We’ve heard horror stories about customers in China getting ripped off by errant tech retailers who fluff up their hard drives with metallic weights to give them an authentic heft — but apparently, it’s happening in Singapore too.
A Facebook user put up a post last week to warn others of an alleged scam that went down at infamous tech mall Sim Lim Square. Apparently, his friend got himself a cheap 2TB Toshiba external hard drive… which didn’t work at all when he tried it out on his computer.
Why? Probably because the hard drive was actually just a thumb drive with a metallic slab stuck inside for added weight.
Fortunately, the buyer got his “drive” replaced by the sellers, who were believed to be from an unnamed shop on the fourth floor of the mall. The excuse given was that the buyer received a “display unit” instead of a proper one.
Fake hard drives are a fairly common phenomenon, FYI, involving scammers sticking things such as bolts, screws, and other metal trinkets into legit-looking hard drive casings.
As far back as 2011, an unwitting schmo in Russia got ripped off by a Chinese store that sold him a 500GB hard drive, which turned out to be a 128-MB flash drive with two nuts glued next to it.
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