Amazon i9 warning

Thanks for all the good info guys. I'm surprised i've never heard anything about Amazon's inventory management.

This explains why there are so many conflicting reviews for a lot of items I have bought in the past (ie several people saying the items they got where clearly low quality garbage and others saying it was genuine. )

I always assumed I was relatively safe buying items like flash drives, sd cards, etc if they were directly from Amazon. I guess for critical easily counterfeited items I should be looking elsewhere.
 
I can't believe that inventory system is a thing, I'd be super pissed if I spent that kind of cash on a CPU and got a fake one or nothing in the box all together and they gave me a hard time about it, I wonder if that amazon chase card has any protection against that sort of thing,
 
Same thing is happening over at the photography forums. Members over there are reporting buying expensive B&W filters and upon opening the package finding a cheap $1 filter or even worse a cheap filter with fake B&W written on it. People are buying things, keeping them and returning fake items. Amazon has gone to complete shit now.
 
Amazon has become horrible. Their policies are super anti-customer. I purchased the EVGA DG-85 from there last week because it was on sale for $85 and since it is so big it had to come UPS ground from NJ. I hadn't even received it yet and the price dropped to $65. I talked to them about it and they wouldn't help at all. They told me to send it back and repurchase it. I told them no it took a week to get to me then I would have to wait a week to get it back to them and then a week to get the new one. That isn't a solution.
 
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Thanks for all the good info guys. I'm surprised i've never heard anything about Amazon's inventory management.

This explains why there are so many conflicting reviews for a lot of items I have bought in the past (ie several people saying the items they got where clearly low quality garbage and others saying it was genuine. )

I always assumed I was relatively safe buying items like flash drives, sd cards, etc if they were directly from Amazon. I guess for critical easily counterfeited items I should be looking elsewhere.

Amazon is rife with counterfeit merchandise in ALL categories.

Many product listings are fake, they'll use stock images from the interwebs and ship you a cheap knockoff.

I had a few customers that I directed to get various replacement parts on Amazon, only to get ripped off by scam sellers with fake parts. I only deal with Ebay used parts now, as the rate of counterfeit parts is far lower.
 
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-

View attachment 97827


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


Video all unboxing and initial work until you're sure of what you've got.
 
My mother bought a 500 TB flash drive lmao ... it actually shows 500 TB on windows until you try and copy data and then it errors out and kept asking me to troubleshoot. I cant convince her she was ripped off.

She is computer inept. She swore that thing was 500 terabytes for $5.99

Amazon sold it.
 
I've heard of the same thing happening with specific EOTech EXPS3 models like the EXPS3-0. Instead of a real EOTech, you get a cheap Chinese knock off that looks like its for Airsoft shit. The worst part is you pay pretty close to full price for them.
 
My last few CPU and motherboard purchases have been through Microcenter, and I think they're going to stay that way. Video cards, and laser printers as well.

The rest of the computer parts I buy are so high-volume and low-price I'm willing to take a chance with the odds.
 
My last few CPU and motherboard purchases have been through Microcenter, and I think they're going to stay that way. Video cards, and laser printers as well.

The rest of the computer parts I buy are so high-volume and low-price I'm willing to take a chance with the odds.

I purchase CPU's almost exclusively through Microcenter. Video cards are something I buy from them only when online stores are price gouging and Microcenter has them for MSRP.
 
why microcenter?

Because Microcenter almost always has the absolute lowest prices on CPU's period. If you buy a CPU from them they normally give you $40 off the motherboard of your choice if you buy a motherboard at the same time. That tends to put the motherboard into the cheapest price point as well, but not always.
 
They have good prices, and it's a lot easier to get a replacement if you get a fake product.

For the truly paranoid, you can open up the box in front of the cashier, and look for an empty box/incorrect part (from return scammers), or a lack of official labels/seals.
 
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Video all unboxing and initial work until you're sure of what you've got.

I hear you, it just isn't worth the time and effort in a business environment. I would go back to buying from suppliers like MA labs, haggling prices with the sales reps, and living with normal shipping times before I start recording every box opening and build assembly. The only real reason we use amazon is for prime shipping. Originally it allowed us to keep very little inventory. Unfortunately shipping times are getting longer and overnight is often no longer an option.
 
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I purchase CPU's almost exclusively through Microcenter. Video cards are something I buy from them only when online stores are price gouging and Microcenter has them for MSRP.


MicroCenter is where I went to get the replacement and where I get my personal CPUs. We are close enough that in a pinch, it's viable, but most of any savings are eaten up in paying me OT to make the trip. It's amazing to have them available as a fallback however, I dont know of any other place in the state that would have had an $1100 CPU in stock.
 
