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Today I read road.cc's article about fake Shimano brake pads. They look the part and appear to work fine, until they get too hot and the pad falls off the backing plate! Potentially causing a catastrophic failure:
Before I knew any better I also bought some L05A-RF brake pads off eBay, from a seller called Cyclinghome_uk (they have since changed their name to hopeus). The seller has over 99% positive feedback.
Luckily I haven't put them in my road bike yet, so decided to take a look to see if I could spot any obvious signs of fakery.
The box looks and feels absolutely perfect, but peel away the "Authentic?" sticker and there is no barcode to scan!
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The back of the pad matches genuine ones from pictures online, apart from one tell - there is no "bobble" in the middle strip at the top, where there should be:
Finally, a tell on the front is the residue all over the plate
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These fake ones presumably work fine most of the time, until they suddenly don't! So lesson learned and I will only be using proper bike shops and suppliers in future.
I bought a fake chain by mistake. Did look ok on the ad including a bricks and mortar bike shop but was definitely dodgy. eBay refunded without issue. I put it on the pub bike rather than bin it and it was awful. Should've just binned it.Â
There is some great cheap stuff out there but I'd much rather have a budget Chinese brand than a fake I've had loads of good cheap parts, including brake pads, from non mainstream brands.
There's also an epidemic of fake Shimano cleats. I just buy Shimano from proper retailers these days.
There's also an epidemic of fake Shimano cleats. I just buy Shimano from proper retailers these days.
Yeah, I got caught by this last week. eBay refused to accept my report of failing their conditions by selling counterfeit goods, and the appeal! They lasted 5 rides before being so worn they wouldn't engage the pedals.Â
Don't buy anything Shimano on ebay or anywhere else unless it's a retailer you recognise. There are reputable bike shops on ebay, like biketart, but also many dodgy sellers.
I got a counterfeit chain on ebay. It was totally destroyed in a couple of hundred miles. Very difficult to tell it apart from a genuine one, even with them both side by side.
Avoid Amazon too - plenty of fake SRAM and KMC too. Got to be proper bike shops for chains, pads etc etc.
I was quite shocked in the difference between Malaysian Shimano & Chinese Shimano discs - both same model number & bought from known sellers, Chinese one much cheaper manufacture & consequently returned under distance selling regs.
Got caught out by some hooky avid bb7s, almost fell apart as I put them on the bike, got my money back but eBay seller was a right sister.
Thanks for sharing. The front shot of those pads looks fake to me. You wouldn't know unless you had them out of the box!!
Blimey, I have been avoiding buying chains off eBay after I think getting a dodgy KMC one.
Will stick to trusted retailers for brake pads as well now, thanks.
The trouble is even trusted retailers aren't a guarantee, IIRC it was Merlin that got stuck with a load of fake stuff a couple of years back. One of the things you can do with fake products, is replace real products further up the supply chain, so a pallet of chains leaves the factory, gets nicked and replaced with fakes, faker sells genuine product, shops get fake product that they've no reason to doubt, and it spreads out over loads of outlets.Â
There was an amazing Which article years back about fake memory cards, where they bought Sandisks from about 10 highstreet and online shops expecting to find maybe 1 or 2 dodgy products and every single last one was a fake, that was the same thing, supply chain interrupts.
But in the real world, short of auditing the entire supply chain yourself, buying from an established retailer is still the best way of drastically reducing the odds of buying fakey gear.
Is it the real world though Chakaping, how can we be sure?
Manufacturers sometimes make it more difficult to spot fakes by varying the packaging on legit items. I had a SRAM chain not so long ago, box was different dimensions to every other same chain I've bought, queried whether it was fake, turns out it's fine. Never seen another one packaged similarly.
IIRC it was Merlin that got stuck with a load of fake stuff a couple of years back
It's something to watch out for, but Merlin probably isn't the best example. They do seem to get stock from unusual sources sometimes. If it was Sigma, Biketart or Halfords I'd be more concerned
There was an amazing Which article years back about fake memory cards, where they bought Sandisks from about 10 highstreet and online shops expecting to find maybe 1 or 2 dodgy products and every single last one was a fake, that was the same thing, supply chain interrupts.
There was a similar problem with Amazon at one point, allegedly Amazon didn't keep separate bins for different sellers in the warehouse, so if you were MemoryCardsTrackWorld selling 128GB sandisk cards with a certain SKU you sent in 1000 of them and they went on the shelf in the same crate with another box from DodgyMemoryR'US, and there was a crate in each warehouse.  When the consumer ordered that card, didn't matter who from, if it was fulfilled by Amazon if came from whichever seller's supplies had ended up in your local warehouse. Even if you ordered them from the Sandisk store on Amazon!
It was an easy scam for the perpetrators as once their cards were in the warehouse there was no way to separate them or trace them back.Â
We had some kit that only worked with a very specific Transcend CF card and had to buy them from known shops, and even then we stress tested them in the office through several read/write cycles before we'd put them into use.