05.20.08

In reply to a comment from “John”

Posted in fastmemorymanscam at 9:11 am by blog

 To quote someone who posted here: 

John |  | IP:

 

To put things in perspective: I ordered and got delivered exactly what I wanted within 10 days. This shop had more than 16.000 transactions last month. Still, 98% of the feedback is positive. But with such large quantities, only 2% of unsatisfied customers is still 320 people, which is a lot so that’s why a weblog like this gets a lot of input.

 

May 20, 7:57 AM

Fastmemoryman may have 16,000 transactions per month… But that’s still very few compared to a reputable memory vendor such as Crucial. I’m sure if some of the larger and more reputable vendors were selling junk, then they too would have hostile websites written about them. 

You also have to consider that he sells technology products, and the vast majority of people wouldn’t be sufficiently technically literate. Most people would believe his lies about their motherboard compatible, he tried to claim that my “MSI K8T Neo” motherboard doesn’t use the VIA K800 chipset, and that it actually uses a VIA 8xxx chipset, which corresponded to the part number of the IDE controller, the average customer is likely to believe his lies assuming he knows better than they do, and then they return the item at their own cost having paid for overpriced postage, leaving fastmemoryman with profit from the shipping costs and the original item to sell to the next unsuspecting victim.

Then there’s items which work, but poorly… A lot of people who have contacted me or posted to this site have bought flash cards advertised as branded goods, only to find that they’re fakes, many people wouldn’t notice this…

And some of the items perform poorly, such as the flash cards just mentioned… Many people have purchased cards advertised as a certain speed, only to find them to be laughably slow.

Some people have even received memory cards which are actually of a lower capacity, and have a corrupted FAT table to make them look bigger… Such cards corrupt badly once you reach the actual capacity point. Many people will take quite some time to fill a large card, and won’t notice the problem quickly. 

Then there’s over clocked processors, very few people will notice these unless they fail and they try returning them to the original manufacturer. 

Regarding postage costs, i ordered 3 strips of memory and was charged GBP6 per module for shipping. He claimed he couldn’t provide a postage discount because they were all processed separately. When they arrived  the 3 modules were in the same jiffy bag with GBP1.20 postage attached, assuming the jiffy bag cost GBP0.20 which is a very high estimate, thats GBP1.40 for shipping of all 3 items, yet he charged GBP18. 

You say you got what you wanted within 10 days…. Most of fastmemoryman’s listings make false claims about the item location. A lot of people have bought items that were supposed to be in their own country, only to find they were sent from a foreign country. You got you’re memory in 10 days, when i order from a reputable vendor it arrives next business day, 10 days is a ridiculous delivery time unless you live in the arctic or something.

The fact is, while he may occasionally get stocks of genuine decent quality items, the vast majority of what this guy sells is cheap unbranded or fake garbage, which he gets away with largely based on on the lack of technical knowledge among the majority of customers. He is perfectly willing to lie about what he’s selling in an attempt to rip off customers,  he massively overcharges customers and will try every dirty trick in the book to wring a profit out of unsuspecting victims.

So 2% of unsatisfied customers is already quite high, certainly higher than other memory vendors… Then you need to take into account the way the feedback system works and how he deals with it…

If you post a negative feedback against fastmemoryman he will respond in kind and then offer you a bribe to remove the feedback. Some people will take the bribe and cancel the feedback, many more won’t leave him negative for fear of having negative left for them (but isn’t ebay changing this system?). Some people have even been told to cancel disputes or leave positive feedback if they want to get a refund (which invariably they don’t get, since having cancelled the dispute they now have no comeback).

So what is his true percentage of unsatisfied customers? I would imagine it’s massively higher than the feedback numbers would suggest… 

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