I am new to road biking..got my first flat and wanted to order a nice tire.

I asked around here and I had a lot of recommendations for the Continental GP4000s II. The LBS wanted $70 for one, but I found several retailers online via Amazon that sold it for $35-40.

I ordered from one supplier that is UBXbikes.....

when the tire showed up it was in a box that looks like a genuine box... the box itself seemed high quality none of theprinting looked weird or anything.

when I pulled out the tire itself and mounted it onto my wheel and looked at it - the sidewall printing seemed "smudged" and not very nicely done... the continental that I too off had very crisp lettering.. this one almost looked like it was stenciled on and the ink ran.. I can't imagine a company like Continental would let this slip by..but maybe this is normal.. i'm new to this so I don't know.


am I being overly paranoid? with all the counterfeit stuff on the web, I started wondering if it's not a real tire and it's some generic in a nice box???

look at the pics and let me know what you think? maybe they all look like this?



notice how the C and the O have little bumps on the edges at the top of the letters.... almost like it was poorly printed onto the tire... is this normal for a major brand tire?









by comparison - the lines/font of my original tires look much cleaner - no fuzzy edges and none of the letters have what looks like bumpy writing or bleeding edges...

I will probably just go ride them tomorrow.... and see how they do... but if anyone has heard of people getting bogus tires let me know... normally I would not have suspected these to be fake - but the way the printing on tehs ide of the tire looks..it just doesn't look like something a major brand would tolerate and I know some counterfeit products have issues with the printing/fonts they use.

this is a link the seller that fulfilled the order.

https://www.amazon.com/sp?_encoding=...b=&vasStoreID=

good reviews... the box looked legit... so my gut says it's ok..but I just got hung up on how tacky the printing looked on the tire.. especially compred to the tires I just took off....

I think a tire might be one of the more difficult items to counterfeit. I've never looked at the printing on my tires very carefully. How does the rest of the tire look. I'm pretty familiar with the inside as I often go over it slowly looking for the tiny piece of wire that caused a flat.

Could be a 'factory 2nd' especially given the price. Order from the UK next time.

Never looked closely at the Conti tires I got, just installed and went out. First really nice tires I've every purchased and they rolled great. Forty miles into a fantastic ride until some old fart lets his dog lead out on a leash from behind a lawn truck. Had to jam on the brakes so I didn't squish the muttttt and fish tailed the rear taking off a year's worth of rubber.

Brand spanking new tire SHOT thanks to another inept dog owner.

there have been many cases of Schwalbe tires being counterfeited, it wouldn't surprise me if there are counterfeit Continentals. That tire doesn't look right to me, wouldn't surprise me if it's counterfeit.

My Continental looks sharper than yours but my Grand Prix is about as bad as your Continental with lumps and such.

Second the UK sites:
probikekit.com
ribble.co.uk
merlincycles.com

there may be others.

Looks like a product of the surface...

Email some detail photos to Continental. If their tires are being counterfeited they'll know about it, or want to know, and may ask for photos of specific parts that are harder to counterfeit at a lower price.

Usually the first things I examine on tires is the tread and inside surface for any irregularities. I barely look at the lettering or graphics. Old habit from years of using film. There's a persistent urban myth among n00bs to film photography that the markings in the margin or rebate are reliable evidence of the authenticity or quality of the film emulsion. Not so.

I took the bike out for a 25 mile ride today with the "questionable" tire on my front wheel.

since I'm such a newbie - it's hard for me to quantify what I'm feeling, but I do think the tire worked well. I feel like the tire gripped pretty well in turns... it almost seemed to feel like the bike was more stable... the steering felt more firm too... almost like there was a tad more resistance when I was changing directions...

so far so good. it may just be a fluke with the lettering... I sent an email with a pic of it to the amazon retailer and it also cC's a copy to Amazon themselves. i'll see what the seller says. I can always send some pics to continental and get their input.

thanks guys. in the end, if I got one "bad" tire it's no big deal... I just want to make sure I don't end up getting bad stuff... I was reading some reviews on amazon about shimano bike clipless pedals that guys were buying - not th3 pedal but the small triangular / yellow/red/blue colored thing that bolts to the bottom of your bike shoe - and several people had posted that after buying them, the ones they received quickly broke and they realized they are counterfeit...and these were sold by some large amazon retailer... so it makes you worry.. amazon is really just a huge online broker... and they don't know if the end supplier is pushing fake merchandise onto people.... so it can happen... if it's going on rampantly on even cheaper parts like bike, stuff i'll just satart being more caeful what retailers I buy from or deal with the local bike shop....

thanks again.

