Blew $80 on a Fullmetal Alchemist box set that turned out to be bootleg

I was so excited when I found a supposedly complete box set of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood on a third party seller site for a deal. Tbh I didn't even check the reviews before buying because I thought it was too good to pass up. When it arrived last week, the discs had weird menus and the subtitles were off by like 3 seconds on every episode. Ngl I should have just saved up and bought from a legit store instead of trying to cut corners. Has anyone else gotten scammed by a fake anime box set?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_eric3d agoMost Upvoted

Been there. Check the seller's return policy first - some third party sites will still refund you even if they say no returns. File a dispute with your payment method too. Had a friend get fake Death Note sets twice, third time he finally paid full price from RightStuf. Only real way to know is look at unboxing videos on YouTube before buying. Those bootleg menus are always a dead giveaway, menus shouldn't look like a kid made them in Windows Movie Maker.

elliot_harris253d ago

Yeah the unboxing videos thing is huge. I got burned on a Fullmetal Alchemist box set that looked fine in the listing photos but the actual discs had this super glitchy menu where the text was all blurry and the episodes skipped around. Watch for the little things like the Funimation logo being off center or the spine art being misaligned. eBay and Mercari both sided with me when I filed claims though, just had to take photos of the bootleg next to a legit copy I had for comparison. Amazon third party sellers are actually the worst about this in my experience, they bury the returns in fine print.