hacked "4, 8Gb" player

daveislander · #91 (**permalink**) 11th Dec 2006, 8:09 am

I got a 4GB 4GO R14 player from Ugoole on Ebay.. it took 4 weeks to arrive and within 2 hours it became obvious that it was faulty.. it loaded up to 1 Gb then I got format errors... A google found this site,, and 10 minutes later I knew what the problem was.. Following the simple steps mentioned here I now have a 1GB player... and I love it!
Yesterday I wrote to Ugoole, stating the problem, asked them for either a 75% rebate (4Gb-3GB=1GB or 75% less than offered), or an assurance that they had no knowledge of the 'problem' and were withdrawing all 'fake' 4GB players as a matter of urgency.. I gave them 3 days to answer before I started the 'official' procedures and left them negative (but honest) feedback. Today they got back to me... told me to format the player and if it was still 'faulty' I was to send it back, NOT using UPS or any fast track parcel carrier.. Paying my own postage.. they would investigate the problem upon receipt and return it to me, or replace it but I would have to pay postage and any other costs if the player was not faulty.. They stated quite clearly that this process would take a LONG time, and cost me a great deal of money.. (about $15HK each time or at least $45HK total).. and IF I wanted to just keep the player they would refund me £5GBP... Basically, they have us over a barrel, and we cannot really do much to hurt them,, so I shall probably accept the refund and then fight like hell to both warn others of the Con, and push Ebay to remove these items!.. Legally we are powerless against a Chinese company,, Ugoole has sold over 4000 units this month alone,, and a majority of these will be fraudulant units... So our only recourse is to educate and warn others whilst trying to get Ebay to see that they should be helping the customers, not grabbing money off the suppliers all the time... eventually their behaviour WILL bite them on the Backside.. and I hope that I can have a hand in doing so!

tadad1 · #92 (**permalink**) 11th Dec 2006, 1:39 pm

daveislander, you may be better off dealing with Ebay and paypal instead of the supplier. If you accept the sellers £5.00 they will consider the matter closed and ignore you.

daveislander · #93 (**permalink**) 12th Dec 2006, 11:58 am

I agree that I would be better fighting through Paypal & Ebay,, but have to wonder what the chances of a better refund will be... The supplier is happy to check my player, happy to repair or replace it and asks that I pay the costs... in other words to someone who doesn't want to lose a nice fat cheque each month (EBay & Paypal) I suspect that they will be seen as doing all they can to rectify the siuation. In some ways it would have served my purpose if Ugoole simply ignored me.. but they seem to be getting smarter and are wording their replies to make it 'seem' as if they are really bothered about my complaint. I suspect I will be told to return it and await the outcome, which leaves me £30 out of pocket initially and without my beloved player for weeks... I MAY decide to go through the channels,, but need to think it through some more and see what has been done for others in the same boat. I also have to wonder how come more folk haven't complained about this scam? Ugoole have sold thousands this month, but only have a handful of complaints.. do folk just throw these things away when they stop working (as most of them will)?

Dave

domtor0 · #94 (**permalink**) 12th Dec 2006, 2:34 pm

Hi ,
I just bought one of those "faked" memory player (firmware 9.0.48 ) ... The technic to do that is very good now... listen:
Under Linux, fdisk say me this is a 4GB device... then formated it with:
% mke2fs -c -c
(verify read/write) say me that all is OK .. the 4GB of memory has been formatted (and verify!) with success :shock: !!! Of course when I mount it the filesystem is well 4G...

Under Window:
Window XP see 4GB , and format it as a 4GB FAT32 filesystem
With HP format no problem to format the 4GB ... even if 4GB is not possible in FAT16 !!!!!
But all files after 1GB are corrupted ...
Chinese people make great job :evil:
PS: The seller return me 10£GP ...

domtor0 · #95 (**permalink**) 12th Dec 2006, 2:41 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by javad";p=&quot

is there any way to reformat hacked playet to actual capacity only. so that we do not waste time loading data on un usable space and than getting error message.

also one more problem is my player has voice recorder also, and it also goes on recording as it assumes lot many space available and finally recording what i get after some time is corrupted!!!

