Counterfeit Ink for Epson Printer: How Counterfeiters are Getting Better

If eBay is not a paradise for counterfeiters and fraudsters it isn't exactly a hell. I have to admit that eBay and its sister company, PayPal, are doing a phenomenal job in preventing fraud and helping fraud victims. However, there is caveat in their policies which helps perpetrators victimise unsuspecting customers.

That caveat is 90 days. Yes, 90 days. You have to report or file your dispute (an umbrella term for any suspicion of fraud or actual disputes used at eBay) within 90 days of purchase through PayPal and this is only valid if you paid using the same. That is why I did not file a dispute against the seller of Rock Mobile Disk. (see Review: Stay away from Rock Mobile Disk)

I have a printer which cost me $60 and I bought directly from its manufacturer and its ink – the whole set of four cartridges – costs me almost $100+ dollars. However, there is a solution which involves eBay. I can buy genuine – not generic – ink cartridges for my printer from sellers on eBay at a fraction of their original cost. I have been doing this quite successfully for a long time. Until recently.

I bought several cartridges of ink from a seller (eBay username: daily_office_supplies) in USA at almost 50% of original cost. The seller made it clear that he will be shipping them in plastic seals only without cardboard packaging to save shipping cost. Nothing suspicious there too. It had been done by other sellers too and cartridges turned out to be just fine.

After I received the cartridges, I kept them in a box for later use. Fortunately, my printer had to do some overtime on printing resulting in it demanding two cartridges be replaced. I replaced them. Immediately printer started skipping and missing and leaving big gaps in prints; a sure sign of clogged nozzles. I cleaned them to no avail. I cleaned them twice. I cleaned them thrice.

Incensed, I called Epson, my printer’s manufacturer. They patiently helped me. Helped me. And helped me again, until I got a clear, near perfect print out. I had to change several cartridges during the process. Here is a point to be noted. Every time I changed a cartridge, I replaced it with one bought from same seller, daily_office_supplies. After two agonizingly frustrating days, I decided to check and match the empty cartridges that I initially replace with new ones. The similarities and differences were uncanny.

It wasn't my printer's fault that the prints were coming out lousy. It was the ink cartridges all along.
First thing that made me believe that there could possibly be nothing wrong with the new cartridges was their plastic seal packaging. Look at the following photographs. These seals contained the faulty – or shall we say counterfeit – ink cartridges.
 

They are the typical plastic seals that most Epson cartridges come in. Until I threw them out I had been unable to find any infamous spelling mistakes which counterfeit products' packagings are supposed to have.

Note that my printer uses following epson ink cartidges: T069220, T069320, T069420, T069520

These are SKU codes. They also appear as T0692, T0693, T0694, T0695, i.e. with out trailing 20.

Now let us examin the differences between an original and a fake cartidge in some photographs. The cartridges that I am using in my comparison are T0692 or T069220 which is cyan colour.

First Picture

1

Original: Green electrical part is securely fixed in the cartridge. Also it is even and straight surface.

Counterfeit: Bottom end of green electrical part seems loose and not secure. It is bent near the metal parts.

2

Original: There is slit separate from green electrical part just blow its bottom end.

Counterfeit: There is a huge gab below the green electrical part.

3

Original: Design is complex and pinch clip is wide.

Counterfeit: Design is simple and pinch clip is narrower.

Second Picture

1

Original: Pinch clip is thick and smooth,

Counterfeit: Pinch clip is thin and and has holes in it.

2

Original: Word EPSON etched in the surface.

Counterfeit: Word EPSON is missing.

3

Original: Left side layer is thick.

Counterfeit: Left side layer is thin.

Third Picture

1

Original: Complex design and notice the letter H near top left corner.

Counterfeit: Simple design and the letter H is missing.

2

Original: More pronounced groves and no barrier on either side of the groves.

Counterfeit: Groves are less pronounced and there is barrier on their left side.

Fourth Picture

1

Original: Structures above and below ink hole are thicker and smoother.

Counterfeit: Structures above and below ink hole are thiner and uneven.

2

Original: Thin and thick horizontal lines and the hole is deep.

Counterfeit: Both lines of plastic are thick and the hole below them is shallow.

3

Original: Base is wide.

Counterfeit: Base is narrower.

Fifth Picture

1

Original: Smaller print is thinner and SKU code is underlined.

Counterfeit: Smaller print is thicker and SKU code is not underlined.

2

Original: If you enlarge the picture you can see the word EPSON etched into the plastic. Similarly there are some numbers etched near the bottom end, too below the company name. Overall structue is also more complex.

Counterfeit: Etched word and numbers are missing. Structure is simpler and smoother.

3

Original: Overall structure on left side is much more refined and there is circle on right side of the pinch clip.

