Two 32GB USB keys for €24

[Aaron Hastings]

I don't normally pass on offers I find, but this one seemed too good not
to share. LivingSocial are doing an offer on stainless steel key-shaped
USB drives (they're gorgeous...) - one for �16 or two for �24.

Link below:
http://www.livingsocial.com/deals/338544

Aaron
P.S. - I also have a personal referral link, if anyone is feeling
charitable ;)

[Martin ODonnell]

wow thats really too good to be true! sign me up and post your personal referral link, i might as well go for it via that

 

thanks for the info

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 10:13 PM, Aaron Hastings <aa...@091labs.com> wrote:

I don't normally pass on offers I find, but this one seemed too good not to share. LivingSocial are doing an offer on stainless steel key-shaped USB drives (they're gorgeous...) - one for €16 or two for €24.

[Alan Keaveney]

Aaron please pass me on your referral link.
Thanks.

Alan.

Sent from my iPhone

On 3 May 2012, at 22:13, Aaron Hastings <aa...@091labs.com> wrote:

> I don't normally pass on offers I find, but this one seemed too good not to share. LivingSocial are doing an offer on stainless steel key-shaped USB drives (they're gorgeous...) - one for €16 or two for €24.

[Conor Hoary]

Me three.

This email brought to you by Conor.
From: Aaron Hastings
Sent: 03/05/2012 22:13
To: 091labs...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [091labs-public] Two 32GB USB keys for €24

[Aaron Hastings]

You guys are awesome. Referral link below then :)
http://www.livingsocial.com/deals/338544?rpi=59551506&ref=personalized-link-box-59551506&rui=111078741

[Alan Keaveney]

Hi Aaron,

Just ordered two of the keys for €24 via your referral, thanks for the tip-off, hope you enjoy the view from the top of the pyramid!

Alan.

[Pete]

Anyone receive their usb keys yet? Notice anything fishy?

On May 4, 8:51 pm, Alan Keaveney <akeave...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Aaron,
>
> Just ordered two of the keys for €24 via your referral, thanks for the
> tip-off, hope you enjoy the view from the top of the pyramid!
>
> Alan.
>
> On 4 May 2012 12:09, Aaron Hastings <aa...@091labs.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > You guys are awesome. Referral link below then :)
>

> >http://www.livingsocial.com/deals/338544?rpi=59551506&ref=personalize...

[Aaron Hastings]

I received mine two days ago. Haven't gotten a chance to try them properly yet, although my colleague told me something about both her keys maxing out at around 22GB, reporting full when there's roughly 10GB left.

I haven't tested this yet - and it could have easily been something to do with her setup/files.

When you say, "Notice anything fishy?", do you mean that based on something you've heard, or just out of curiosity?

Aaron

[Pete]

well, i received mine a week ago.

First up they are unbranded and show up as 'no brand' in windows. I
then found the exact same keys on ali-baba being sold in bulk. Not a
sign of anything fishy, but not a good sign.

When i started to use the drive i noticed how damn slow they are. i
did a drive speed test on it and was getting 1-3MB/s .

Then i read up on fake 'oversize capacity' usb drive scams. Seems rife
on ebay. The drive reports itself to OS as the advertised size, 32gb
but in fact it only contains a fraction of that in actual chips
inside. all seems well until you start writing data over the physical
capacity.

I tried one of the recommended tester applications (burnin test,
h2testw. Bart's Stuff Test 5), F3 for linux: http://oss.digirati.com.br/f3/
and sure enough it reported this:

Data OK: 7.64 GB (16024412 sectors)
Data LOST: 23.53 GB (49337732 sectors)
Corrupted: 23.53 GB (49337729 sectors)
Slightly changed: 1.50 KB (3 sectors)
Overwritten: 0.00 Byte (0 sectors)
Average reading speed: 10.44 MB/s

Then i tried to format the key and all hell broke loose.It seems to be
stuck in between repartitioning now and i cannot do anything at all
with it. Its like its bricked.

i have not had a chance to test it twice or test the second usbkey, or
with a different application. Could some of you guys test this out? if
i am correct in my suspicions, then these drives are a total scam. And
the last time i checked, this livingsocial offer was taken up by
thousands!

