Amazon i9 warning

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Kardonxt

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Apr 13, 2009
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I just wanted to give users a heads up on our relatively high fraud rate on i9 CPUs from Amazon.

We recently received an i9-7900x box that was opened and missing the CPU, and yesterday we received a fake i9-7940x CPU that fell apart when removing the CPU for troubleshooting (both sold by amazon not a reseller).

Amazon originally refused to do anything about the open / missing i9 incident, we had to throw a fit with support and argue to even get a credit. I think a smaller customer would have been told to pound sand.

They didn't give us any trouble about the fake 7940x so I'm wondering if this is not uncommon for them. We had to go buy the CPU locally as they already delayed the shipment of the CPU several days and they had no more in stock.

We have ordered 4 i9s in the last several months. Not exactly a huge sample size, but we are considering purchasing from other sources moving forward.

Fake \ falling apart CPU Image-

b81b9fd4-6e18-4008-aa78-3e6bdcc3edb1.jpg


That white mess was covered by the heatspreader originally. The copper plate was under it where the die would be.




I wasn't really sure where to post this but since the Newegg is dead to me thread is here I figured this was reasonable
 

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OMG, that is freaking terrible. Can believe what a common place it is now to get fucked/scammed now a days. What happened to working for a living, and working hard to value the things you have... Sorry buddy, but glad you were able to get your monies back atleast
 
wow.

that's terrible.

3rd party sellers or amazon direct? nvm amazon themselves.

take it to facebook and amazons twitter.

you'll get the amazon fanboi blame but seriously that's one hell of a fake.
 
If those were both sold by Amazon and not just through Amazon it looks like they're going to need to do some SERIOUS supplier/staff vetting.

These things are trackable from Intel to Amazon to you. If one of the suppliers in the middle is playing funny and pulling shit out of the gray market - they're screwed.
 
Amazon's third party seller 'Fulfilled by Amazon' shit is really screwing them over. If you want to be a 'Fulfilled by Amazon' merchant, you just send your crap over to Amazon, and they put it in their warehouse on the same shelf as all of their other crap, and then when somebody buys a thing, they just pull the most convenient thing.

I've read that this happens a lot with counterfeit clothing, but makes sense that it happens with PC parts too.

It's a really great scam too - as a scamming merchant you send Amazon a counterfeit CPU, Amazon throws it in a bin with all of the others, both from Amazon itself and other third-party merchants, and when a customer orders from you, Amazon pulls from the communal bin and they've only got a 1-in-whatever shot of pulling the crap one. Mixing all of the merchandise together is probably more efficient for Amazon, but it means that when someone gets clever scamming ideas, innocent customers and other sellers get hurt. I'm sure that Amazon has a way of tracing back who sent the bad merchandise to them, but if it's a merchant from Russia or wherever, I'm sure that there's little Amazon can do to pull the settlement back from them.
 
It's been a problem since a bunch of spec-ops style cat burglars broke in and stole a bunch of original Pentium processors. Will make me consider buying locally.
 
Ever since Amazon opened up to third parties I've had nothing but trouble with electronic fakes. It's so bad, I've given up ordering anything remotely electronic mass market like this from Amazon. Shame too. I still order lots of other stuff, but won't buy PC parts from them until they fix this.
 
TrailRunner said:
Amazon's third party seller 'Fulfilled by Amazon' shit is really screwing them over. If you want to be a 'Fulfilled by Amazon' merchant, you just send your crap over to Amazon, and they put it in their warehouse on the same shelf as all of their other crap, and then when somebody buys a thing, they just pull the most convenient thing.

I've read that this happens a lot with counterfeit clothing, but makes sense that it happens with PC parts too.

It's a really great scam too - as a scamming merchant you send Amazon a counterfeit CPU, Amazon throws it in a bin with all of the others, both from Amazon itself and other third-party merchants, and when a customer orders from you, Amazon pulls from the communal bin and they've only got a 1-in-whatever shot of pulling the crap one. Mixing all of the merchandise together is probably more efficient for Amazon, but it means that when someone gets clever scamming ideas, innocent customers and other sellers get hurt. I'm sure that Amazon has a way of tracing back who sent the bad merchandise to them, but if it's a merchant from Russia or wherever, I'm sure that there's little Amazon can do to pull the settlement back from them.
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Amazon's efficient inventory management system is a joke with third parties now.
 