Yes you can... thank to Linux!!!
with fdisk create a partition which has the real size.... then format it in FAT16 (mkdosfs -F16 ) , then you MP4 player with see the real size and Windows will stop to fill it when the real size is reached...
PS: This can depend of technic used to faked the memory...

fablept · #96 (**permalink**) 14th Dec 2006, 7:47 am

Something that i cant understand..

If the seller´s are selling fake item´s and fake information (in my case, it said the item was form UK, but it was from Hong Kong, had to pay +50% of customs charges), many people had open an dispute, make a lot of complaints to ebay......but why they´re still selling this fake MP4?

If he commited a FRAUD, this a CRIME, so he should be PUNISHED by the LAW!!! not like virtual emails from ebay/paypal, but realistic punishment by the law..i spoke to my Professor of Law, and he said this has to go more further than a simple compaints trought ebay... people should go to Police or even to the Hong Kong Embassy to report this situation.

daveislander · #97 (**permalink**) 16th Dec 2006, 8:08 am

Fablept.. I agree with all of your 'should' comments,, but unfortunately I fear that you will find that Ebay and Paypal will not lift a finger to help customers.. Make no mistake,, they have received a great many complaints about this scam but as they make a huge amount of money from chinese companies, and once the market place is opened up they stand to make even more money.. why should they bother about a few upset customers when their bank accounts are soon to be overflowing with Yen?.. Ebay also state that they are not responcible for the goods offered on their webspace.. it is the job of the sellers to advertise correctly.
The Police will not act upon a chinese company that 'states' they are in England when in fact they are in China.. the offence was commited on Chinese soil and they don't usually bother about their own countrymen robbing the likes of you and me.
The Chinese Embassy are almost impossible to tie down with any kind of promise of action,,, I have emailed them twice and not received any response. We can try to shout and moan about these things, and try to warn off others from buying,, but if we became too succesful I suspect that Ebay would suddenly start to block our messages in some way.
It is a fact that we are fighting a new phenomenon with chinese companies ripping us off, but you must also remember that we are fighting EBay and Paypal and a whole raft of folk who are only interested in getting more of our money,, and if they get it on the back of a scam, then so be it! The ONLY real hope for us is if we can get some of our fellow countrymen to sell these items.. at least then we can report them to Police etc.

Bert the Janitor · #98 (**permalink**) 21st Dec 2006, 1:34 pm

Bought two of these things from platinumteam01 on eBay.
Pieces of junk the pair of them.

This seller has had his account suspended. He states item location is London when it is Hong Kong and sells the 2gb hacked model.
Paypal is currently dealing with this problem, but for UK buyers, if you paid by Paypal or with a credit card, get in touch with your credit card company and get them on the case.
My cc company advised that as they have his bank details they can take the money back as he is guilty of false advertising and selling goods not fit for purpose. They claim to recover in 9 out of 10 cases. They can also claim the postage costs back

Skunk · #99 (**permalink**) 30th Dec 2006, 4:47 pm

First time to ever mess with these things. I bought an 4gb player and turns out to be only a 1gb player. AMVs were not working on it so I read manual wich was written very badly. It said player may not fuction properly if firmware is not updated. I updated it with firmware that came on cd now it doesn't work. I filed a complaint with ebay and a dispute with paypal. hopefully I get my money back or a new player. For the price I paid even if it was a 1gb player I still would of been happy. Why did they have to scam us. This will hurt them in the long run.

ouramos · #**100** (**permalink**) 6th Jan 2007, 1:15 am

Hi I joined just to let you know that I have a Real 4GB MP4 1.5" nano size player. It has 2 flash chips on it and each flash chip holds 2GB with a total of 4GB. I have done all the test and confirmed that it works. I even opened it up just to make sure there where actuary 2 flash chips. I just thought I would let every one know. By the way I bought this directly from a factory in china.