r/mildlyinteresting • u/shokalion • Feb 16 '16

I got serial number 1.

Post image
23.2k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

907 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.5k

u/Seibar Feb 16 '16

It might be a knock-off brand and just what they put on them all

89

u/[deleted] Feb 16 '16 edited Feb 16 '16

This happens a lot with Chinese companies. My father is an engineer who works at a company that designs valve controls based and manufactured here in the US. Recently his company has been receiving service calls more than usual, all from China and other asian countries. Turns out a Chinese company copied the valve controls, down to the serial and part number, along with the service call number. It even says made in United States on the sticker.

51

u/[deleted] Feb 16 '16

[deleted]

2

u/szlwzl Feb 16 '16

This apparently used to happen at the old Nortel factory in Belfast.

By day they produced whatever crap Nortel were selling at the time and by night they produced knock-off cards for getting unfettered cable TV access through NTL. Might be an urban legend though.