drives on eBay”, which are worth mentioning here. The www.mympxplayer.org also contains a nice article. Feel free to contact me if you need any information.

2. Send to all the last one-two months winners of 4Gb MP3/MP4 player a message to check the real memory size of the player they bought right now. The reason is that so far nobody have seen the real 4Gb MP3/MP4 player yet, and the chip set that player is built on can only use 2Gb of RAM. Therefore the probability that all those players are fakes is quite high. This would help the customers to recover their money, as most purchases have a short time frame to request a refund.

3. Remove the 10 days delay from “Item received is not as described” eBay report - at this moment I cannot even report to eBay that I have received a fake item, until ten days passed! The reason for this delay is completely unknown for me; obviously the player is not going to gain 3Gb of missing memory in those ten days.

4. Enable the private auctions only for specific categories. There are only few categories where you really need private auctions – for example, selling adult videos and toys. The only reason to use a private auction to sell a cheap MP3 player or a flash drive is to hide the winner, so nobody can warn him to check whether he bought a hacked device.

5. Do something with your customer support. The only thing me and everybody I asked have ever received from your customer support was an automated reply from “unmonitored mailbox”. There seems to be even no e-mail addresses on eBay site to send a question about, and to ensure its delivery to a real person, and therefore I have to send a regular mail! When you report the 10th item, and see no reaction except auto-generated e-mail, it is very disappointing, and makes you think all your efforts are useless.

Obviously none of this will really help the people who have already bought a hacked player. However it would help stopping the flood of selling hacked players, and it worth it. I do not ask you to reimburse my return shipping (which at least partially is your fault; if your fraud investigation team did their job, I would not have to write this letter to you, as you had enough information to stop this fraud before I even bought this player). I only ask you to warn the community, thinking that we, buyers, deserve at least something from eBay in exchange of return shipping we pay returning those hacked players to sellers., while eBay still earns its auction fees.

I am writing this in hope that eBay will be able to solve this issue in timely manner, and we, the buyers community, will not have to involve the media, courts and politics into this. This may affect or even invalidate all your hard work fighting the proposed Auctioneering Regulations, and your opponents will definitely benefit from a situation like this. There are already people who think eBay should be held responsible for its negligence, and the sellers should be licensed to reduce fraud on eBay. And if there is enough people, this might become a law. The rest is predictable.

In my opinion it is better to fix the problem now than wait until it is too late. I would be glad to be informed about the decision you made, and hope you can make it fast.

By the way, after I sent all those complains, the seller gave me $25 refund, so I've got 1Gb player for $28 (incl. shipping). This makes me feel kinda a$$hole now

Old

I am sure what you have done will help many others that have been cheated by dealing with her. Perhaps she will be more responsive to helping resolve the issues with these hacked players. YOU DID GOOD!

Dave

Oldnemesis, don't feel bad because you got a good deal out of the situation - you deserved it after being cheated like that. The same thing happened to me, only it was with a 512mb player advertised as a 1gb player from powersellerturbo (see thread titled "hacked 1gb player from powersellerturbo). I got a $10 refund, which means I paid $28 for a 512mb player - not too bad. Anyway, we need to spread this around the web so that no one else gets sucked into blown-z and powersellerturbo's schemes. The sellers attempt to quiet us by eventually offering refunds, but it won't work! I will, to the best of my ability, significally decrease the number of people who purchase from these sellers by alerting them to these scams.

Oh yes, and we should compile a list of people who got scammed by these two sellers

Thank you everyone for support.
My suggestion for everybody who was cheated by those sellers, and have reported it to ebay/paypal without receiving any reaction beyond the "automated reply" - write to eBay CEO. You can use the sample above, or create your own. Send it via registered/certified mail, or leave youeself a copy, and record the date. This way if we bring a lawsuit later, it would be easier to prove eBay negligence.

PS: http://www.rebel101.com/sue_paypal.htm

oldnemesis,

You did good with your letter. Very indepth.

It would make a great 'sample' letter to those who are in the same situation as you and might be 'afraid' to take further steps.

Keep up the good work.
The more we start actioning these problems, hopefully we can stamp out the bad traders who are selling hacked 4GB players.

oldnemesis wrote (View Post): › Hi there, I have bought a hacked 4Gb (really 1Gb) player on (snip)

Unfortunately for me, I fell into the same trap as you did. I believe I may have purchased the exact same players you did. The "Newest style 4gb" etc player.

Shame on me for being an uneducated buyer. Shame on the seller for blatantly ripping people off.

I have also requested the seller's contact information.

Pasted below is the text of the email I sent this seller:

Jake Chial
DBA: Supreme Solutions
Blaine, MN


Hello Mr. Chial,

I received the 4 MP4 players I purchased from you today.

I have a major problem with these players. They are FAKE!

They do NOT have 4GB of memory as your ebay ad states. They only have *1* GB of memory. These players have been *hacked* and fraudulently represented as having 4GB of memory.

As far as I am concerned, you have 3 options to resolve this issue.

1: You can issue me a 100% complete refund including all shipping charges for all 4 of these players and I will send them back to you at my expense after receiving my refund. I will email tracking number to prove I sent them back.

2: You can issue me a 75% refund of the purchase price for each of these players and I will keep them. Why 75%? Because I'm only receiving 25% of the memory I paid for. Therefore the way I see it 75% of my money was fraudulently obtained. The refund amount would be $146.27. After refund I would leave positive feedback for you.

3: You can do nothing. In which case I will leave negative feedback, file a claim with Paypal and my credit card company and file a police report with the police in your hometown of Blaine, MN. regarding your fraudulent activities.

You have 72 hours to respond to this email before I assume you have chosen option number 3. I have sent you this via personal email, and through ebay's member contact system. I will also attempt to contact you by telephone via the phone number provided by ebay within this 72 hour period.

For your reference, the ebay item numbers are below:

200051634593
200051618249
200051582198
200051331941

I look forward to your rapid response to my letter.

Sincerely,
Michael Paul


If this doesn't work, then I'll join with oldnemesis in his campaign. Wish me luck guys!

Michael aka Radius

Oldnemesis,

I have just recently on Nov.05,06 bought the same mp3/mp4 player from blown-z. It is supposed to be a 4gb but I just read your post and I got it out. It is supposed to be for my son for Christmas. Can you tell me how to check to see how much memory it has on it? All it has is those two stickers on the back that says 4gb and FM. Also I will be filling a complaint to Ebay against him. The bad thing is that I left him good feedback. I plugged it in when it came in the mail and it seemed to work. I just didn't know anything about them. Any information will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks