I went on Ebay and purchased a 16GB USB Pen drive for £10, when it arrived, it turned out to be 8MB, dmesg reports "[321252.688535] sd 20:0:0:0: [sde] 16384 512-byte logical blocks: (8.38 MB/8.00 MiB)"

Also, the casing was falling off and split in half. The packaging says it was 249MB, and it had an obviously fake 16GB NTFS partition. So I'd obviously been sold a repackaged 8MB pen drive with a fake partition on it to look like it was 16GB. Suffice to say I was not amused. The first thing I did was email the seller, maybe he'd purchased a batch of fake drives unknowingly, maybe he was the victim here? so I sent the following message.

Hi, This item is not a 16GB flash drive and is in fact 8MB. That is not a typo, 8 megabytes, 0.0078GB, 0.048% of what I ordered. dmesg on Linux reports "[321252.688535] sd 20:0:0:0: [sde] 16384 512-byte logical blocks: (8.38 MB/8.00 MiB)" Also, looking at the packaging it says "Micro vault is approximately 249MB (for Windows)" ( http://bit.ly/bxUAwf ) What would you like to do to rectify this situation?

4 days passed and no reply arrived in my inbox, so I sent another message.

Hi, It has been 4 days since I sent you a message regarding this item and as of yet I have received no reply. If I do not receive reply by Friday (A full week after my original message) I shall view this as fraud, and act accordingly.

Friday came and went, I received no reply. This was obviously fraud. Off I went to the paypal dispute resolution center, I'd heard so many bad stories about getting money back. I wasn't so worried about the £10, more that the seller would continue to scam other people. I created a paypal dispute.

What I purchased: NEW 16GB USB Drive via ebay (120573695692) What I received: 8MB (Note: NOT GB), Used drive with casing split and falling off I contacted the seller on the 11th of June on this subject, thus I have given him a full week to reply and received no response, so I am now opening a paypal dispute.

I didn't expect a reply from the seller, but much to my surprise, next morning I had my refund. Maybe he got scared when I realized I was going to take this all the way? I looked on ebay again and saw lots of negative feedback from other people who had been scammed just like I had, he obviously just gave me my money back in the hopes of shutting me up. I wasn't going to do that.

I went back to ebay and reported the item

Listing Policy Breaches > Counterfeits and breach of copyright > Fraudulent listings > You received an item that may be fake; This drive is not 16GB, it is actually 8MB (Note: MB not GB), Managed to get refund through paypal.

Next morning, I received an email from Ebay stating that they have looked into the complaint and taken the action that was required. I also received another email from the "eBay Loss prevention Department" warning me that I should not complete my payment with the scammer (bit late, but it's the thought that counts, right?) I went and checked that the Item was no longer on Ebay, it wasn't. I went to the scammers profile to see if he'd been banned, and sure enough he is "No longer a registered user"

I'd say this went reasonably well, I got my money back, the scammer is no longer trading on ebay. Win win, I know alot of people have trouble with ebay, so I figured I'd make a change and post my sucess story.