Counterfeit Scams

I should have known this time. This happened to me in the past multiple times. I bought an SSD drive which was 256GB on the outside and only 40GB inside. I bought suspiciously inexpensive 1TB microSD card which was way less than that in practice. I bought branded fragrances which were fake.

And this time I bought AirPods Pro 2 for a too-good price. They were fake.

Fake, but really hard to distinguish from originals. I just could not believe what I saw. 

The AirPods looked and felt like the originals. Perhaps the audio quality was not that great, but that is always a bit subjective. Anyway I wanted them for my Mom. She has some minor hearing loss. I read all the recommendations about the Pro 2s stepping in the role of a hearing aid (with a firmware upgrade). Of course I wanted to try this feature, so all I was looking for right after pairing with my iPhone was the firmware update.

The AirPods paired like the originals. Displayed all the native features, including the serial number, and even reported the AppleCare+ validity until June 2026. With the online AppleCare+ validity check they must have been genuine. Except they would not want to upgrade the firmware, which stayed at version 6A303 for two days. The internet says AirPods should receive an upgrade within half an hour maximum, and typically within 5 minutes. I waited and waited and nothing happened.

And that got me suspicious.

I went on to watch one of a dozen of YouTube videos about fake AirPods and this was really jaw dropping. It turns out the bad guys are able to "copy" the entire Apple chip almost atom-by-atom (or bit-by-bit), so that the copy presents itself as a genuine product. To the point that is is acknowledged by Apple to be covered by the AppleCare+ service. Then at some point the youtuber mentioned "and by the way the copies do not support firmware updates". My suspicion skyrocketed.

I grabbed the serial number reported by the iPhone (it was G2TV74372K) and plugged it into Google search. To my surprise I found dozens of AirPods' photos with exactly the same number. This (and the inability to upgrade the firmware) has been the final non-disputable evidence.

I understand it may be difficult for Dior to block counterfeit fragrances. Or SanDisk to block counterfeit SD cards. But AirPods are clearly a cloud-connected product. If Google can find multiple occurrences of a serial number, so can Apple. And they shoudl clearly warn the user about the product being not a genuine product. After all it is the user experience that suffers (and consequently the Apple brand) while the illegal counterfeiting industry flourishes.