Fake merchandise has moved far beyond the bogus Rolexes and Louis Vuitton handbags that have been sold for decades with a wink and a nod.
Counterfeit toothpaste showed up in discount stores in June, and fake wine has been popping up at auctions. “It used to be that counterfeits was what you saw on a street corner in New York,” market researcher Lauren Freedman said. “Now the whole world is a street corner.”
When the Sennheiser CX-300 earphones, ordered online, arrived, the black earbuds were adorned with company logos, the asymmetric cord was just the right length and the silver plug fit an iPod perfectly. They came in a snazzy Sennheiser package with text in six languages. They sounded great.
List price — $79.99. Amazon.com had them for about $65. On the same Amazon product page was a link to Amazon Marketplace, where anyone can put an item up for sale. That’s where the CX-300s were being offered for less than $25.
The seller with the best price, Wifipro, had a positive customer feedback rating. Was the product, at $24.99, used, refurbished or damaged?
Wifipro’s e-mail reply: “These units are brand spanking new … not returns, not used and not refurbished. … They are a beautiful product at an unbelievable price.”
Counterfeit electronic products have a history of being so obviously flawed that they’re jokes. For example, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in Long Beach, Calif., recently displayed seized packs of what were intended to look like Duracell batteries, except that the label read “Dinacell.”
When the CX-300s arrived from Wifipro, I removed the medium-size ear cushions from the earbuds and tried to replace them with the smaller ones in the package. But they wouldn’t stretch over the earbuds.
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Ultimately, I sent the earphones to Sennheiser’s experts, who said they were among the best counterfeits they had seen.
“The counterfeiters start with reverse engineering to study the design and components,” said Lou Lenzi, a senior vice president for product management at Audiovox Corp., which makes electronics. Then, plastic injection machines and circuit board printers can be programmed to make a clone, but the emphasis is on appearance, not functionality.
The man behind the Wifipro moniker, Sidney Jacobs, 66, blamed the distributor when told the earphones were fakes.
Shortly after we spoke, $24.99 plus $4.99 for shipping was returned to my credit card account.