So I don’t normally buy my strings from Amazon but I was short on basket total to get free shipping and did need a pack so looked about and found some Hybrids Slinky’s sold and distributed by Amazon themselves so thought they’d be legit.
Nope.
Sticker on the back from some dodgy place
No product code printed inside
Badly cut/trimmed packaging
Hard to tell from a photo but the paper packets and printed ink isn’t typical EB quality plus the strings are heavily tarnished inside
Amazon refunded but didn’t care. They wanted me to send them back but it’s an offence to knowingly post counterfeit items in the U.K. so they told me to dispose of them once I’d informed them of such.
I asked Ernie Balls U.K. distributor to confirm as fake, and they are. The APEKS company is a known seller of fake products.
Just be careful out there people.
Comments
If you happen to be a seller of these strings, then you send them in to an Amazon fulfilment centre, however of all the sellers (including Amazon) the stock gets sent from whichever fulfilment centre is nearest to the customer, whoever's stock it happens to be.
As a result, you can order as shipped and sold by Amazon, previously a reasonable guarantee of getting good product, and actually get sent the counterfeit items supplied by Chinese Tat Merchants Inc.
The good news is that Amazon come down like a tonne of bricks on sellers suspected of counterfeiting, they do not want to be perceived as an expensive Ali Express, so hopefully a few reports will see this seller banned, and their stock chucked out.
To be fair, I find Ernie's that poor at times that I can only assume they must all be fake Rusty strings out of the packet, break easily, last about a day with my skin chemistry. Pretty much everything from Picato to Encore are better for me. YMMV and all that.
(Only semi joking)
The yard is nothing but a fence, the sun just hurts my eyes...
My company used to sell around 35K's worth of genuine laptop batteries and chargers every fortnight on Amazon (that was when you got paid, every fortnight.) All was good.
Then using a backdoor method in Amazons UPC coding system resellers began importing fake versions from China and selling them on Amazon, undercutting our genuine products because the fakes had none of the EMF shielding, over current protection etc so were much cheaper to produce.
I wrote to Amazon, I showed them examples of these fakes I had brought from their site, even showed an internal view of a charger that fell apart after being dropped less than 30cm onto a worktop.
They weren't interested in the slightest and we had to withdraw from the market and leave the fakers to it.
Who did you tell (apart from Amazon of course)? Trading standards would surely be interested?
(I've always used EBs on my electrics and never had a problem personally - in fact the only "rusty in the packet" strings I've had were d'Addario mando strings)
now if a little shop in a quiet suburb of London was the distributor there would be a Trading Standards Team , Health and Safety Officer ,Fire Brigade Inspector crawling over the place in 5 minutes and a photo of Mr Evil Shopkeeper on the DM with a tagline like 'Firebug Faker Fucks Customers over "
The only reason to use them is the convenience. If that's what you value the most, expect to get ripped off from time to time.
I hope they will be ok.
I’m so bored I might as well be listening to Pink Floyd
I get my strings from StringsDirect too. Yes its retail price (or maybe a little cheaper) and not as cheap cheap as Ebay/Amazon but I know I'm getting the genuine goods and I want to support the smaller UK businesses.
https://www.unitetheunion.org/campaigns/action-on-amazon
It’s not the same issue, but helping to bring Amazon to book in other ways will make a difference.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Amazon is pot luck for the reason that @darthed1981 stated. Sometimes you'll be fine, othertimes you won't be, but then that's the chance you take with many things when price is the main purchase-driver.
Personally, I'm fed up with Amazon being flooded with cheap "branded" Chinese stuff for many items nowadays. I don't want cheap, I want good and reliable/proven, and so I place some value on buying some things from a recognised brand. Lots of that Chinese stuff is now "branded", but they're nonsensical here-today, gone-later-today "brands" that have absolutely zero value.
It's become a re-formatted AliExpress.