Motorola radios that don't really exist

One of my suppliers in china - a reputable manufacturer with their own branding has just offered me some Motorola radios, only they’re not Motorola at all. They’re branded Motorola, the radio, accessories and box and manual say Motorola and yet Motorola have never made a MT-777 model, the design is just a black radio, and it’s just a single band (VHF or UHF) hand-held with a nice spec. I’ve been selling their radios with their own brand happily for year, but they have a ‘pretend’ Motorola product for sale. I fail to see why they’d bother, but clearly there must be a lot somewhere to be shifted so worth remembering that if you get offered a Motorola MT-777, then despite the excellent reviews, it has never been inside a Motorola factory.

I have seen plenty of products coming out of China that have copied a reputable brand and just like these radio’s put a big name on them all for duping buyers and selling more product. Not sure how well they work or don’t work, but I can only imagine buying a bunch of these and trying to get them serviced by Motorola. Good luck dealing with the influx of these counterfeit radios.

Servicing isnt a problem here, they’re disposable products. If you spend Motorola prices on radios you do it to get the service as well as the product. One thing I have found is that programming seems to be key. If a Chinese radio uses the original manufacturers software for programming it is probably the original product, and production overruns, or simply assembled from module stock when brands change. So if they were producing genuine products, when the item is discontinued they can put together complete radios from the parts. These will program from the original software. Other items are simply re-engineered modules with the give always being a different operating system, so menus are different, different displays, different software etc etc. batteries and antennas are already available. I’ve got some expensive Motorolas from around ten years ago, date wise as brand new stock to fiddle with, and I cannot tell them from the old ones I have in hire stock. I’m 99% certain they are genuine. These 777 radios clearly are just similar in style and materials.

Have a close look at the box.

What is an Emorgency? :rofl::joy:

Don’t get me wrong. I use a Baofeng regularly and it’s great, but I don’t like the idea of people paying Motorola prices for cheap Chinese radios.

I think the key here is that they’re Baofeng prices, not Motorola - which is a pretty big red flag.

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Just say no to Chinese knockoffs.