[Duncan Thomas]

On 24 May 2012 17:17, Pete <tierna...@gmail.com> wrote:
> well, i received mine a week ago.

Not yet received mine, despite the fact it should be 4 days delivery

> Could some of you guys test this out? if i am correct in my
> suspicions, then these drives are a total scam.

Will test when I get mine

--
Duncan Thomas

[Alan Keaveney]

Hi Pete,

I did some rough tests today on mine and things are not looking good. 

Was working on OS X and wrote about 8 GB of ~700MB video files to the drive.

This completed OK at write speeds of about 25 MB/s.

Then tried a write of a 16 GB folder of photos to the drive,

this seemed to be going ok, writing at about 25 MB/s but bombed out with a "operation cannot be completed"

error when the drive was 20 GB full. 

When I locate some better test software I will try it, but for now I don't have much confidence in the drives.

Alan.

[Pete]

That kind of behavior would correspond with what is expected from a
fake oversize capacity usb drive. i call shenanigans on this. 5,402
people bought into this scam. it is possible that the site selling
these might not have know and were duped by their Chinese supplier,
but they are still responsible. Im going to contact livingsocial right
away and demand a refund.

Id would love to crack one of them open to see exactly what physical
capacity is inside.

On May 24, 6:54 pm, Alan Keaveney <akeave...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Pete,
>
> I did some rough tests today on mine and things are not looking good.
> Was working on OS X and wrote about 8 GB of ~700MB video files to the drive.
> This completed OK at write speeds of about 25 MB/s.
> Then tried a write of a 16 GB folder of photos to the drive,
> this seemed to be going ok, writing at about 25 MB/s but bombed out with a
> "operation cannot be completed"
> error when the drive was 20 GB full.
>
> When I locate some better test software I will try it, but for now I don't
> have much confidence in the drives.
>
> Alan.
>

> On 24 May 2012 17:20, Duncan Thomas <duncan.tho...@gmail.com> wrote:

[gerryk]

I am unsurprised. Flash memory scams are rife these days. I wouldn't buy memory of any shape or form from anyone except big, well known vendors.

--

[Pete]

also,

word of warning, others who have purchased fake oversize capacity
drives have noticed that the drives sometimes contain viruses. so
might be best to test these on linux/mac or windows vm.

[gerryk]

Heh... I have found a few viruses on CDs from China, but not on flash drives... yet.

They have been showing up on digital photo frames and in motherboard BIOS flash areas recently too.

--

[Pete]

Thanks, china!

On May 25, 9:44 am, gerryk <ger...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Heh... I have found a few viruses on CDs from China, but not on flash
> drives... yet.
> They have been showing up on digital photo frames and in motherboard BIOS
> flash areas recently too.
>

[gerryk]

There was a story in 2600 a while back about someone who had a cochlear implant with a trojan on the microcontroller that was connecting to the local wifi and transmitting audio back to head office in china as a means of industrial espionage. Pretty sure it was a short story, despite being billed as factual... or not billed as fictitious, to be more specific. Still, definitely in the realms of 'currently possible' rather than 'science-fiction'.

--

[Aaron Hastings]

Well that's not good at all. What Alan said about the drives stopping at around 20GB sounds exactly like what my colleague was saying. She reckoned the drive still advertised 10GB free, but stopped around the 20GB mark.

This whole thing of drives coming with malicious little scripts is making me paranoid as hell.

Let us know how it goes with LivingSocial and if they get back to you on this.

Aaron

[Duncan Thomas]

On 25 May 2012 11:17, Aaron Hastings <aa...@091labs.com> wrote:

> This whole thing of drives coming with malicious little scripts is making me
> paranoid as hell.