Decibel said:
If those were both sold by Amazon and not just through Amazon it looks like they're going to need to do some SERIOUS supplier/staff vetting.

These things are trackable from Intel to Amazon to you. If one of the suppliers in the middle is playing funny and pulling shit out of the gray market - they're screwed.
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Except it's not because of how Amazon does "Random Stow" inventory. Just because you order from the Amazon page does NOT mean you get the inventory Amazon put into the system. You can actually get anyone's. It's terrible and the reason they can't trace the fakes. It's obviously solvable, but to date Amazon does not care.
 
Occasionally Amazon will buy out a 3rd party seller and ship it as their own if they run out. You can tell because there will be an addition barcode sticker over the existing barcode on the box.
 
LuxTerra said:
Except it's not because of how Amazon does "Random Stow" inventory. Just because you order from the Amazon page does NOT mean you get the inventory Amazon put into the system. You can actually get anyone's. It's terrible and the reason they can't trace the fakes. It's obviously solvable, but to date Amazon does not care.
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Co-mingled inventory isn't generally used for high value items.

Also, when Amazon takes a 3rd parties inventory and uses it to fulfill they orders they sure do know where it came from.
 
obs said:
Co-mingled inventory isn't generally used for high value items.
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After having toured their facilities and questioned the leads, "random stow" is a 100% thing across all of Amazon's inventory. I realize others do NOT do that, but it's simply a way of life at Amazon. The final straw from me was a fake Intel XXV710 25GbE card from Amazon. I returned it and bought from a trusted provider and the resulting product had all the logistical verification seals/stickers, etc. The one from Amazon's direct order page, as shipped, was clearly fake.

Is a $500 25GbE card without SFP28 modules high enough end for you? FYI, SFP28 modules are $200 each from Intel and this is for my home network because I like to play with tech and take things rather seriously.
 
LuxTerra said:
After having toured their facilities and questioned the leads, "random stow" is a 100% thing across all of Amazon's inventory. I realize others do NOT do that, but it's simply a way of life at Amazon. The final straw from me was a fake Intel XXV710 25GbE card from Amazon. I returned it and bought from a trusted provider and the resulting product had all the logistical verification seals/stickers, etc. The one from Amazon's direct order page, as shipped, was clearly fake.

Is a $500 25GbE card without SFP28 modules high enough end for you?
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I'm just saying it's likely they bought out a 3rd party to fulfill your order. Either that or it was return fraud that got past their return inspectors.
 
RE
obs said:
I'm just saying it's likely they bought out a 3rd party to fulfill your order. Either that or it was return fraud that got past their return inspectors.
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No, that's not how their facilities work. Have you EVER spent any time in an Amazon fulfillment facility? I doubt it. I have for at least personal and work edification. LOL. You think they bought out a ton of high-end 25GbE cards from third parties that were lacking the Intel validations. 25GbE, at the time I bought them was a while ago, was and still is a tiny market out side of cloud providers. IEEE didn't even want 25GbE to be approved, but cloud providers revolted. Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about.
 
nice of OP to give us 2/3 of a story and then disappear


Also, who the f counterfeits an enterprise grade NIC? Like, how many of those get sold outside of official channels?

Damn though, 25Gbe, didn't even know that was a thing. Sick.
 
ZeqOBpf6 said:
nice of OP to give us 2/3 of a story and then disappear


Also, who the f counterfeits an enterprise grade NIC? Like, how many of those get sold outside of official channels?

Damn though, 25Gbe, didn't even know that was a thing. Sick.
Click to expand...

I didn't know anyone even commented, I was waiting for alerts to popup lol. I don't see any questions tho.

Honestly it isn't so much an exciting "I got screwed" story.

I just wanted to warn other people. Particularly since the first time they denied the refund until we pointed out the amount of business we do with them and that we wouldn't try to scam them over $1000.

If this was my personal amazon account I would have had a heart attack and I don't want any [H]'rs going through that. If my boss wants to order more i9s from Amazon it's no skin off my back (although making the drive to microcenter in rush hour so we don't miss our deadline is not my ideal night lol.). If I was buying a cpu for a personal build I would probably look elsewhere to be safe.
 
