About a week ago I bought a tire inflator from OLX thinking that it was genuine Toyota accessory, made in Japan. I asked the seller about his claims and he repeatedly told me that the item was legit.
Here is how it looks:
As soon as I got it, I suspected that it was something neither made by Toyota nor manufactured in Japan. Look at the sticker below:
That is very commonly used by Chinese factories to authenticate their products. Scratch the bottom, get a number and put it in the website and it will display if the product is genuine or not.
Also look at the user manual printed on simple A4 sheet printer paper:
So, not made in Japan?
There are no markings on the product itself. No certification labels, no serial number and no product number. There is a big mark on the back saying made in Japan but that looks very out of place as if someone is trying very hard to tell you that.
I asked the seller about this. He gave me a very long lecture about how these pumps come with JDM cars and the dealers take them out of the cars and sell them separately. That they are not sold in market and only come with cars. He was adamant that the pump was genuine Toyota accessory and berated me on my lack of knowledge on challenging his thriving business. He even told me that if he wanted to defraud me, he could have just kept the money and never send the item. All in all, he refused my request to return as the pump was in working condition. But for me, I didn't want a generic Chinese air inflator pretending to be something else.
So I kept trying to find some more information.
I emailed Toyota Pakistan about this. Here is their reply:
I then emailed Toyota US about this. Here is their reply:
I am still awaiting reply from Toyota Japan.
None of them accepted this item to be a Toyota product. You cannot find it on any of their websites or brochures. Even googling this tire inflator doesn't bring up any thing except that listing on OLX. So for me it was established for sure that the product is fake and all the markings consequently fraudulent. But I went a little further, I opened it up:
Look at that crappy Chinese branded Songle relay and Jakec capacitors. Something made in Japan would never ever have them.
So in the end, buyer beware. There is a lot of crap being sold in this country which isn't worth more than dog turd but fake labels of some Japanese sounding name or something similar gives the seller an opportunity to dupe people. Now I am thinking of getting some lollipops with Toyota made in Japan wrappers, I bet they will sell like crazy.
Anyways, I hope this post will help people in a similar situation. Thanks
