I suspect the vast majority are stolen.

As my username implies, I am German by background, speak German and spend a fair amount of time there with occasional trips to Eastern EU countries. There is a massive problem in mainland Europe with theft of ICE from cars. Often stolen in the west (largely by Albanian and Romanian organised crime gangs) and then shipped to countries where there is high demand. I wouldn't be surprised if there are not container-loads of these units being fenced across Europe (the same goes for mobile phones and laptops). This is a very organised business. For example, Albania is the poorest country in Europe (annual income of about £2000) yet it has the highest per-capita Mercedes ownership in the world - 90% of them stolen cars. I have been to a Russian market and see perhaps 15-20 current-model VW, Skoda, SEAT ICE stacked up and offered for sale at very low prices (well under £100) - were these from written off cars or factory re-works - I think not!

Montenegro, Moldova, Malta, Macedonia, Armenia, Georgia, Albania... This is the list of the pooreset European countries. Romania used to be poor.You mentioned that Albania had a GDP per capita of 2000 dollars which is incorrect as this was 6000 $ for 2008. I cannot but sense a sense of racism in your posts which could be due to your personal experiences but again, this does not justify generalisations.

I cannot but sense a sense of racism in your posts which could be due to your personal experiences but again, this does not justify generalisations.

How wonderfully patronising! Have you ever been to Albania? I have. Its a nice country, a bit dirty, but generally nice people and surprisingly good food. Lots to see. I think it could become a popular tourist destination in the next 5-10 years. It does have a massive problem with organised crime though and the Albanian 'mafia' is active throughout Europe (arms, drugs, vice). The income figure I quote is from a recent article in 'Die Welt' (a quality German newspaper) - about 2000 Euros per annum (that's about £2000 or a little over US$300). That is the income, not the GDP/head. If you visit Albania you cannot but notice the poverty. Romania did not 'USED to be poor' - there are a few wealthy people now, but much of the population is still dirt-poor (especially the Gypsies, who live in abject poverty) and £25/month is considered a decent wage. When I last visited Albania (Oct 2007) I stayed at the Tirane International in the centre of town overlooking the main square - it was amusing to sit and watch the chaos of the traffic - 80% of the cars being Merc's, many still with their 'D', 'CH' or 'A' stickers still on the bootlid!! The rest were mainly newer-model VW's and Audis with odd BMW and Toyota thrown in. Don't recall many Skodas. According to the article I read in 'Die Welt' the German police reckon that just over half of the cars stolen in Germany end up in Albania. In fact they have nicknamed it 'Albenzia' LOL! You can buy a 1-year-old C-class for about £5000. Its quite difficult to hire a car there (most of the major rental companies have low-profile operations due to theft) and there are actually not that many new car dealerships (because not many cars are bought brand new and spares are mostly stolen from abroad and sold at small shops). If you have an interest in cars a good place to visit is Durres. There are car pounds full of highly-polished cars (all stolen and shipped in) and every kind of car part and accessory you can imagine being sold from numerous stalls. Now THAT would be the place to get yourself a cheap Columbus

Seems surprising that ebay are wise to people selling Pocket PC's with potentially ripped off versions of TomTom software, but not aware of sellers blatantly selling what Hauptmann alleges are all stolen satnav systems from not only Skodas, but BMWs and Mercedes.

Mine was purchased from naviandbmwparts - feel free to do a search of the seller on ebay, and see the list of items for sale.

Are you really suggesting that ebay are letting such blatant criminal activity continue ?

Well this is wandering off-topic a bit, but ebay themselves reckon they have a 0.1% fraud rate (doesn't sound a lot, but they have a lot of auctions runnning!) and Which? reckon there are about 200 fraud auctions a day. IIRC the Met Pol did a bit of an investigation a couple of years back and called ebay the 'country's biggest fencing operation' (and they didn't mean the chicken-wire type of fencing!). I don't think that ALL items of car audio for sale on ebay are stolen, but certainly a proportion are. On the face of it ebay is a bad place to sell stolen goods, since the sale is very transparent. The problem is that it is very difficult to prove a crime. In general the UK police will not investigate unless the crime has been committed 'on their patch' - there is no national internet consumer crime unit, like the US's IC3. Additionally, most buyers, if they get a working unit, probably won't probe too deeply into its provenance. Those members of Briskoda who have purchased a tampered or 'hacked' unit - have you reported it to the Police? Even then it could be hard to prove that a unit is stolen if no national/international database exists and the police would probably feel that the crime is too small to bother with in the face of the resources needed to get a prosecution. Gets even more complicated if the seller is overseas. Incidentally, I don't think ebay themselves are particularly vigilant about the sale of pirated software. So far as I can see they have a 'police your own trademark' policy (VERO) and rely on trademark owners to notify them of potentially pirated products. Some companies seem vigilant (e.g. TomTom) others less so ... there are masses of obviously pirated car manual CD's and DVD's on there and nobody seems to bother too much about that?

trouble is even after the event of buying the "said item" whatever it may be. The fact is if you do choose to report it to the police your reward for your civic duty is to have the item taken off you, loose your money and possibly be charged with receiving stolen goods. So is it no wonder why people dont?Trouble is in the country the law is geared to the criminal. That however is my own view.So back to the topic, I guess if in doubt dont buy unless its possibly a refurbed unit or from a wreaked motor. Or its from a suppler like the one at £1339.

