Can you spot the fake?

These two Scarab Chromag pedals look exactly the same right? Almost. If you look closely, the pedal on the left is slightly different. It appears to have an extra pin hole near the non-crank end of the pedal. So it must be fake right? It doesn’t look the same as the pedals on the Chromag website. It was found on Amazon. The price was comparable to Chromag’s price. But is it fake?

Not even Chromag is sure.

“I can’t say if these are fake or not,” says Chromag founder Ian Ritz.  “These look like an earlier design of our Scarabs which we have not produced for about ten years.  It seems very unlikely that these would still exist in the market though as we’ve never really had an excess of stock.”

So it might be a fake. It might be that the lister simply used old photos. It might even be old stock. But would you take the risk for the same price you could pay at your local bike shop?

Fakedy fake fake

Ritz warns that there are fakes out there. “We’ve seen about a half dozen copies of our Dagga pedal,” he says. “Most of these have come back to us as warranties as the axles are inferior and have been bending.  So far we haven’t been able to chase down a source, but to be honest, it’s not a process we have experience with either. It’s incredibly frustrating to see someone making copies of a product and a brand that we’ve been working over twenty years to build. It’s also a significant safety risk for the purchaser.”

Protect yo’self

“The fakes are impressively similar,” says Ritz. “There are key things that are different that we can notice, but in the case of the Dagga fakes, it would be almost impossible for a consumer to spot.  The best approach for any consumer is to purchase anything new, only from a qualified dealer (not from auction sites or third party platforms, unless the buyer can confidently establish credibility).  Purchasing second hand might be a risk and unless the buyer can gain confidence in the seller’s original source, they should be extremely cautious.”

The old adage, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. If you’re looking at a pair of brand new One Up Components pedals for $81 they’re probably fake.