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Writer's pictureBlue Cromos

Fake parts causing downtime in production!

Updated: Jun 13, 2023

Do you want to protect your brand, your customer relations, and your costs for servicing your customers? Brand protection isn't only a matter for marketing, branding and the legal department. Counterfeiting can have repercussions across all functions in a business. Also for service technicians.


Service technician

Image from iStock


Learn from Charlie, the alert service technician.

"That’s weird" Charlie thought. "This customer used to be low maintenance. But these latest few months there’s been more trouble there than for decades. What’s going on, really?" Since a few months, this long-time customer had called repeatedly, getting increasingly agitated about downtime costs, allegedly caused by faulty spare parts from Charlies company who once supplied the machinery in the first place. As their assigned service technician, Charlie was first in the firing line. "I have to dig deeper into this." Charlie thought as he drove to the customer site. "There seems to be some monkey business going on." Soon he had them up and running again and the mood had improved. He looked at the part he had replaced. It looked just like any other, to the naked eye. "Can I have a look in your spare parts store?" he asked his long-time friend at the customer. "Of course" his friend answered without delay. (He was a bit uncomfortable too, about the whole situation.) Charlie started the isAuthentic app he had recently installed on his mobile phone. He was one of the first to be approved to authenticate. He started to authenticate the remaining spare parts of the same kind. The parts were flagged as fake by isAuthentic, one after the other. He checked some other types of high turnover parts. Same result. More than 50% were counterfeit parts. Charlies company, the equipment manufacturer, used a network of middlemen for the distribution of spare parts. "I just wonder if...?" He asked his friend if they had changed supplier for their spare parts recently. "Yes, actually. We did change supplier some six months ago. Their prices were much better than the previous." "I’m sure they were." Charlie said. "That’s because they sell fake products. Not ours. They’re into product piracy. You pay the cost several times over in expensive downtime, we get the blame, and our brand reputation takes a hit." On his way back to the office, Charlie called his manager who alerted the legal department and the brand protection manager. Getting isAuthentic was already paying off.

We're the ones cutting the edge 

At Blue Cromos, we don't add fancy labels. We don't add "magic" ink. Nor do we add any transmitters of any kind. We do product authentication like nobody else, using our patented fingerprinting technology. We're cutting the edge of technology to make life easy for you.


Curious? Get in touch!

Do you want to learn more about how isAuthentic can help you fight counterfeiters? Just get in touch here



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