Hi my mother in law bought a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 32 Gb for about $150 in a shop in Bangkok (not in a marketplace). It works in Australia and usually retails for about $800-$1000.
Also my flatmate bought a refurbished iPhone on eBay. A person that looked at it said that it didn’t have genuine parts.
So how could the Samsung phone be so cheap and still seem to work ok? Is it just that the parts aren’t genuine?
Different prices for different countries.
To sell for $150 let’s assume the cost price is $140. How can something sell for $800+ if the cost price is $140? Let’s assume there is $50 for shipping and the middle-men get $200…
So you’re saying that the product is exactly the same? (nothing dodgy going on)
BTW on eBay the cheapest is AU$699 and it is from Australia… why aren’t there Chinese ones there for $300 or something?
If the phones are 100% authentic why don’t people import them from Bangkok? They’d be able to make huge profits on eBay or at a store. BTW Samsung phones are made in Vietnam, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Korea. Not Thailand (Bangkok) so due to shipping costs the cost price would need to be even less than $140.
BTW I know that some products have huge markups, but there are stores that promise the lowest prices and price wars would lead to the sale price to be a lot closer to the cost price. Sometimes the stores even sell things at cost price.
Are you sure it’s an authentic phone? The fake ones look SUPER close to the real ones.
The only way you could really tell those apart on casual inspection is because the fake one has a pretty shitty screen./dev/goat:
I’m sure that it would be a fake or at least most of the parts would be. Thanks for the link. BTW I found this site:
http://spotafakephone.com/
BTW even if it is a fake it was a fraction of the cost of a real one and that’s what my mother in law thinks is the important thing.
Believe me it’s almost impossible to buy anything genuine in Thailand. Even going to a respectable shop will not guarantee what they sell you is genuine.
Time will tell if the phone is genuine. Usually the battery is the first thing to go, it will swell up and try to get out of the case. :eek:
If the battery does go, don’t buy a cheap replacement no matter how genuine it looks, it’s just not worth it.
Glad your MiL is happy with her purchase and that’s the main thing.
Does a fake Rolex tell time accurately enough for a person who wants to know what time it is?
My fake Gucci belt did a good job of keeping my pants up.
A fake may contain an electronic (quartz) movement, while a real Rolex has mechanical movement. A quartz watch is just as accurate, often better.
A fake cell phone, on the other hand, would not have the same functionality or performance as the real one.
By the way, Tech Insight estimates the production cost of the Note 5 is $298. The screen and the processor are the most expensive components, so a fake would likely have an inferior screen and slower processor.
It’s easy to throw together some cheap thing that works. It’s much harder to make something cheap that works well. And if all you want is something cheap that works, then you’re probably better off with a genuine cheap model made by a reputable company (who will know where you can get away with cheaper parts, and when the more expensive parts are worth it) than with something for which the primary design consideration is that it looks like an expensive phone.
What do you see if you type in the IMEI number into Samsung’s warranty checker?
(It can be faked, but I’m just curious…)
But then why would that person get a fake Rolex, instead of a similarly priced no-name watch that doesn’t imitate any particular brand? I would guess the answer is that this person would, in fact, ascribe some value to the cachet of having a Rolex.
Its’ quite possible they got it as a gift or that they may wish to impress people.
I got a Rolex for my 21st birthday some mumble mumble years ago. I haven’t had to change a battery in 46 years (oops). It’s self-winding so I don’t have to do that either. Yes I do have to reset it slightly to the right time every month or so, But think of all the money I’ve saved on no batteries.
And all my life, I’ve used digital quartz watches so cheap that it’s not even worth buying new batteries, just throwing out the watch and getting a new one as necessary. Not only do they keep better time than your Rolex, but I can probably keep replacing those watches for my entire life and still add up to a lower cost.
Another possibility is that it’s stolen or refurbished with counterfeit components (including chargers, etc.). And although I haven’t yet heard of this being done with phones, they could also potentially hack the firmware so that it reports itself as being a higher capacity model than it is (32 GB instead of 16, etc.). This is done all the time with USB sticks.
Some shops have gotten very good at replicating the box so that it looks like a new, sealed unit.
My brother was in Thailand when he was applying for grad school, getting his authenticated documentation transferred etc. He always thought that was a bit amusing.
The screen is the only really expensive part that can be replaced with something much cheaper ??? So at that price I’d think perhaps stolen?
Good fake replicas are cheap, but they aren’t that cheap (say $500-$1000). A real Rolex is significantly higher. You could look like you were sporting an expensive watch without the financial hit. The need to sport a Rolex may come from business or social pressures of the group you find yourself in.
From a functional POV, those expensive luxury watches are mostly jewelry. Status symbols for the rich. Your cell phone has a better clock. So do most quartz watches.
However the fakes are very good now, and many can’t be spotted as fakes without some expertise. You may not be able to pass it off as real to a watch dealer, but for a buyer on eBay? No idea how you’d tell.
I saw a youtube video where the guy was showing his fake omega against his real omega. Side by side, you couldn’t really spot the subtle differences, unless he pointed them out. Both had automatic movements, and he claimed the fake kept better time.
He bought the fake to wear as a day to day watch, and the real one was brought out on special occassions. I doubt anyone (except him) would ever know.