Ripped off with ebay purchase - arduino board

[old man emu]

I've been pulling my hair out for a couple of weeks trying to get an Arduino board that I bought on E-bay to connect to my computer. I've tried every possible suggestion from turning my computer off and unplugging it before rebooting, to almost engaging the services of a Haitian Voodoo priest. So I bit the bullet and bought a board from a CNC/3D Printing retailer here in Australia. This board cost me $49 as against the $22 from E-bay. As soon as I plugged it into my computer it worked.

The board I bought off E-bay was marked as an Arduino board, made in Italy. It came on a sheet of plastic foam. The board from the retailer came in an Arduino box with a warranty card. I bean to wonder what the difference was between the two boards. Here is a photo of the tops of both boards with the one from the retailer on the left.

Top of board.jpg

The red circle highlights the difference in font size and boldness of the silk screened printing on the boards. The genuine board has a smaller font and less dense printing. The same can be seen with the printing in the orange circle.
The yellow highlights four contacts. In the genuine board, these are closed holes.
The green hghlights the words "Made in Italy" on the genuine. This area has been painted over on the other board.

There are differences on the bottom of the boards, too;
Bottom of board.jpg

The most telling thing is in the red circle. On the genuine board, there is what seems to be a serial number printed here. There is nothing on the E-bay board.
The green circle indicates two pads on the E-bay board that are not exposed on the genuine board.
The orange circle shows the opposite ends of the contacts which I marked in yellow on top of the board.

I think the Chinese manufacturers missed a point on the bottom of the board by leaving the map of Italy there. I'm sure that is a sort of trade mark.

The worst thing about this, apart from the grief it has caused me because I haven't been able to get my printer going, is that I can't remember who I bought the Ebay board from. I know it was supposedly from an address in Australia, and if I can remember I will notify Arduino.

My advice to you is to carefully examine the pictures of boards offered for sale over the Net to see if these small quality errors are present. It is probably worth spending the extra $20, or so, to buy a genuine board from a reputable dealer in your own country.

Old Man Emu

[atoff]

The majority of Arduino boards on Ebay are clones, it's really difficult to find a decent priced one that isn't. I was lucky to have picked one up for $20 a while back. I was pretty sure it was a fake, but I contacted the seller anyway to ask for assurance... he told me it was legit, and turned out it in fact was. Though, according to his feedback he went to selling the clones after running out of stock.

Another thing to watch out for is SD / memory cards. Just an incredible amount of them are fake. Kingston, Patriot, SanDisk... even if they look genuine, they're most likely not.

[CaptainObvious]

Hey, you may want to keep that Voodoo priest at hand in case you manage to track down the seller.

[old man emu]

Hey, you may want to keep that Voodoo priest at hand in case you manage to track down the seller.

Give the seller pins and needles, and for a couple of chickens I can have the priest arrange a visit by zombies!

OME

[3dkarma]

Give the seller pins and needles, and for a couple of chickens I can have the priest arrange a visit by zombies!

OME

Point the bone at 'im.