No need to be paranoid, just careful. Dodgy cds (including corporate
ones, e.g. the Sony root-kit debarkle) have been out there for ages,
and sprinkling loaded usb sticks around has been a pen-tester's tool
for years now...

--
Duncan Thomas

[Aaron Hastings]

Cheers. How would I go about testing for something like this? I assume a format* wouldn't do the trick?

*if even possible - based on what Pete said. What filesystems did you try, Pete?

[Duncan Thomas]

On 25 May 2012 11:30, Aaron Hastings <aa...@091labs.com> wrote:
> Cheers. How would I go about testing for something like this? I assume a
> format* wouldn't do the trick?

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd bs=1M count=33554432

and see if it runs without an i/o error. Try count=32000000 if you
think they might be using a decimal definition of gigabite.



--
Duncan Thomas

[Pete]

after i had ran F3 on the key i tried delete the files it creates. It
works by writing 1gb files to the key until its full, then trying to
read the files back and compare that with what it is expecting. any
large discrepancy will show up the missing memory.

anyway, when i tried deleting the files it went weird and froze. the
files wouldn't delete. then i tried fdisk to inspect the partitions.
(virus loaded keys work by having extra partitions with the autorun
windows thing on it. i think it fools windows into thinking its a
cdrom and gets it to run some code automatically or something). there
were no extra partitions. i tried to delete partition table and this
froze it up again and fdisk returned some error about not being able
to write partition table.

that key is now stuck. cant wipe it, can repartition it, cant delete
the corrupted files on it.

On May 25, 11:30 am, Aaron Hastings <aa...@091labs.com> wrote:
> Cheers. How would I go about testing for something like this? I assume a
> format* wouldn't do the trick?
>
> *if even possible - based on what Pete said. What filesystems did you try,
> Pete?
>

[Pete]

from what i have been reading online about the oversize capacity keys,
you cannot detect it from writing to the disk. its because the key
will keep accepting data up to 32gb and simply write over existing
data on the actual memory. so any format or dd might not tell you
anything. The os is fooled into thinking the transfer has completed
successfully. The only way to detect is by writing to the disk and
reading the files back and comparing with a known copy of the file.
this is what f3 and h2testw does.

[Domhnall Walsh]

Otherwise, recent versions of OSX report volume sizes in decimal figures, which is effing annoying, but could be useful here. Alan can check this, I think?

[Duncan Thomas]

On 25 May 2012 11:48, Pete <tierna...@gmail.com> wrote:
> from what i have been reading online about the oversize capacity keys,
> you cannot detect it from writing to the disk. its because the key
> will keep accepting data up to 32gb and simply write over existing
> data on the actual memory. so any format or dd might not tell you
> anything. The os is fooled into thinking the transfer has completed
> successfully. The only way to detect is by writing to the disk and
> reading the files back and comparing with a known copy of the file.
> this is what f3 and h2testw does.

Yuck. In which case, use dd to create a 32 gig file from urandom to
some scratch space then dd that onto the drive and use cksum on src
and dest. Or use Pete's tests.

--
Duncan Thomas

[Domhnall Walsh]

Heh, it reminded me of this when I was chatting with Jodi last night:

http://www.neowin.net/news/fake-chinese-500-gb-external-drive-is-one-clever-paperweight-literally

Domhnall.

[Pete]

yip, f3/h2testw are made exactly to test for this. so definitely try
either of them out.

On May 25, 12:18 pm, Duncan Thomas <duncan.tho...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Alan Keaveney]

yes Domhnall,

OS X reports the capacity as 33.54 GB.

Alan.

[Conor Hoary]

My one works its seems i got the whole game of thrones 1080p first series on it and that 29.9Gb.

[gerryk]

Are all the files valid?

[Aaron Hastings]

Try playing all the files, Conor. See if they work.

Aaron
-
Sent from my Commodore 64

On May 25, 2012 7:30 PM, "Conor Hoary" <cono...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Alan Keaveney]

Hi all,

How are others getting on with their 32 GB keys? 

