“Walmart and London Drugs say that fake Apple iPad 2s made of clay are also appearing on their store shelves, a day after electronic giants Future Shop and Best Buy revealed they are launching a major fraud investigation into the scam,” Darcy Wintonyk reports for CTV News.
“In most of the cases, the popular tablet computers are bought for cash and then swapped out for a piece of modelling clay,” Wintonyk reports. “The boxes are then re-wrapped and returned to the store, only to end up back on the shelves and resold to other unsuspecting customers.”
“Future Shop and Best Buy say as many as 10 fake models were sold in their Metro Vancouver locations. London Drugs said it is aware of four incidents in the past month. Walmart officials haven’t provided an exact tally, but officials said they are investigating fewer than 10 cases,” Wintonyk reports. “Scam artists are taking advantage of the popularity of Apple’s latest offering, says Future Shop spokesperson Elliott Chun. ‘It’s really sad that people stoop to these low levels to take advantage of really hot sellers. As you probably know, tablets were the number one touted gift items for the holidays this year,’ he said.”
MacDailyNews Take: No, they weren’t. Well, “touted,” maybe. But, iPads were the number one gift items for the holidays this year, not “tablets.” People don’t want fake iPads, they want real iPads.
Wintonyk reports, “For its part, Apple says it is part of the investigation, but has refused to comment on any of the frauds. Both Walmart and London Drugs say the shrink-wrapping on the bogus products was professionally done, so the items did not look tampered with. Future Shop and Best Buy said their policies on returning wrapped tablet computers changed in early January because of the frauds.”
Read more in the full article here.
Oh those Canadians!!
Amazing. If those people would just put that much effort into something productive and legal.
“As you probably know, tablets were the number one touted gift”
Future Shop spokesperson Elliott Chun is a sales person, not a journalist. His job isn’t to inform you, but to push off the shelf that which is not selling.
I hear modeling clay was also a top seller.
lol
Yep, this does explain the headline in the Vancouver Times two weeks ago, “Top 10 Christmas Gifts – Hobbies Enter the Fray as Unemployed Seek Cheap Entertainment”
That explains why I couldn’t get Angry birds to work. Which they would have told me earlier.
Stupid autocorrect. Killer of jokes since summer of 2011.
Which = wish
Yah, I whish it would work better! haha
Auto-correct’s over-zealousness notwithstanding, you could also read what you wrote before you press that “Post Comment” button.
Just sayin’.
At least you can type “hell” now with out it getting corrected to “He’ll”.
Modeling clay probably out-sold the ‘Tablet’ market! 😉
do we know for sure they didn’t replace iPads with android tablets? Would anyone have been able to tell?
Actualy, these are real iPads they are the limited Clay Akin model.
Clay? Isn’t this like bricking your Zune?
Bestbuy at fault for putting returns back on store shelves! They should be sent back.
London Drugs, Future Shop and BestBuy have very generous return policies – started with London drugs, who are the very best place to buy Apple in Canada – IMHO.
Sadly, sometimes people take advantage.
I imagine this means that they will open the packages from now on. That should fix it.
Those RIM executives will go to any lengths to discredit Apple in Canada. What do you expect when you have two co-tards in charge.
pfft, they got what they paid for. All MACS and I-things are not worth more than clay. I hope those people go back and buy android products with the refunds they received
Doing so would make them dumber than you.
Come on, don’t exadurate, no one could be dumber than him/her/it.
My apologies. I was trying to be kind.
Some consumers were confused to learn that the lump of clay in the box was not an iPad 2. One unsuspecting customer was quoted as saying that the lump of clay “…worked just as well as the Android tablet that I tested in Walmart last week.” I was actually rather happy with the incredible battery life until I learned that I had been duped.
There are some fairly low tech options to stop this fraud. Use a metal detector on returns or X-ray them…even weighing them would catch the less precise fraudsters.
The devices also have unique IDs, so if the buyers did not also use a stolen credit card (and what is the point of returning an item that you bought with someone else’s credit?), them might be trackable in that manner.
Get ’em, Apple!
With the boxes returned Apple should have enough information to block, wipe or otherwise disrupt the use of thes hot iPads. They should send a message to the iPad “This iPad is stolen property please contact your local Police department with information on where you purchased it and you will receive a new replacement” then they can catch the criminals.
Exactly what information would that be? And exactly how could that even be done?
People bringing BACK IPads should have been a re flag! (LOL)
Maybe it’s the new ‘Moses’ tablet? You know… the real original?
Future Shop is owned by Best Buy but has higher prices than its overseeers because its carbon units work on commission.
It also has fewer choices of anything in stock, probably including clay iPads.
Did they actually mold the clay into identical sculpts of the ipad? Did they uses say white clay to create a bezel around the black screen? It would be a real pain to accurately recreate the speaker grill in clay using a paperclip or push pin to generate the hundreds of small holes you see on the speaker. This is what art is really all about people!