So what about this lot: http://www.oemretrofits.co.uk

Kosher goods or not? They're currently offering a Columbus for £550!

What I do find a bit odd is the manual you download is blatantly a scan from a VW manual & not a Skoda one, which sort of puts me right off!

A couple of days ago I contacted two ebay sellers (tech_toys_ltd and lukas078) who were/are selling Columbus units. I asked them if they could prove that the units had been sourced legitimately, i.e. from a crashed vehicle that had it factory fitted or a factory refurb unit. To date neither has replied, which I think speaks volumes!

If there are any Brisky members that are planning to sell a Columbus unit (that they can prove is 100% legitimate) then I might very well be interested. I would be happy to pay a premium above the current ebay going rate of £450-£500 to ensure that I am not buying something hooky.

We tend to buy a fair number of used parts for repair, normally when owners are paying for repairs themselves and wishing to keep costs to a minimum. There is so much hookey stuff floating about now that we ALWAYS ask for a full receipt from the seller for higher value parts. This HAS to include their name and address (preferably on legit headed paper) and the registration and VIN number of the vehicle that the part was removed from. Where an item has a serial number (such as a stereo, gearbox, ECU etc.) then we ask them to include that as well. Any legitimate breaker will be prepared to do this for you. We keep all of this on file so that should the BiB come knocking we can show a paper trail for all the parts on our premises.

Well here are the responses from the ebay sellers - they sound plausible, but what do you all think......

naviandbmwparts - "owners security card with pin code is included"

tech_toys_ltd - "all serials are tested to see if the units are stolen, and we receive them in original vw packaging with company invoice!"

The techtoys one sounds perfectly feasible,

A security card is easy to fake, I guess the key thing would be "Are the security Seals intact".

'all serials are tested to see if the units are stolen'

"How?" would be my next question.

Posted 15 November 2009 - 14:49 - how much bunnying?........ could have had one installed and working by now..........:-)

Arent Tech toys around £1k? Which would indicate something legit IMHO.

The latest one from them on Ebay is £824 delivered.

Edited 10 December, 200916 yr by Indiana Jones

Yep that was my thought too. More money = more legit ! Out of interest has anyone used 'naviandbmwparts' for a columbus ? Did it arrive in good nick with seals in tact ? Any thoughts on the seller himself - honest, reliable etc ? Cheers

Just thinking about this whole legitimacy issue again with the RNS-510……. I think I am turning into Skippy with my hesitancy to commit to a purchase (apologies folks).

Skoda will sell around 700,000 cars globally in 2009 and I would assume that a relatively small proportion of those will be sold with factory fitted Columbus say circa 1 in 20 (5%) which is 35,000 units.

Assuming that the Columbus has a warranty failure rate of around 2% (I work for a high-tech electronics company and that number seems sensible). Therefore each year 700 units will be returned to the OEM for refurbishment to be resold. Let us also assume that another 300 units become available as a result of total-loss insurance claims. This gives a grand total of 1,000 units per annum that could be legitimately purchased by the man-in-the-street.

That equates to about 19 units per week (GLOBALLY). OK, so my maths isn’t going to be that accurate, but it does make you think that the vast majority of the units on eBay must be a bit fishy. Just looking at eBay UK I can find one seller, who alone, has 9 of these units currently for sale………..

Aaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhhhh !

Just thinking about this whole legitimacy issue again with the RNS-510……. I think I am turning into Skippy with my hesitancy to commit to a purchase (apologies folks).

Skoda will sell around 700,000 cars globally in 2009 and I would assume that a relatively small proportion of those will be sold with factory fitted Columbus say circa 1 in 20 (5%) which is 35,000 units.

Assuming that the Columbus has a warranty failure rate of around 2% (I work for a high-tech electronics company and that number seems sensible). Therefore each year 700 units will be returned to the OEM for refurbishment to be resold. Let us also assume that another 300 units become available as a result of total-loss insurance claims. This gives a grand total of 1,000 units per annum that could be legitimately purchased by the man-in-the-street.