I compiled and ran F3v2 on OS X on the 32 GB key yesterday, 

f3write completed successfully but took over 5 hours to fill the key, 

reported average write speed of 3 MB/s.

However, the key is much more unstable today, f3write bombs out before the first file is 

even written to device, key disconnects and reconnects to the computer, errors as below.

@Pete did you have any luck dealing with LivingSocial?

Alan.

**************************

alan-keaveneys-macbook:f3v2 alan$ ./f3write /Volumes/UNTITLED/

Free space: 31.22 GB

Creating file 0001.fff ... 0.04% -- 1.58 MB/sf3write: Write to file /Volumes/UNTITLED//0001.fff failed: Device not configured

alan-keaveneys-macbook:f3v2 alan$ ./f3write /Volumes/UNTITLED/

Free space: 31.21 GB

Creating file 0001.fff ... 0.03% -- 221.00 KB/s -- 44:15:30Assertion failed: (!fdatasync(fd)), function measure, file f3write.c, line 171.

Abort trap: 6

*******************************

[Accounts peter]

Hi alan,

You have to run f3read after running f3write. F3Read checks the data that was written. As said before, you can't test the keys by just writing, you have to then check what has been written by reading it back.

but the behaviour you report with instability after filling up the key is exactly what I had and I would say that you have the same issue. Can you run f3read?

I got no reply from living social, but bo-vida were very quick to apologise for sending me a 'faulty'  drive and that they have sold thousands if them and only had 50 returns and offer full refund if I sent them back. The line seems to be that if you complain, it's a 'faulty' drive you got and you were just unlucky. 

- pete

Sent from Samsung Mobile

[Aaron Hastings]

Warning: Only 8217 of 31983 MByte tested.
The media is likely to be defective.
7.5 GByte OK (15768960 sectors)
517.3 MByte DATA LOST (1059456 sectors)
Details:0 KByte overwritten (0 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors)
517.3 MByte corrupted (1059456 sectors)
0 KByte aliased memory (0 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x00000001e13b0000
Expected: 0x00000001e13b0000
Found: 0x0000000000000000
H2testw version 1.3
Reading speed: 12.1 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

Urgh...

[Martin Mitchell]

Has anyone dismantled their drive to see what chips are on it?

[Domhnall Walsh]

I suspect that people are holding off to see if they can return them or something?

[Accounts peter]

I would love to do this, but you will need a dremel tool to cut the casing.

Also, it is likely they wont refund if it haas been butchered. Although if you dont find 32 gb of chips in there it's hard proof that it's a scam.

Sent from Samsung Mobile

[Aaron Hastings]

I'm not even sure I'll use it if I get an *actual* 32GB key back. The speed is just atrocious and is just too slow for any sort of practical file management. Has anyone verified that it is USB 1.1 or is there another issue at large?

[Accounts peter]

The controller in them is most likely usb 2, the problem is that they are likely using poor quality memory chips plus the oversize capacity scam will cause general weirdness 

Sent from Samsung Mobile

[Oisin Greaney]

Peter: as far as I can tell, if you bend back the little "lip" of metal at the very front of the drive you should be able to lever it out of the casing.

But I'm just going to send mine back. I haven't tested it but after the issues others have been having I'm not going to bother. Plus I can put that €16 to much better use.

[Paul Mac Eoin]

Testing mine of the Linux version of H2testw  called F3 (v2). Going to take hours. Running it on one of the dell boxes so my laptop doesnt melt.

I'll let you know how it goes. http://oss.digirati.com.br/f3/

[Aaron Hastings]

You can just run it until it exceeds about 8.5GB, then do a read and find out what the story is. I quit my h2testw test prematurely and it had still failed at that point.

[Ciarán McCool]

Can we put this up on the quotes page?

 

"I don't normally pass on offers I find, but this one seemed too good not to share."

 

Riviting tale, chap

[Paul Mac Eoin]

It has finished writing already and I'm just running the validation test now. Not sure how long it'll take.

