Recently, I made a disastrous mistake with my Mophie Juice Pack Plus by partially submerging it in some water. This of course destroyed it and with only a couple of weeks until WWDC, I needed to get a replacement pronto. I jumped on Amazon and noticed the Mophie was selling for $65, which was an incredible 35% savings off the retail price. In this case, it turned out to be too good to be true.

The thing I didn’t notice was that this offer wasn’t from Amazon themselves, but instead another Amazon “seller”. Amazon does call this out, but I personally don’t think it’s prominent enough. I’ll certainly be keeping a closer eye on this in the future because I was shipped a counterfeit Mophie!

If the bottom edge of the case hadn’t started to peel, I may have never noticed. Once that happened, I posted a picture on twitter and the @mophie account replied back to me to be wary of counterfeits from Amazon sellers and to make sure to order directly from Amazon or Mophie to be sure to get a legitimate Mophie. I grabbed my broken case and started comparing and, sure enough, there were very subtle differences. Most of those differences are outlined here (thanks to Jay Tamboli for the link). The only thing I didn’t have to compare was the packaging.

I ordered a Mophie direct from the company (luckily they were running a 20% off sale for Memorial Day weekend). When the new case arrived, I started comparing the packaging and I noticed all the differences the site above points out. One thing that’s hard to capture its that the color of the LEDs that light up to show the Mophie’s battery level are also different. The real deal is pure white, while the fake has a blue tinge to them.

Be careful when you see a good deal on a Mophie, there’s a chance it’s too good to be true.

I’ve also reported the seller to Amazon and they are issuing me a full refund. Great customer service there. Kudos to Amazon.