Fake Cell Phones in China
Maybe you ended up at this site looking for imitation cell phones made in China. Sorry to disappoint you, you should probably come to southern China yourself if that’s what you’re looking for. Just don’t expect to find anything really worth your money =)
Fake Laptops and Phones in China
One thing that is common in some shopping districts in China is to be approached on the street and be offered a laptop or cell phone. Usually, the people selling these things are not thieves in the sense that they did not steal the thing they are selling to you. Instead, it is usually fake, or made of essentially worthless components. Some of the laptops offered in the streets in China even turn on but are still purportedly fake (I wouldn’t know ’cause I haven’t bought one).
You wonder who would be gullible enough to buy such a thing, but apparently people do. It’s an unfortunate part of the reality of a developing China that some people will try to cheat you out of your money, and there countless ways of doing so. Of course, lots of people are out to cheat you out of your money in the States as well, there just aren’t as many plainly-in-sight versions as there are in China.
When I first came to China I bought a no-brand (well, it had a brand, but nothing you would recognize as a brand name) phone that seemed really neat but quickly broke down. As a general rule, don’t trust Chinese electronics unless they are from a truly reputable brand. I hate to say this, but I have been burned by this more than one time (I also bought a BESTA electronic translator. It quickly broke) The following article was translated from the the September 18th edition of 晶报:
300 Yuan ‘Bargain’ Cell Phone Not Worth a Cent
Recently a reader named Mr. Lee called in to say that his wife had run into a conman while shopping. The result was she bought a fake cell phone from the conman for 300 yuan.
Mr. Lee’s family lives in Long Gang. Several days ago, when his wife was walking over the Long Gang Square Sky Bridge, a young man blocked her way and secretively said to her that he had a new Samsung cell phone that he was trying to get off his hands for a low price. As he spoke, he pulled out a black phone and showed her that it worked, pressing a button that gave off a color ring tone. Pressing another button, a color picture popped up, and he told her that this cellphone could also take pictures, record videos, and surf the Internet (not at all unheard of in China). Mr. Lee’s wife started to get excited as the young man told her that if she bought this kind of cellphone in a store it would cost several thousand yuan, but if she wanted it, 300 yuan was all that was needed to seal the deal.
Mr. Lee’s wife hesitatingly asked, if it is worth so much money, why in the heck would he sell it to her for so little? The young man seemed very unwilling to tell her “the truth”: that this cellphone was stolen. Although she had a cellphone, it didn’t have the abilities that the young man described. Since she had run into such a “good deal”, Mr. Lee’s wife didn’t question the young man again, instead she immediately pulled out 300 yuan to buy the cellphone. She then went to the store to buy a charger to accompany the phone, but when she got home she couldn’t recharge the phone. When she put in a cellphone card the phone also would not turn on. It took Mr. Lee getting home to discover that the phone was not a real one at all, but an in-store display model.