That equates to about 19 units per week (GLOBALLY). OK, so my maths isn’t going to be that accurate, but it does make you think that the vast majority of the units on eBay must be a bit fishy. Just looking at eBay UK I can find one seller, who alone, has 9 of these units currently for sale………..

Aaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhhhh !

I would think any OEM agreement would preclude legitimate reselling of reman units.

I would think any OEM agreement would preclude legitimate reselling of reman units.

Not necessarily, there are many companies who sell on re-furbished parts (some even on E-Bay) Bose, Canon, Philips spring to mind.

Yep Bandit you are absolutely right. I recall buying a Canon camera from Digital River (Canon's official refurb partner) - it arrived broken, but that's not really the point !

Anyhow I'm sure you can all see the point I made with volumes. I don't want to turn a blind eye or knowingly purchase what might be a hooky Columbus since someone will have suffered somewhere else in the world (not to mention my money directly or indirectly lining a theifs pockets). Equally I don't want to pay £1400 for a new unit.

At this rate the vRS will have been sold by the time I finally find a legitimate 2nd hand unit !

Yep Bandit you are absolutely right. I recall buying a Canon camera from Digital River (Canon's official refurb partner) - it arrived broken, but that's not really the point !

Anyhow I'm sure you can all see the point I made with volumes. I don't want to turn a blind eye or knowingly purchase what might be a hooky Columbus since someone will have suffered somewhere else in the world (not to mention my money directly or indirectly lining a theifs pockets). Equally I don't want to pay £1400 for a new unit.

At this rate the vRS will have been sold by the time I finally find a legitimate 2nd hand unit !

I completely agree, I have just had a Paypal Refund from Ebay as the seller did not send either the correct unit nor replied to my questions as to why the seals were broken etc. I have my refund & also still have the unit as he will not respond to my mails to collect it, i have mailed E-Bay to ask what to do.

Yep that was my thought too. More money = more legit ! Out of interest has anyone used 'naviandbmwparts' for a columbus ? Did it arrive in good nick with seals in tact ? Any thoughts on the seller himself - honest, reliable etc ? Cheers

Bought mine from him. Took not responding to emails to a whole new level until I really pestered him. Unit arrive with all seals intact, a code card etc. There was however a ding on the screen surround despite the fact that he described unit as "in unmarked condition". I emailed him telling him this wasn't good enough but never got a response. To be hoest I can't be arsed to be without it now so such is life.

Did all our conjecture and wondering about the legitimacy of the Lithuanian Columbus units impact the price.......... I've just seen one sell for £370 from 'navi andbmwparts' Anyone from here?..........

Did all our conjecture and wondering about the legitimacy of the Lithuanian Columbus units impact the price.......... I've just seen one sell for £370 from 'navi andbmwparts' Anyone from here?..........

Certainly not me

I bought mine about 10 months ago from them - he responded promptly to my offer to buy - had no problems with communication, and touch wood, have so far had no problems whatsoever with the unit. It came with a card, was in the condition described in the ad, and has, unlike certain others, accepted the 2664 and 2684 firmware updates

Price at the time was getting on for double this one

Right, think I have made a decission..........I'm not going to get a Columbus for the following reasons:

1 - Trying to find one at a good price that the seller can prove is not stolen, is nigh on impossible

2 - The Bluetooth kit is too expensive as an add-on

3 - The Ipod interface is too expensive as an add-on

4 - Looking at the thick end of a grand to get the nav (probably hooky), ipod lead and bluetooth

However I am rather taken with the Pioneer AVIC-F310BT although it is the cheapest in the range it has the same functionality as the bigger screened F710BT but at a far lower price and now that the firmware has been upgraded the slow responsiveness appears to have been resolved. So to get it too function properly I will need a few fitting accessories as listed, bringing the price in at £600 ish.

1 - Can-Bus Adaptor circa £50

2 - Aerial Adaptor circa £10

3 - Double-din fascia convertor circa £40

4 - Ipod lead circa £20

5 - Head unit circa £490

This will give me a legtimate unit with more features that a standard Columbus and a 12 month warranty / aftercare. Plus if I purchase before 31/12 I qualfy for a FREE Ipod Nano 8GB worth about £90 I guess.

Will keep you all posted with how I get on and if I regret my decission.

Let the abuse commence............

However I am rather taken with the Pioneer AVIC-F310BT although it is the cheapest in the range it has the same functionality as the bigger screened F710BT but at a far lower price and now that the firmware has been upgraded the slow responsiveness appears to have been resolved. So to get it too function properly I will need a few fitting accessories as listed, bringing the price in at £600 ish.

Just make sure you get it connected up properly as far as the power supply is concerned to avoid any risk of battery drain