Counterfeit: Overall structure on left side is crude and the circle from right side of the pinch clip is missing.

Sixth Picture

1

Original: SKU code is underlined. Words Cyan are thinner.

Counterfeit: SKU code is not underlined. Words Cyan are thicker or bolder.

2

Original: Matrix code is lighter with more gaps.

Counterfeit: Matrix code is darker with fewer gaps.

In conclusion, counterfeiter are becoming more and more sophisticated and unreasonably high prices of easily manufactured products give an open invitaion to such criminal minds to target the bargain hunters who are looking for more bang for their buck.

Although, it is a buyer's responsibility to do due diligence when purchasing any product online from an unknown seller, however, companies like Epson should give a chance to some reason and common sense when they charge $100+ dollars for a $60 printer.

Be safe and prevent fraud!

Review: Stay away from Rock Mobile Disk

If you use "External Hard Drive" as keywords on eBay, you will find that an image that constantly appears in search results is following:


I bought two of those in 2007. One in May and second in June, 500GB each. I paid $140+ for each. The one that I bought in May, I used to store enormous amount of pictures which are inevitable in this day and age of digital cameras. I had to use ACDSee to regularly organize pictures on it.
In about May 2008, exactly after one year after its purchase, it completely gave up on me and I regularly began to hear the dreaded click of death whenever I tried to access it. I lost all of my pictures. I had no backup. In fact I was quite satisfied that now I had this mass storage which had sole purpose of storing images, I had nothing to worry about. Silly me.
It all happened when I used Windows Disk Defragmenter. So I figured maybe this was the culprit. I checked the second hard drive that I bought in June 2007. It had videos on it and I did not use it as often. It had huge number of bad sectors. I had not used Windows Disk Defragmenter on this one. It was slowly giving up on me. By experience, I estimated that it would completely give up in June 2008, if I accessed it a few more times. I bought a 1TB external hard drive from FutureShop and transfered all of my data on to the new one and never used Rock Mobile Disk again.
Now I noticed something else. External hard drive that I bought from FutureShop, hardly ever got even warm, whereas Rock Mobile Disk heated up so quickly and so much so that you could hardly touch it.
Then I decided to open the disk with click of death.
I removed all four tiny screws. Two at the top and two at the bottom; see picture (only top screws shown):

Then you can pull the covers sideways to remove them. Following is a picture of front of the disk with the cover removed:

Following is a picture of back of the disk with the cover removed:


See following two pictures and see how they fit the hard drive in the casing. They used pieces of cardboard:



Here's another picture. I have pulled out all the pieces of cardboard and put them beside the hard drive:


Here's how to pull the hard drive out of the casing:


Look at the following close-up of the hard drive, and the close-up after that. Try reading the label and pay attention to the condition of the lable:


In above two pictures, you can clearly see that the hard drive is manufactured by Western Digital. The seal has been deliberately damaged. I assume whoever is selling these hard drives has got a bulk of faulty hard drives which are doomed to fail after much shorter than normal use and he/she is selling them as external hard drives by enclosing them in cheap casings. The label of the hard drive clearly instructs not to cover any holes and the casing is essentially airtight with no possibility of ventilation for the hard drive whatsoever. An over heated hard drive is more easily prone to failure. Any quality external hard drive's casing should have a way of cooling for the hard drive. The hard drive that I bought from FutureShop is from a well known company and, as I said before, doesn't heat up like a Rock Mobile Disk.
If you do a Google search for Rock Mobile Disk, you'll never find the manufacturer's web site. The only web sites you'll find will be either auction web sites or the forums with heaps of complaints about this product. Here's another assumption for your thought: Rock Mobile Disk is a phony company which only manufactures or supplies cheap, low quality casings for the standard hard drives.
There is no question, these external hard drives sure look good on internet and cause a lot of bid wars which result in inflated prices. These external hard drives with added shipping & handling charges, cost more than a high quality product with same capacity bought from a well known retail store.
Here are some tips to keep yourself safe from rip-off known as Rock Mobile Disk:

• If you are bidding online on one of these, stop. Pull out your bid if you can or hope someone outbids you. Alert the bidding site about the possible fraud.
• Do a survey of your local computer retail stores and compare prices. I bet you'll find a better hard drive at much lower price.
• If you are currently using a so-called Rock Mobile Disk, make a copy of all the data in it and to prevent any possibility of data loss, stop using it. You have been a victim of internet rip-off like me. Don't lament. Help prevent such frauds.
• If you have won a bid on one of these disks and haven't paid yet, then don't pay. Negotiate with the bidding site and let them know about the situation involving possible fraud. I hope they'll understand.

If you have any further information, if you want more information added to this blog entry or if you have relevant links to share please feel free to leave a comment. You don't have to register to do so.
Be safe and prevent fraud!