Is this Mitutoyo caliper for real?

E

extropic

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Mitutoyo 500-196-30

The price is about 1/3 of the price on Amazon.
The seller has 10 feedback and the listing says 126 sold. What??
Seller has 3 eBay listings (all Mitutoyo calipers).

This has to be counterfeit goods, right? Or, am I paranoid?

Edit: I just noticed the listing headline reads 500-196-20/30. Dash 30 is the current model. I suppose it's possible he has purchased a pile of old stock -20s at a very low cost and is selling them cheap. Too good to be true?

Edit 2: I found THIS video and read one article he linked. I'm convinced the eBay listing is counterfeit.
HERE is another eBay listing for $0.10 lower item price, direct from China. :bs:
 
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The quality of the pictures is a bit blurred. The price asked is probably wrong because..
.. even to Mitutoyo in a China mass production operation, there is not enough margin.

It looks too good to be true - so it likely is.
Counterfeit!
 
There have been numerous posts and articles about counterfeit Mitutoyo calipers. Some of them were obvious as in misspelling Mitutoyo or different font but others were so subtle that you had to take the calipers apart to see a difference. It got so bad that tool vendors were buying what they thought were genuine calipers and selling at normal prices. Customers were advised to buy only from tool suppliers like MSC whoi buy directly from Mitutoyo to insure getting a genuine article.
 
@RJSakowski we have that same problem here in Canada. The provisioning chain is getting polluted with fakes - not many, but enough. I just ordered a Mit from KBC Canada, and I know they are an authorized dealer, getting their stock directly from Mit Canada.
 
I have run into numerous scam ads on one of the social media sites. The ads are selling snake oil or knockoffs of legitimate products for ridiculous prices. Stihl has been one victim in the recent months. In another case, the scam artist was selling a product before it had even been released by the manufacturer. Reporting scam ads to the website moderators gets no response.

If I see a product being advertised at an unbelievable price, I will attempt to find to original manufacturer and verify the pricing. Recently my wife is shopping for a greenhouse and an ad came up on a social media site for one at a very low price. As it turned out, it was a brand that I had looked at in the past and I checked with their authorized distributor and the offered price was less than 20% of the MSRP. I backed away very quickly. Again, reporting the ad resulted in no response.
 
It's almost certainly a fake. They are using the same pictures as Travers Tools, but not the exact part number. Travers has the part number 500-196-30. The one on eBay has a part number 500-196-20/30. The asking price on the Travers site is $160.99.

I bought this one from Travers last year for $156.00. Prices are going up not down.

www.travers.com

MITUTOYO 500-752-20 0 - 6

Designed To Perform In The Harshest ConditionsTake Digital Measurements Where You Couldn't Before Without Compromising Accuracy Or SpeedPresenting here is a sturdy electronic caliper from Mitutoyo which is exclusively designed for use in harsh machine shop floor environments. The new absolute...
www.travers.com www.travers.com
 
I see this now:
1615313755049.png



Perhaps someone reporting it did help?

-brino
 
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