Walmart caught in Hard Drive selling fiasco

Introduction: how do hard drive sellers scam people?

When it comes to hard drive storage size, people are often scammed by sellers who lie about the amount of space that is available. This can be a problem when people are trying to buy a new hard drive or upgrade their existing one. Often people will look to reputable places to buy their hard drives, but what happens when you can no longer trust those places?

Well, that is what happened with Walmart this week, and they were caught in a bit of an embarrassing moment. Read all about how one eagle-eyed tech master, and his son, proved this scam and all the fun the internet had with it in our quick article.

So what happened?

To make a long story short, our Twitter hero Ray pointed out the obvious scam. He had seen some hard drives on Aliexpress that were just too good to be true. Sure with Aliexpress you kind of take listings with a grain of salt. But when Ray noticed the same hard drives on Walmart he just had to order it to see if it was the same.

Walmart has since, and smartly, taken down the page but the wayback machine still had it available, so here is what it used to look like:

And this is what it looks like now:

So you can easily see how someone might think ” Oh this is a great deal from Walmart” but actually be just ordering some product that is drop shipped or middle manned by someone preying on people looking for good deals.

But back to the story, Ray gets the hard drive, and takes it apart to expose the fraud for everyone:

Ray continues to break down the entire scam and how it is pulled of, which is a great read and you can follow it all at https://twitter.com/RayRedacted/status/1562914396732801025?s=20&t=YTSBi61pjYTqsfkgBKOA3Q

Basic ways people are scammed when buying hard drives

Here are some ways that sellers may try to scam people:

Some sellers may claim that a hard drive has more storage space than it does. For example, they may say that a 1TB hard drive has 2TB of storage space. This is not true and is just a way for the seller to get more money from the buyer.

Another way that sellers may try to scam people is by selling fake hard drives. These hard drives may look real, but they don’t have any storage space on them.

The lie of inflated storage size in Hard Drives

The person who made this uses a program that causes the computer to incorrectly see the properties of the card. So it might report a higher number of space than is available.

Most times this results in errors when users are trying to fill up that space; because it just isn’t real. Ray, being the superhero he is actually went through all aspects of the scam and it is super impressive. So check it out when you have a chance. We have linked to him a couple of times here as he deserves all the credit ( and MORE ) for this story.

What is the Walmart Marketplace?

The Walmart Marketplace is an online marketplace that allows third-party sellers to list and sell products on Walmart.com. Walmart does not own or directly sell the products listed on its website, but it does take a commission from each sale. But, their name is all over the site and that is what gives these types of scams the power they need.

The everyday person who is in a rush might see it and think yeah I am safe it’s Walmart. Unlike Amazon where people know it is an online marketplace, Walmart is not generally viewed in the same type of selling setup. You can find info about it but at first glance, it is easy to forget it isn’t Walmart selling the products, which allows these scams to be successful.

If you’re considering buying a product from the Walmart Marketplace, be sure to do your research beforehand and check reviews from other customers. This will help you avoid being scammed by a dishonest seller.

The thing that further makes it harder to determine who is selling it is if you were to search for a product on Walmart and you get results like this from Google:

Sure , you can argue we are searching for that specific product, but the results prove that the pages are indexed by google so you would’ve found them with other searches too. But just looking at these listings it isn’t clear that it does not come from Walmart , right?

We see the domain is Walmart, we see decent ( not great ) ratings, but all things point to the thought that you will be buying this device from Walmart, right?

How to avoid being scammed by hard drive sellers

It’s getting harder and harder to trust hard drive sellers these days. With so many scams going around, it’s important to be extra careful when shopping for a new hard drive. I get it that money is tight, and everyone wants a good deal. But if you get scammed it isn’t a good deal, nor is it a good price. It is easy to say just buy from manufacturers etc. but the truth is that they are expensive!

Here are a few tips on how to avoid being scammed by hard drive sellers:

1. Do your research. Make sure you know exactly what you’re looking for in a hard drive before you start shopping around. This way, you’ll be less likely to fall for a scammer’s lies about storage size or other features. Sometimes you can find less known manufacturers that still produce good products, they just don’t have the brand name behind them.

2. Check the reviews. Before buying from any seller, be sure to check out online reviews from other customers. This will give you a good idea of whether or not the seller is reputable and trustworthy. This Walmart one actually had people outing it as a scam in the reviews.

3. Be wary of too-good-to-be-true deals. ( Exactly like this one) Sure there are great deals, and there are even once-in-a-lifetime deals you might get with incorrect prices, etc. But if it is like this one, and the price hasn’t been corrected but still seems like a once-in-a-lifetime deal… see what others have said about it.

As you can see in this picture, the case and even font are pretty similar. So again, although it might look similar, you won’t get nearly the space or performance you would from a real Samsung SSD.

Final thoughts on Walmart SSD scam ( and our thanks!)

When it comes to hard drive storage size, it is important to do your research to avoid being scammed. There are many lies that companies tell to get people to buy their products. Some of these lies include inflating the actual storage size and promising free space that doesn’t exist.

Don’t be fooled by these tactics! The best way to avoid being scammed is to educate yourself on hard drive storage sizes. This means knowing how much space you need and being aware of the common scams that companies use. With this knowledge, and a bit of applied common sense you should be able to steer clear of losing your money.

Once again thanks to Ray ( and his son ) for his hard work and thorough documentation of the scam. It does answer this question as I have often thought about how is this possible or how the scam works!