If anyone was curious, the fake cpu did not damage the build. I was a little worried since I had no idea what's going on inside the silicone.

The microcenter CPU booted right up and passed all of our normal stress tests.
 
Kardonxt said:
I didn't know anyone even commented, I was waiting for alerts to popup lol. I don't see any questions tho.

Honestly it isn't so much an exciting "I got screwed" story.

I just wanted to warn other people. Particularly since the first time they denied the refund until we pointed out the amount of business we do with them and that we wouldn't try to scam them over $1000.

If this was my personal amazon account I would have had a heart attack and I don't want any [H]'rs going through that. If my boss wants to order more i9s from Amazon it's no skin off my back (although making the drive to microcenter in rush hour so we don't miss our deadline is not my ideal night lol.). If I was buying a cpu for a personal build I would probably look elsewhere to be safe.
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Dude! Amazon direct or third party?.
I will say that not getting alerts for our own threads is something I wouldn't mind seeing changed as well.
 
amazon direct, says in OP and in Master Shake's post once he realized it lol.

I assume there is an option to subscribe to our own threads somewhere. I haven't been super active after the forum change, I find something new every week lol. I edited the OP like a dozen times trying to get the picture to work. Luckily a mod fixed it for me and told me how simple the new way was lmao.
 
The problem we have with Newegg is inconsistent shipping. Free 2 day from Amazon is hard to beat ( admittedly, Items do get delayed or randomly have ETA dates at checkout way longer than 2 days despite being eligible for prime shipping more and more frequently.)

Newegg is typically cheap 3 day or eggsaver and occasionally items just get stuck in processing for several days. They won't do anything about it because technically it says in the fine print it can take 24-48 hours to process an order (even tho it only seems to happen to us when we are in a rush for an item.)
 
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That's terrible. I have some parts coming in from Amazon today that I'm going to be looking very closely at.
 
I checked the new i9 when leaving microcenter and realized the fake cpu was missing the black gasket \ glue that wraps around the heatspreader (the stuff you scrape off when delidding). It should be pretty easy to spot if you are actually looking for it.

I'm really glad the stupid thing fell apart when removing the heatsink. Otherwise I would have wasted several hours debating on mobo or CPU, and probably sending both back to be safe.
 
Kardonxt said:
The problem we have with Newegg is inconsistent shipping. Free 2 day from Amazon is hard to beat ( admittedly, Items do get delayed or randomly have ETA dates at checkout way longer than 2 days despite being eligible for prime shipping more and more frequently.)

Newegg is typically cheap 3 day or eggsaver and occasionally items just get stuck in processing for several days. They won't do anything about it because technically it says in the fine print it can take 24-48 hours to process an order (even tho it only seems to happen to us when we are in a rush for an item.)
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any time i order for newegg i just expect it to take a week+ no matter what i select.. their shipping is a joke and like you said the fine print allows them to do it. as far as amazon goes and most etailers for that matter i always take pictures of everything including the box before it's opened, makes it easier proving that any issues were either on their end or shipping if somethings screwed up.. i've never had an issue with amazons customer service though, they've always been quick to fix anything.
 
LuxTerra said:
Except it's not because of how Amazon does "Random Stow" inventory. Just because you order from the Amazon page does NOT mean you get the inventory Amazon put into the system. You can actually get anyone's. It's terrible and the reason they can't trace the fakes. It's obviously solvable, but to date Amazon does not care.
Click to expand...

That's ridiculous. They should be tracking them by s/n. That's why the barcode is printed on the sticker.

You should be able trace the CPU from manufacturer, to wholesaler, to retailer, to customer.
 
vegeta535 said:
As much as I also perfet to use Newegg. They are not imune to this sort of stuff. Years ago they also had had similar issuses with cpus.
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I do remember the Intel CPU debacle with Newegg, but I've never personally had an issue with them. I am no dummy, though, and am more scrutinizing these days of the product I receive no matter where I bought it from.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
any time i order for newegg i just expect it to take a week+ no matter what i select.. their shipping is a joke and like you said the fine print allows them to do it. as far as amazon goes and most etailers for that matter i always take pictures of everything including the box before it's opened, makes it easier proving that any issues were either on their end or shipping if somethings screwed up.. i've never had an issue with amazons customer service though, they've always been quick to fix anything.
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Never takes more then 3 days to get my order. Even when shipped from the West coast. I get my order next day if I order early enough and it ships out of the NJ warehouse. When they switched to UPS for a bit awhile ago it would of get stuck in a ups warehouse for a week. When ever they used FedEx it was fast.
 
