Back in March of this year, I purchased a Honda timing belt kit that includes several parts. It was advertised as genuine, it came with all the OEM packaging, stickers/labels, made in Japan, etc...
These parts are designed to last a solid 100K miles or more. About 5K miles later, yesterday the timing belt snapped in half and my mechanic is confused because this has never happened to him before. Now I realize these were counterfeit parts.
I go back to the seller account where I purchased this Honda Timing Belt kit and to my surprise, the seller account was closed they have comments stating:
" These are counterfeit parts. I took them to a Honda dealer who confirmed that these were counterfeit parts"
and
" Parts were not OEM Honda parts, they are fake OEM parts reason why I know this is because a friend of mine works for Honda and I compared the parts to the original parts and they look similar but you can tell the quality difference, tensioner was another brand and was weak that it made rattling noise afterward, the timing belt was overly stretched after just a short run, OEM water pump seal and dow pins comes fix on the pump, this one the o-ring was pack separately and no Dow pin "
The problem I have is that the seller account was banned and this was back in March. I cannot ask for a refund, even if I could, the seller is gone. I have been with eBay for 20 years, and years ago I could call and talk to a live person, customer support is 100% AI/Web Pages.
I didn't realize this was a big issue, but apparently, there is a lot of sellers here that sell counterfeit auto parts and they know they will last a few months, and by then, it is too late, they have our money and are gone. Failed counterfeit auto parts can literally kill someone...
My wife was about 200 feet from getting on an interstate with a speed limit of 70 mph. Her vehicle died just before she got on the interstate. Had it died on the interstate with traffic at this speed, she could have died... Thank goodness she is safe. This could of happened with our entire family on the interstate.