I just purchased a set of these tires, from Ribble in the UK. The logos on the sidewalls do have an uneven or wavy appearance. Most likely its due, as posited above, by the sidewall's surface texture. Its slightly misshapen from the cross hatched pattern in the sidewalls and the white letters stand out against the dark background. Mine have the proper side information in place, their construction showed no flaws when inspected. Their ride is very, very good, I am moving from Gatorskins for 4 years to the Grand Prix 4000s II.

As long as you are buying from a reputable store, on-line, or brick and mortar, you should be safe. As said above, no reports of counterfeit Continental tires, that I have heard about, or read about.

Bill

I've had genuine Continental GP tires practically lose all the sidewall printing in very short order - almost like it just rubs off.

FWIW, many of the items suspected of being counterfeit aren't in a precise sense.

Many come out of the "back door" of factories, either stolen from the production line by employees, or likewise stolen from the reject bin, when they were supposed to be destroyed or reworked. Other sources for counterfeits happen if the brand owner changes vendors. Then old vendor may have left over stock, or still have the tooling and use the opportunity to make more.

To a large extent the counterfeit issue traces back to the trend of having goods produced by 3rd party vendors. This cause loss of control of tooling and to an extent finished goods. For example a vendor may overproduce, and end up with product he wants to convert to cash.

So they may be the genuine article, but may also be substandard.

Presently, Continental has no press releases regarding any counterfeit bicycle tires listed on their website. I suspect that @FBinNY has any chance of how they might come to be nailed down.

Most of the time, manufacturers will yell loudly about counterfeit items, they don't want any liability from defective products causing them grief and expense. Especially when they didn't make the item in question. Production over runs, as FBinNY said, are the way a lot of out of the loop goods come to be.

Looks like the 4000s IIs Ive been buying the last few years.

If you bought your tires from a bike shop you would be able to know the supply chain.

who they buy tires from . in the distribution level..

ribble.co.uk is a dead domain? I thought I must have landed on an old thread.

ribblecycles.co.uk is the correct address although you can use ribblecycles.com.au

thanks guys! I will assume tey are legit and enjoy them.

they did seem to ride pretty well.... i'l order up a couple more and eventually swap out the back tire.

too bad it rained today..i wanted to go out and ride again...

thanks, that one works.
Edit:
Hey, great prices too. Park IB-3C I-Beam Mini Fold-Up Hex Wrench $21.
(rubs hands with Glee at the prospect of a shopping frenzy )

Could be a factory second due to the printing on the tire

The only problem is that all bike shops everywhere are always out to scam everyone out of every last penny. It is a rule amongst us that we agreed upon at the secret meeting! Jeff Bezos runs a much better bike shop, sure he can't repair your bike or give you advice on anything and it is possible you are buying counterfeit or factory seconds but he needs our money. The poor guy is only worth 67.3 Billion dollars. Sure he might mistreat his employees, work against unions, put local businesses out of business and promoted illegal activities, amongst other things but come on, he is just a poor down on his luck guy trying to get on his feet

As far as those tires go, I might contact Conti and ask their opinion? For the future buy from a local shop as fietsbob said you would know the supply chain. We get out Conti stuff from Highway Two and I can get on the horn with them and I know my tires are coming from Continental in Germany where many of the tires we buy are made. We can develop relationships with these suppliers and manufacturers so if there is a problem we can better handle it than sometimes you can do on your own.

@veganbikes, you have some nerve using common sense and taking a reasonable approach to this problem. Very clever ploy using sarcasm to start off, also, make the laugh and get comfortable before selling them the aluminum siding.

I wish I lived near your shop, I'd be at the door first thing this morning, Good on you sir, good on you.

Bill

Happens all the time. Corporations are unscrupulous and will push the envelope as hard as they can until they get caught. I used to work for a major lighting manufacturer, of which will remain nameless so they don't come after me. We made automotive headlamps at this plant. They had major contracts with Ford, Honda, and Toyota. EVERY bulb got checked via several different pieces of testing equipment.

The company goal was ONE bad bulb per MILLION bulbs sent out, this meaning that when the shipment got to the auto manufacturer, THEY inspected each one, and we got the feedback from them that they had a bad bulb. Seemed anal to me, and still does. However all this being said, the so-called "bad" bulbs that failed testing at the plant were categorized and either scrapped because they didn't work, or if they only failed certain parameters, then they were sold off at hugely discounted prices to Kmart and Walmart and the like.

So I'm guessing that it may not be such a stretch to imagine tire seconds, much like shoe and clothing seconds, do exist.

So long as the manufacturer selling the items declares them as '2nd's' I see nothing wrong with it. What would be/is unscrupulous is the selling of '2nd's' without declaring it, which is more likely something the reseller would do (and what I proposed possibly happened here).