Well, I got burned on eBay. I looked so carefully through listings that I believed were bogus and I settled on a seller (in the USA) with high feedback. I received the box today — a sealed Retail Box of Microsoft Office 2003 Professional. I was a little suspicious at first glance — something didn’t look right. What do you think (click to inspect closer):
I opened it up and here is the CD case:
Here is what really caught my eye, though, a book in the case…
Check out that S!
I pulled out the 1st CD and here it is along with a Genuine OEM CD (click on it to see it better):
Can you tell which is which?? Obviously my scanner makes it hard to see what the holograms actually look like. To the naked eye, they look very similar. The one difference that they can’t seem to replicate is the Microsoft box at the bottom — it should switch between “Microsoft” and “Genuine” when you look at the CD at various angles.
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If you look closely, you’ll see that the holographic designs on a sticker on the CD on the right — look at the edge:
It’s just an amazing counterfeiting job.
For now, I opened a dispute with PayPal. The seller said he would refund my money when he got it back. He said he was sorry and that he was duped. I’ll keep this updated.
Here is an excellent summary of how to spot a fake Office 2003.
This is an amazing quote from a Microsoft press release in October 2006:
Overall, the study found, the chances of purchasing genuine, legally licensed Microsoft software on eBay is less than 50 percent.
It’s amazing to me that this can just keep happening. I guess globalization opens up lots of cans of worms.
Here another case of similar fraud.
Here is information about counterfeiting from Microsoft.
Here is detailed information about Office 2003 security features on the CD itself.
UPDATE 5/2/08: Yes, I am dumb. I bought an OEM Office 2003 Professional for around $280 and it’s counterfeit, too! I sent the boxed one back on Wednesday, and I’m hoping I can get the money back on that soon from the seller. I think PayPal may only cover me for $200 if they don’t refund my money. I’m hoping for this new seller that PayPal would cover me for the whole amount since it is a PowerSeller with PayPal Buyer Protection (with 99.7% positive feedback + 2200 rating) if the seller doesn’t refund me.
Here are some pictures:
Notice in the Certificate of Authenticity, on the right side vertically, that is supposed to be an interwoven ribbon, but in this case it is just scanned from an authentic COA and printed very professionally. Here is a close up of the real thing on the left and the bogus COA on the right.
You’ll notice on the real COA little bumps of paper covering the genuine strip and you can see through those bumps a little bit. On the right, the strip is just white and not seen.
Below is the CD itself, just like above, it is a sticker, and not quite as good as the one above, so it must be a different counterfeiter:
When I put the CD into my drive, here is what pops up (I typed in the key) — definitely not Microsoft!!
Followed by:
MY ADVICE:
Stay away from Microsoft and Adobe software purchases on eBay, no-name websites, Amazon Marketplace and everywhere that cannot be guaranteed. The counterfeiters appear to sell to a wholesaler that sells to someone else and no one knows it is fake. My store of choice is , they have a 100% legal guarantee and I’ve purchased thousands of dollars of software from them for years.