Armenius said:
I do remember the Intel CPU debacle with Newegg, but I've never personally had an issue with them. I am no dummy, though, and am more scrutinizing these days of the product I receive no matter where I bought it from.
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Me niether. I will continue to use them. Hell they replaced a Hard drive I dropped and broke the SATA connector with out issue.
 
vegeta535 said:
Never takes more then 3 days to get my order. Even when shipped from the West coast. I get my order next day if I order early enough and it ships out of the NJ warehouse. When they switched to UPS for a bit awhile ago it would of get stuck in a ups warehouse for a week. When ever they used FedEx it was fast.
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yeah when they switched to UPS i was pissed.. had a case stuck 2 hours away for 9 days because they claimed the roads were too icy to drive down even though our USPS trucks were driving the same road 4 times a day and the distribution center was right next to the UPS building. the CS rep didn't like me when i brought that up, lol.
 
wow, glad I clicked on this thread....

I guess next gpu I'll be getting from online , I will meet delivery person as they drop
off package and open it as they are standing there , as I'm recording to make
sure Item I bought is in the box they delivered !

maybe I should have several lawyers standing by also.........
:cautious:
 
99.99% of our orders are fine. I wouldn't be too paranoid (unless you are ordering an i9 lol).

It's interesting to hear how Amazon handles their inventory. It seems like things we view as common sense controls are too burdensome \ expensive and it's faster \ cheaper for a giant like Amazon to just throw refund money at issues as they pop up.
 
ZeqOBpf6 said:
nice of OP to give us 2/3 of a story and then disappear


Also, who the f counterfeits an enterprise grade NIC? Like, how many of those get sold outside of official channels?

Damn though, 25Gbe, didn't even know that was a thing. Sick.
Click to expand...
A lot...

The Chinese gray market is huge and it pays big on high end products like that NIC. The card actually was a real Intel NIC, but was missing all the logistics validation seals, etc. How that happens is, enough units in a batch failed which means you toss out the entire batch. It's simply too expensive to 100% validate every card that rolls off the assembly line. It's cheaper to toss them out. Those cares are to be destroyed, but basically the whole batch or a few boxes fall off a truck or pallet somewhere and enter the Chinese gray market. The then get mixed back into valid supply chains (occasionally), but mostly get sold on eBay to ignorant buyers. The NIC might actually be 100% function, but it's impossible to know.

These gray market items enter Amazons supply chain through unscrupulous third parties who realize Amazon doesn't actually track their inventory that way (see random stow, it's was a innovation Amazon fathered, but it has some serious drawbacks too) and they figured out they send fakes they bought out of China for nothing, but get paid the full price of a real one. Or they go on eBay for a reduced price.

Most buyers have no idea what all the Intel logistic holograms, etc should be on the card so it works. Also, since most the batch was actually ok, or ok enough that most users won't care or notice. It might show up as more dropped packets or driver crashes and you'll never really know why. As for Amazon, they don't care because most consumers don't. The losers here are the manufacturer who made no money on the sale and gets blamed for a faulty NIC as well as the consumer who didn't what they paid for. The scammers/frauds make out big and Amazon doesn't loose enough to care. At least until more consumers learn what they're really buying.

Edit: if you've ever worked in a serious QC/QA industry (e.g. space and military) where failure isn't ok, there's a ton of effort spent on calculating MTBF and MTTR based on the exponential distribution and the resulting bathtub curves. Of course like most of that modeling, the exponential is the wrong distribution, but it's close enough and easy. Validating supply chains is a big part of that or else your numbers mean absolutely nothing.
 
Kardonxt said:
99.99% of our orders are fine. I wouldn't be too paranoid (unless you are ordering an i9 lol).

