Comments on: scam or no scam?

Question: scam or no scam?

freddymetz — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:57:05 -0800

I think i got cleverly scammed on amazon? I bought a micro sd card on amazon and it has 2gb printed on it BUT when i formatted it, it told me it only had a capacity of 983mb(or something around that). Have i been scammed or is my pc crazy?

i bought this sd card:
http://www.amazon.de/SanDisk-GSM-Micro-SD-Multi-SD-Kit/dp/tech-data/B000R9YIFC/ref=de_a_smtd?ie=UTF8&qid=1197399106&sr=8-2

By: winston

winston — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:59:02 -0800

Or somebody made a mistake.

Inform the seller of the problem, assuming it's an honest mistake. If you haven't done that yet, there's no reason to panic.

By: kcm

kcm — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:01:40 -0800

It's big business to use eBay to scam on flash memory (USB drives, SD, etc.).

By: Cat Pie Hurts

Cat Pie Hurts — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:05:29 -0800

Is it partitioned? I purchased an 8gb flash drive, but only 4gb was usable. Turned out that it was partitioned with only 1 4gb partition formatted.

By: freddymetz

freddymetz — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:06:21 -0800

its a sandisk 2gb sd card with exactly that printed on the card itself, do they make these mistakes at factories?
Is there no chance of my pc being at fault?

By: rokusan

rokusan — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:10:04 -0800

How did you format it? It's possible to format any volume "down" to a smaller size by accident. The rest is unused space, similar to Cat Pie's example.

By: freddymetz

freddymetz — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:12:22 -0800

i just tried formatting again and now its 1.89gb so i guess its solved. Why only after the 6th format? Sorry to cause a nuiscance.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:13:12 -0800

SanDisk actually is unusual in that they have phone support. You can call them and ask. I've done this and got talked through the basic steps to determine if the problem was with their hardware or mine. Give them a call.

NORTH AMERICAN TECHNICAL SUPPORT

1(866) SAN.DISK (North America)

1-866-726-3475
7 days a week:
4:00 am. - 10:00 pm. (PST)
7:00 am - 1:00 am (EST)

SanDisk Extreme Memory cards
1-866-270-5532

By: skynxnex

skynxnex — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:13:40 -0800

I don't have tons of experience with SD cards exactly, but I know that there are some readers that may have issues with cards bigger than X GBs, including 2.

See for example the Wikipedia article. So it is possible that your flash reader is the problem (this isn't to rule out either the card is incorrect or it just was formatted incorrectly). It might help if you posted as much as you know about it.

By: kindall

kindall — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:29:05 -0800

Sandisk cards are widely counterfeited, and the fakes often have problems like this. Call Sandisk and ask them to verify that you have received a genuine Sandisk product. If it is, have them replace it. If it is not, send it back to the seller for a refund (and if they refuse to take it back, dispute the charge with your credit card issuer).

By: kindall

kindall — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:32:02 -0800

In fact, here is a list of SanDisk "counterfeit hotline" numbers for various countries.

By: Skorgu

Skorgu — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 14:29:57 -0800

Probably a scam. Happens all the time.

By: Skorgu

Skorgu — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 14:32:24 -0800

Sorry, second item in that link is the relevant one.

By: solotoro

solotoro — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 14:49:38 -0800

Why only after the 6th format?

Did you format on a different computer? Because skynxnex is absolutely correct. My threeish year old HP laptop won't recognize more than 1 gb on an SD card.

By: damn dirty ape

damn dirty ape — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:45:18 -0800

Whats going on is that that card is two 1 gig modules put together. If you continue to lose 1 gig or get formatting errors then its defective. I'd do more format and large copies to it and if I could replicate the problem I'd start the RMA process.

By: freddymetz

freddymetz — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:25:29 -0800

i performed all formats on a 3 year old pc with vista installed.