I was considering buying an LTO Ultrium tape drive on eBay. One seller, Dennis Resnik of Magstor Corporation (ebay ID dresnik-magstor), has IBM LTO 2 and LTO 3 drives listed:
The photo of the LTO 2 drive looks fine. But then I noticed that the LTO 3 drive photo looks exactly like the LTO 2 drive photo, down to the positioning of the CD and manual, and the position and wrinkling of the antistatic bag. Here are the photos:
The only difference between the images is the 2 vs. 3 in the logo. There’s no way the seller staged that photo twice with two different drives.
Then I examined the 3 closely. Someone doctored the photo and mirrored the top half of the 2; it doesn’t even meet to form a single glyph, and it isn’t even close to matching the official Ultrium 3 logo. Here are some high-resolution examples of the real logo for comparison:
I sent email to the seller inquiring as to why he was using a faked photo. I was expecting that he might reply with some justification like not having time to set up a photo of the LTO 3 drive. Instead, he wrote back:
Are you “nuts”???
Although Mr. Resnik has 99.9% positive feedback, I don’t think I’ll be doing any business with him or his corporation.
Ebay scammers have been a real sore spot for me lately. Someone hijacked my ebay account a few months back.
Here is this weeks entry.
Ebay auction:
IF YOU HAVE AN ERROR 52 ON YOUR HP IIP, IIP+ OR IIIP LASERJET PRINTER, THIS IS THE PART YOU NEED TO FIX IT.
So emailed the seller, and asked if this was a motor controller board.
His response:
This is located within the black box inside the printer. It will fix an error 52 if replaced. If I had a digital camera I would show you exactly what it looks like, sorry.
Yea, I dont think so.