[Paul Mac Eoin]

my log. Highlighted the TLDR at the bottom.

Looks like I'll be getting a refund.

labs@labs-OptiPlex-GX280:~/Downloads$ ./f3write /media/F637-4A4F

Removing old file 0001.fff ...

Free space: 28.30 GB

Creating file 0001.fff ... OK!                              

Creating file 0002.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0003.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0004.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0005.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0006.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0007.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0008.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0009.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0010.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0011.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0012.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0013.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0014.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0015.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0016.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0017.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0018.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0019.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0020.fff ... OK!                           

Creating file 0021.fff ... OK!                         

Creating file 0022.fff ... OK!                         

Creating file 0023.fff ... OK!                         

Creating file 0024.fff ... OK!                         

Creating file 0025.fff ... OK!                         

Creating file 0026.fff ... OK!                         

Creating file 0027.fff ... OK!                         

Creating file 0028.fff ... OK!                        

Creating file 0029.fff ... OK!                        

Free space: 0.00 Byte

Average writing speed: 2.95 MB/s

labs@labs-OptiPlex-GX280:~/Downloads$ ./f3read /media/F637-4A4F

                     SECTORS      ok/corrupted/changed/overwritten

Validating file 0001.fff ... 2097152/        0/      0/      0

Validating file 0002.fff ... 2097152/        0/      0/      0

Validating file 0003.fff ... 2097152/        0/      0/      0

Validating file 0004.fff ... 2097152/        0/      0/      0

Validating file 0005.fff ... 1087488/  1009664/      0/      0

Validating file 0006.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0007.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0008.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0009.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0010.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0011.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0012.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0013.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0014.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0015.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0016.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0017.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0018.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0019.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0020.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0021.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0022.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0023.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0024.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0025.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0026.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0027.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0028.fff ...       0/  2097152/      0/      0

Validating file 0029.fff ...  409216/   217408/      0/      0

  Data OK: 4.71 GB (9885312 sectors)

Data LOST: 23.59 GB (49461568 sectors)

      Corrupted: 23.59 GB (49461568 sectors)

Slightly changed: 0.00 Byte (0 sectors)

    Overwritten: 0.00 Byte (0 sectors)

Average reading speed: 14.87 MB/s

On Thursday, 3 May 2012 22:13:06 UTC+1, Aaron Hastings wrote:

I don't normally pass on offers I find, but this one seemed too good not

to share. LivingSocial are doing an offer on stainless steel key-shaped
USB drives (they're gorgeous...) - one for �16 or two for �24.

Link below:
http://www.livingsocial.com/deals/338544

Aaron
P.S. - I also have a personal referral link, if anyone is feeling
charitable ;)

On Thursday, 3 May 2012 22:13:06 UTC+1, Aaron Hastings wrote:

I don't normally pass on offers I find, but this one seemed too good not

to share. LivingSocial are doing an offer on stainless steel key-shaped
USB drives (they're gorgeous...) - one for �16 or two for �24.

Link below:
http://www.livingsocial.com/deals/338544

Aaron
P.S. - I also have a personal referral link, if anyone is feeling
charitable ;)

[gerryk]

Only 50 returns out of thousands? Wow... you guys must be the unluckiest people in the world. It seems that you have a 100% fail rate.

/TongueFirmlyInCheek

--

[Paul Mac Eoin]

Complaint sent to bovida via their contact form.

[Oisin Greaney]

Sent my complaint around the same time as Paul, got this back:

Hi,
Thank you for your email. I am really sorry to hear that you have had an issue with your product. We will of course look to resolve this issue for you without delay.

We have dispatched over 10,000 of these items and we have discovered a small fault rate with these, approx 50 have discovered different faults.

If you could return the item to us we will be able to run a test on the keys and dispatch new keys to you. However we will of course run tests on these first to ensure that they are working fine.