It's interesting to hear how Amazon handles their inventory. It seems like things we view as common sense controls are too burdensome \ expensive and it's faster \ cheaper for a giant like Amazon to just throw refund money at issues as they pop up.
Click to expand...
The Chinese gray market is bigger than that. As far as Amazon is concerned, probably 99.99% of orders are not returned because consumers have no idea what should be on the product to authenticate it. Thus, Amazon doesn't care.

I do know and I do care and that NIC was simply the last straw. I've had the same problem with a few items which were not PC parts. It's just that PC parts cost enough to make it worth while to run the scam.

Edit: again, it's not until you work an engineering project where all must be validated that you realize just how much fake stuff comes of China and average consumers just write off as brand X being sh!t. It's not a small number for high value computer parts. It also works since the batch testing is status quo for final validation just to keep costs in check. Most of the fake parts are actually probably ok, but you can't know they're ok.
 
Decibel said:
That's ridiculous. They should be tracking them by s/n. That's why the barcode is printed on the sticker.

You should be able trace the CPU from manufacturer, to wholesaler, to retailer, to customer.
Click to expand...
At the scale Amazon is at, that costs real money to manage inventory like that. Simply put, they are not. They're actually rather proud that the aren't because it's actually a massive efficiency boost and really did make sense when all the inputs were validated by Amazon and not third parties. That may change, but it cuts into margins.

It's just the cost of doing business and as long as it's less than the alternatives, it's an optimal solution. I can't fault them for that, it's makes them money. For me, I'm out. I still buy a lot of stuff off Amazon, I love them in general. I do make every effort to validate the product when it matters to me.

For example, I wanted this nice water bottle. It wasn't cheap and had a nice finish on it. Totally not worth the money ($30-$50), but whatever. I ordered it off Amazon and notice some of the markings were missing. Also, it seemed really thin and flexed. Filled it and it obviously was leaking far too much temp through the lid. I was very busy, so I had my wife call the manufacturer and inquire. First question they asked her, did we buy it off Amazon. Second question, take a picture of the markings and if it doesn't have exactly X/Y/Z it's fake and they won't warranty it. Fakes really hurts small western companies trying to build a quality product as is destroys this brand image and reputation.
 
This is fascinating, and is starting to make a lot more sense. Counterfeiting something like that truly baffled me but now that I see they're buying bad batches and labeling them appropriately it makes a lot more sense.

It seems like there are just so many fingers to point it's hard to know where to begin, I guess Amazon. Still, Intel must know that Amazon sucks ass at this and they should do a better job of making sure the garbage actually gets thrown away. That much is definitely on them.

BTW what water bottle? For $50 all I can guess is YETI or Klean Kanteen?
 
There are some other Amazon reviews matching your issue. Definitely fraudulent/tampered product going out of Amazon warehouses. That sucks.
 
ZeqOBpf6 said:
This is fascinating, and is starting to make a lot more sense. Counterfeiting something like that truly baffled me but now that I see they're buying bad batches and labeling them appropriately it makes a lot more sense.

It seems like there are just so many fingers to point it's hard to know where to begin, I guess Amazon. Still, Intel must know that Amazon sucks ass at this and they should do a better job of making sure the garbage actually gets thrown away. That much is definitely on them.

BTW what water bottle? For $50 all I can guess is YETI or Klean Kanteen?
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S'well. Similare to the two you mentioned.

Ya, sorry if that wasn't clear. In general for computer and consumer electronics, it's bad batches being reintroduced. For the water bottle, it seems like they copied the tooling or were using old tooling and then made it with inferior materials and skipped some finishing steps. My real S'well feels solid, the fakes felt flimsy. I cared in this case because the Chinese are well known for putting all kinds of crap in their metals, some of which will poison you like lead. Seriously, they literally put poison in baby formula and sold it. Only reason anything happened was because the western world was up in arms when babies started dying and the Chinese govt took a black eye. Embarrass the govt and you're toast, otherwise it's all ok.

That being said, so much of the raw materials and processed metals come out of China now that's often impossible to avoid. For example, I'm a fan of SSBrewTech and they use Chinese stainless steel. It's hard not too at this point. They compromise and validate each batch of stainless steel from China via a certified American lab. Their Chinese suppliers know this and thus, don't pull fast ones. Also, it provides sufficient protection for me.
 
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