While times of crisis may bring the best in people, it has also led to some incredibly opportunistic individuals to exploit the situation at hand to earn a quick buck. This is especially true of online traders, many of which have been caught peddling either face masks that don’t work, or face masks that simply never arrive after you’ve made your payment.
But in the latest wave of exploitative products being sold online, it has been reported by Sin Chew Daily that online merchants have taken things a step further: selling fake thermometer guns. While these fake thermometer guns have yet to make it into the Malaysian online marketplace (so far), Thai netizens were reported to have found that the temperature guns they bought from online merchants were allegedly fake.
How fake?
Each time the thermometer gun was used to measure someone’s temperature, it would only show 37 degrees Celsius.
And when they are cracked open, the thermometers were completely hollow, containing only a display chip to operate the LCD display and nothing else. The display would even continue to work even after the device had been disassembled.
Apparently these fake goods have been found rampant in Thailand, and Thai authorities have conducted huge crackdown on several Chinese smuggling groups operating in the country. In their warehouses, masks, protective equipment, temperature guns and face masks worth over 33 million baht (RM 4.35 million) were seized.
So if you have been shopping online recently for all your needs online, please be careful of what you’re paying for!
Also read: 36yo M’sian Gets Scammed After Paying Over RM250,000 for 20,000 Boxes of Masks From FB Seller