Please return to
Bo-Vida
The Forge
Wycombe Lane
Wooburn Green
HP10 0HD

Once again I do apologise for this inconveince and hope to have your issue resolved promptly.
Thanks
Kate

[Aaron Hastings]

Nothing yet, but it seems their understanding of the number 50 is somewhat skewed.

"I'm no good at judging the size of crowds, but I'd say there's about 17 million of them out there." - Fr. Dougal McGuire

[Accounts peter]

That is the exact response I got. 

Sent from Samsung Mobile

[Accounts peter]

Attached is a picture of what I found inside, its all sealed  so I cannot view the chips. 

Sent from Samsung Mobile

Accounts peter <account...@gmx.com> wrote:


The controller in them is most likely usb 2, the problem is that they are likely using poor quality memory chips plus the oversize capacity scam will cause general weirdness 

Sent from Samsung Mobile


Aaron Hastings <aa...@091labs.com> wrote:


I'm not even sure I'll use it if I get an *actual* 32GB key back. The speed is just atrocious and is just too slow for any sort of practical file management. Has anyone verified that it is USB 1.1 or is there another issue at large?

On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 12:52 PM, Domhnall Walsh <domh...@091labs.com> wrote:

I suspect that people are holding off to see if they can return them or something?

On 28 May 2012, at 12:47, Martin Mitchell wrote:

Has anyone dismantled their drive to see what chips are on it?

On 28 May 2012 12:43, Aaron Hastings <aa...@091labs.com> wrote:

Warning: Only 8217 of 31983 MByte tested.
The media is likely to be defective.
7.5 GByte OK (15768960 sectors)
517.3 MByte DATA LOST (1059456 sectors)
Details:0 KByte overwritten (0 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors)
517.3 MByte corrupted (1059456 sectors)
0 KByte aliased memory (0 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x00000001e13b0000
Expected: 0x00000001e13b0000
Found: 0x0000000000000000
H2testw version 1.3
Reading speed: 12.1 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

Urgh...

[Aaron Hastings]

Crap product or not, that is impressively tiny.

[gerryk]

 

--

[Aaron Hastings]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 11:52 AM, gerryk <ger...@gmail.com> wrote:

Touche.

[Conor Hoary]

yes also it will help our cases if we all reffernce each other in our complaint emails. to let them know we are very aware this isnt a standalone issue.

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 1:08 PM, Fergal O Grady <fergal...@gmail.com> wrote:

Has anyone thought about making this public? 

I'm not sure what sample size we have here but it sounds like everybody is having problems on the list here. I imagine the reason they have only 50 returns is because the vast majority of people are unaware this is even possible. They probably plug it in see 32 GB and start saving stuff on it, they will only realise there is a problem when, a year or so from now, they try and take the family photos the backed up back off the drive.  

A carefully worded blog or twitter post may be in order to try and at least warn people that they should test these drives before using them to back up or store important data. 

[Accounts peter]

I agree, thousands bought this deal in ireland and the company is fobbing it of as random, rare 'faults'. most people won't realise for months or more. The company should recall all the drives they sold.and why has living social not replied to my email yet?

would the press be interested in a story like this?

Sent from Samsung Mobile

[Gerard Ryan]

In doing this, I think it could also be a good idea to make and link to
a straightforward guide to checking usb drives on the website/wiki, and
mention that it's good to check all drives, not just these ones from
livingsocial.

--
Gerard Ryan :: ger...@ryan.lt :: http://gerard.ryan.lt/blog
PGP Fingerprint: AA11 A666 C98E B6D8 231C 11ED 6EDC 7E4A 62BC 4A15

[Oisin Greaney]

Isn't Bo-Vida a UK company?

[Paul Mac Eoin]

Bo-Vida seems to be a UK company alright, but LivingSocial is Irish (or at least in part).

There's a thread on boards.ie thread http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056627924

We could all reference that in further correspondence with bo-vida. That should be enough.

[Padraic Harley]

I think writing up a blog post is a great idea, as long as we don't go down the "Hark! 'ware treachery!" route with it.

