I Feel Sorry For All These People
 

I found this listing for a 4GB player and you should click on the number of purchases that have been made. Its huge. A lot of people.

But this is why I feel sorry for all those people who bought a player: in the listing it says in red letters:

"The advertised memory capacity of this device represents unformatted capacity. Please note that once formatted and due to variations in flash module block limitations, the functional storage space will be lower than the advertised capacity."

They have no idea they just threw away their money thinking they were getting a 4GB player.

Its sad.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/New-4GB-4-GB-MP4-MP3-FM-LCD-Video-Player-BLK-FREE-SHIP_W0QQitemZ220091105080QQcategoryZ73839QQrdZ1QQ cmdZViewItem

very sad indeed... I guess we should be expecting more signatures to the petition!

Re: I Feel Sorry For All These People
 

"due to variations in flash module block limitations" - what an aweful lie.

Its probably what he tells them when they start getting disk errors. Or just ignores them completely.

I wish there was a way to tell all the buyers who bought a hack from him that they just got scammed, ripped off and lied to.

well there is on ebay... until ebay catches wind of it and blocks you from sending messages. You should be able to get quite a few through before this happens though.

ashley_rb,

Well spotted.
I wonder if we can post a comment to what he said in this auction so to pre-warn others? Is that possible? I know I do that an auction site in New Zealand. I ask obvious questions like "what is this isn't a TURE 4GB? Will you refund?"

Just a thought, in a sense what the seller is saying is true, but could still be using it as a means to rip people off. Of course an unformatted drive of any size and type will be rated as however many GB's. Then after it's formatted it always appears as less. 4GB formatted turns to something like 3.8GB, 1GB to 968MB, even my 80GB Seagate Barracuda once it was formatted was only 76GB.

But as i said... he could be using it as a means of tricking people into buying players when formatted end up with only half or a quarter the space. Very sneaky if thats true

Re: I Feel Sorry For All These People
 

It appears that he's trying to be misleading (or he could just be saying what's true, unformatted capacity is larger than formatted), but I don't think he has a case here if he is. Under windows formatting, you don't lose half the capacity. This is easily proven.

Guess this seller is probably saving his/her ass. When a person buys it and formats the player, finally ending up with 1GB from the original 4GB advertised.
The seller would be protected in a way that when the buyer files a dispute, the seller could always say that he/she have already stated in the ad that the formatted capacity would be lesser.

So in a way, the seller is exploiting a loop-hole, which the buyer cannot file "item not significantly described".