Counterfeit Electronics??

I have heard about this with cables (particularly Cardas) but not electronics!!. I would generally try to avoid buying high-end audio products on ebay to start. You have great selection and mostly reliable sellers right here on Audiogon.

Focal has the same problem, in particular, with the car electronics. Ebay had a bunch of sets of speakers with the same serial number and, suprise, counterfeit. Issued a press release on their website some months back about it.

We havent't seen anything yet except the tip of the coming iceberg.Give the rest of the world another 25-30 years of Mc Donalds coupled with cheap/free labor and lots of cigarettes and some good stuff will create the next electronic marketplace that will make Carter and his liver pills look like a deal....

I beleive most of the fakes are things like accessories, like Bluetooth devices, cell batteries, audio cables, not electronics. If you go to a local flea market you will see the type of fakes that are made. it think it would be too time consuming to fabricate the chasis to make a product which could fool the consumer.

I was sold a Motorola bluetooth piece which I later found was fake. it looked very real, the only giveaway was the rather staticy sound and they mis-spelled the word "Motorolo" in the manual, and word "potent" /patent on the package.

I have purchased a set of fake Dynaudio car speakers off ebay which looked perfect and actually sound excellent. The installer was a Dynaudio dealer and he could not tell the difference.

This has been an issue for ages, except that ebay and shady online retailers have propageted it further. M&K Speakers went under last year due in part to the cost of trying to stamp out counterfeits.