I'd suggest something along the lines of "A lot of our members purchased x from Living Social. x was faulty in z cases of our members. Link to the github/wherever of the different results of tests. In case of it being the case on your drives, we recommend you do a, b and c. We emailed Bo Vida (The Supplier) and we all received <response>. We emailed Living Social but have so far not heard back."

Who of the affected is going to write it? Any volunteer?

- Padraic

--
Padraic Harley - Mobile Device

Mobile: 00 353 (0) 85 2138803
Email: pad...@091labs.com
Twitter: @pauricthelodger

[Antóin Óg Ó Cuinneagáin]

I haven't redeemed my living social voucher with bo vida yet...anyone have suggestions...should I just ask livingsocial for  refund even though I haven't received a faulty product

[Pete]

I don't think you have any option other than to use it. Have a read of the terms on the voucher.

You could try and plead your case with living social, but good luck even getting a reply. And as said before the T&Cs seem to be tied down. But with the amount of complaints, it would be in living socials interests to address this problem and refund everyone unconditionally.

Other option might be credit card charge back.show them all the posts from here and boards.ie and claim you don't want to use the voucher as its a scam.

[Conor Hoary]

I think your best option to redeem the  voucher and when you revive your keys test and complain. The bigger the number of accounted for failed sticks we can get the better. They still owe you a 32gig usb stick ether way or they give you your money back.

This email brought to you by Conor.

---

From: Antóin Óg Ó Cuinneagáin
Sent: 29/05/2012 20:43
To: 091labs...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [091labs-public] Re: Two 32GB USB keys for €24

[Richey Ward]

I was in the post office today, and the dude beside me was looking for a padded bag for a key shaped USB key to send to England. Might it have been one of you folk?  I was gonna ask if he was part of 091, but I got a phone call, and left.

[Domhnall Walsh]

Eminently possible :-)

[Aaron Hastings]

Wasn't me anyway!

Aaron
-
Sent from my Commodore 64

[Oisin Greaney]

I believe that was Paul, one of our newer members. Personally I'm waiting to see what kind of response he gets before I send mine back...

[Aaron Hastings]

I'm taking this as a learning experience. After taking a look at the "Bo-Vida" website, I've noticed a few things that just seem... suspicious...

The "Follow Us on:" links at the bottom are all just links to twitter.com, facebook.com and, hilariously, mail.yahoo.com. From what I can tell from searching Facebook and Twitter, there are no Bo-Vida official accounts.

Under "About Bo-Vida", there is a "How to Redeem" link, with instructions on how to enter voucher numbers. It would seem, therefore, that they are highly dependent on these "daily deal" sites for their income. Not necessarily suspicious, but noteworthy.

A lot of the links down the bottom of the page are empty, with a simple "Coming Soon..." message when you click on them.

Just who is this company? Hell if Google knows. Any results are just related to purchases made using daily deal sites, yet still an unnervingly low number of those. According to their "About Us" page, it would seem they are related to a group called "Varien", whose domain, varien.com, simply redirects to magentocommerce.com (Varien? Magento? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?).

And then there's stories like this. Read the comments for a full picture.

Still no answer from them after two emails. This should be exciting.

[Pete]

I'm at the credit card charge back stage. I'm tired of waiting for a reply from living social and I doubt anything will get refunded if I post them back to bo vida

[gerryk]

I think chargeback is the only option at this stage. You could make an issue of it with Bo-Vida, if you wanted a fight. Sometimes a fight can be satisfying, but sometimes, you just want your money and to put the thing behind you.

--

[Paul Mac Eoin]

That was probably me!

[Richey Ward]

This flew into my inbox today.... 

http://www.livingsocial.com/cities/515/deals/363070-sdhc-32gb-camera-card

I'm looking into it, to see if it stinks of dodge.

Yeah Paul, t'was you I spotted!

[DD]

I bought two of these and they only allow around 12GB on mine. I am waiting to see if I can get my money back.

 

Knew it was too good to be true