[therealfinale]

I've been looking for a pair of Sony MDR-E888's for the past month or two, and a website (themercantiletx) seems to have just gotten a new stock of these headphones within the past week or two. I bought them on impulse for $70, but now I'm wondering if they might be genuine or not.
 
I received a tracking code ending in CN, and the tracking website is a Chinese one ending in .cn.
 
Has anyone bought from this website before or have any experience with Sony MDR-E888's shipped from China?
 
Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[salg]

im actually on this site right now, i'd like to know if you got your cans(it takes about a month to deliver, 've recently ordered some random earphones for work and it took a month...). however, on their shipping page, it says 2-7 days free shipping, so i am not sure. what to expect. i'm looking at the ath-m50s right now. please reply!

 

[therealfinale]

Hi, don't do it. This was my reply to my other thread about this:

Well, just as an update to the Sony MDR-E888LP earphones I purchased from themercantiletx website, it was completely fake. You can see here pictures of fake and real versions of these earphones, and the ones I received resembled the fake ones in every way. Regarding the actual quality, all I can conclusively say is these at least sound better than the MDR-E828's, as I haven't had experience with the other models.

I canceled my credit card transaction due to this.

In case anyone reads this, I'll inform you on my experience and how to determine if a website is genuine or at least ostensibly fake.

-themercantiletx did not reply to any of my emails (one even typed in Chinese) or phone calls over the course of several days
-the website's layout is unprofessional and "looks" fake...although some legit websites that are managed badly look like that too
-the website itself uses strange third-party payment verification that takes several days to verify credit card information, which I've never seen before (and I've bought numerous things online from numerous websites over the years)
-this website and some others use low prices to boost website visits from Google AdSense (Google name of product, and its link to the website shows up)

 

[salg]

thank you for your response.

 

[squallkiercosa]

We advice all of you to buy from authorized sellers and if you're looking for deals, there's a thread where you could subscribe and check periodically for legitimate deals.
 
I updated the counterfeited headphones' list 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/691594/counterfeited-headphones-list

 

[kramer5150]

OK thanks for the heads up.  I think I posted this a couple weeks ago in the other thread, but the MDR-E888 is one of the most commonly faked and counterfeited headphones of the past decade.   There are old HF threads going back to ~2005-6 on the topic... IIRC

 

[ponderance]

I loved these, can you still find them, which are not fake, any more? If so where?