Fake Equinox 800, Gold Monster 1000's And Sdc2300's Floating Around

[phrunt 6,417]

Fancy an Equinox 800 for $200 USD?  Look no further, you can now buy a proper Chinese version!

 

It looks like they've now made Fake Gold Monsters too, Mine Lab ones ?, it really never ends does it, now people even have to be careful buying a trusty GM1000 ?

 

 

 

And the Mine Lab SDC ? I guess Mine lab is safe to use but Minelab isn't.

 

 

And to top it off they sell a detector more expensive than the GPZ!  The high performance Titan Ger 1000! $14,500 USD!!!

 

I think the lesson to be learnt from this is to buy from Authorized Dealers, and if buying second hand, try verify it's authenticity with original receipts or any way you can.

?

 

[Northeast 1,151]

I really don't get how this can happen.  

Aren't the names, logos, images, etc, all Registered or Trademark or Copyright or something?

Surely at least those things cannot be copied without breaching law?

Or is it simply too difficult to pursue the culprits through the court system?   

[Rick Kempf 692]

Chinese pirate product, Chinese online market, Chinese law - good luck.

There have been successful actions to suppress some of this stuff, but it is tough to do.

[kac 640]

Seems to be getting worse, maybe the trade wars going on has a lot to do with it.

[Rick Kempf 692]

The basic problem is the difficulty of getting a Chinese enforcement action done.  

The speed with which these “knock-off” artists can produce the required tooling to make such exact-looking copies of the machines is amazing.  Nowhere in the world is there a rapider and more agile supply chain than in China. Pity they use it for theft of intellectual property instead of innovation.

Here’s a serious and interesting report on how they can manage this kind of fast imitation.

https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/media/file/Shan_Zhai_AChinese_Phenomenon.pdf

 

[phrunt 6,417]

It's disappointing and makes the second hand market a very risky place.  The person who buys a knockoff is likely going to be disappointed with it's performance and sell it off second hand, they'll probably get more for it second hand than they paid for it anyway and then some other poor sucker is left with a fake product.

It can damage the original manufactures reputation too, someone buys a second hand Equinox, thinks it's rubbish, an unstable mess of a detector and tells everyone they had an Equinox and it was terrible.

There has been a lot of discussion lately about Minelab's chip in the GPZ coil, if it was there in a fulile attempt to stop this stuff then good on them. It's just a shame it didn't work.

[Deep1 26]

This is not a new problem for Minelab or any other manufacturer for that matter.

Here's a Minelab update from 2013:

https://www.minelab.com/support/stop-counterfeits/counterfeit-update

They're putting security stickers on detectors to help identify fakes.

More info from Minelab on fakes:

https://www.minelab.com/usa/support/stop-counterfeits

Known counterfeiters and sellers:

https://www.minelab.com/usa/support/stop-counterfeits/known-counterfeit-manufacturers

And somebody stole a load of GPX-4500's in 2011:

https://www.minelab.com/usa/support/stop-counterfeits/stolen-gpx-4500-metal-detectors

[Rick Kempf 692]

One aspect of the whole business is whether the GPX-5000 fakes were the usual VLF crap in a look alike case or something much more serious.  I seem to recall that a Codan employee had his data stolen while on a business trip outside Australia. Subsequent to that there were some suggestions that the pirate GPX’s out of China were in fact using the actual GPX-5000 components and software.

I have no idea if that really is the case or not. 

[Guest AussieDigs]

Its not only a problem the Chinese making these but also the likes of Ebay allowing them to be sold through them knowing them to be counterfeit. To be able sell within the likes of Australia asks alot of questions!

With that middle seller, 523 units sold with a 100% feedback rating!

 

 

[Rick Kempf 692]

Pretty shameless - I forwarded the link to First Texas, I suspect that eBay.au will be hearing from them if these re indeed bogus.