I bought a 256GB USB / OTG memory stick from ebay member activeit_force. Their advert title says “64GB,128GB,256GB OTG USB 2.0 Flash Drive Memory Thumb Key Stick Pen Storage NEW”. I chose 256GB from the offered drop down list. I noted that buried in their description it says “These memory sticks are a Quality product and have been professionally upgraded, as such the capacity of these memory sticks can vary from 8GB to 64GB, 128GB, 256 GB, 512GB & 1TB respectively. All of our memory sticks are guaranteed have a minimum capacity of 8GB.”. So not saying that you may not get the capacity you selected just that they are different sizes.
So I received a USB stick with *2TB* stamped on it. I popped it in a Windows machine and it reports that it is a 1.90TB removable drive. I ran H2testw on it and this reported that after 15.1GB data was getting corrupted. So, this was not the capacity I selected and paid for. I reported this to ebay who refunded the item. I suggested that they should stop this seller from selling these items because such a sale is fraudulent. Needless to say, ebay have not stopped this seller from selling these items. The seller did not ask for the item back.
Considering the true size of this device is 15.1GB, I’ve used MiniTool Partition Wizard to create a 15GB NTFS partition, formatted it and re-tested with H2testw. This now reports that it is valid drive, no corruption.
So, I’ve got a free 15GB usb stick which I can also plug into my phone. Perhaps if everyone got their money back then used them as lower capacity devices people would stop selling these fake devices.