I hear you, it just isn't worth the time and effort in a business environment. I would go back to buying from suppliers like MA labs, haggling prices with the sales reps, and living with normal shipping times before I start recording every box opening and build assembly. The only real reason we use amazon is for prime shipping. Originally it allowed us to keep very little inventory. Unfortunately shipping times are getting longer and overnight is often no longer an option.


Okay, maybe recording the entire build is a bit much.

But how hard would it be to set up a well-lit recording station where this stuff is unboxed and inspected?
You have to unpack the stuff to begin with, and you are going to inspect it at some point.
A recording station, if set up properly, offers high visibility, easy start/stop for recording, and should add no more than a minute or two to the initial unpacking/inspecting routine.
You could even create an unboxing procedure to guarantee uniformity and speed.

This would likely allow you to catch 99% of the egregious stuff.

Then, instead of fighting with Spamazon/RottenEgg/Whoever, you simply send in your complaint and a link to the video.
 
MicroCenter is where I went to get the replacement and where I get my personal CPUs. We are close enough that in a pinch, it's viable, but most of any savings are eaten up in paying me OT to make the trip. It's amazing to have them available as a fallback however, I dont know of any other place in the state that would have had an $1100 CPU in stock.

Microcenter is only 20 minutes from my house so going there isn't a big deal.
 
My big thing is that I don't buy from third party for the most part on Amazon. Third party sellers can't be trusted. Sold by "Blank" and fulfilled by Amazon is not good either. Amazon doesn't examine the items its bad mojo. That way I know I am at least getting an item that was supplied to Amazon to be sold by them.
 
My big thing is that I don't buy from third party for the most part on Amazon. Third party sellers can't be trusted. Sold by "Blank" and fulfilled by Amazon is not good either. Amazon doesn't examine the items its bad mojo. That way I know I am at least getting an item that was supplied to Amazon to be sold by them.
Problem is, Amazon DOES examine most of those items when bringing them in, it's just not effective; nor can it be. There's two versions. One is, the third party is merely using Amazon as a listing service and it ships directly from the third party. In this case Amazon basically just gets a listing fee. This is usually only done for large, bulk and thus expensive to ship items.

The second is the third party sends the items (directly or indirectly) to Amazon who then and adds them to Amazon's inventory. This earns Amazon a slightly larger fee, but it also allows for fast shipping since the item is actually in their inventory. It also enables "add-on" item free shipping. However, after that item is taken in and put into inventory, it's no longer any specific suppliers. Rather anyone, Amazon or any third party, who has put some of that SKU in the inventory system can sell that number of items they put, but not that specific unit. Amazon choose the most efficient way to get the general item, but not specific one, out of inventory and shipped to you. That means even if you buy from Amazon's page (as I did for that Intel XXV710-DA2 NIC), you're not guaranteed to get any of the specific items Amazon actually added to inventory; you get anyone and it's not tracked back. It could be, but it's not.

Thus, when you order and it's Fulfilled by Amazon or directly from Amazon, that means it directly out Amazon's inventory, but you don't know who put that exact item in. It works fine if everyone is honest, but since Amazon does not track individual items back to individual suppliers, fakes are common and easy. To the average person, that sounds terrible, but at Amazon's scale it makes them money. Basically, the cost of inspecting the incoming units would quickly kill the arrangement and ya, there's no reasonable way to train anyone to spot fakes for all the products Amazon carries. It also works for the third parties because even though they also get screwed by fakes (the honest ones), the scale Amazon provides easily makes up for it.

Think of it this way. Would you rather profit $1k/mth selling a few items or profit $100k/mth selling a huge number of items, but $10k is lost due to fakes you didn't put into the system? $1k/mth profit or $90k/mth profit? Obvious.

It's basically the high tech version of "shrinkage" and the only stakeholders with enough vested interested to make Amazon fix it are the buyers. Until we complain, everyone is making too much money to care about trivial problems.

Edit: minor clarification. It all makes sense when you grasp Amazon's scale. Things you might do at a small or medium business cost real money and that's profit. If you can find a cheaper way to do it, even a counter intuitive one (actually better because your competition likely isn't doing it), the better.
 
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I have more problems with Amazon than with Ebay. With Ebay I use PayPal and I am protected far better than with Amazon
 
So far, for items that I learned are usually counterfeit - NICs for example - I go eBay and buy North American. That's not because I equal a chinese seller to a fake - after all, they were/are the dumpster of the world for most IT junk, so it's only reasonable to expect any older gear being scavenged and sold from there, which I think is really smart on their part - but because it takes forever to arrive, sometimes past the point of return, so I would rather not risk it.

Now CPUs... well... is this counterfeit in the sense that looks like one but is DOA, or was it supposed to work and pretend it is what it is except for the fact it's not? I remember the second scenario being quite common during the early Pentium days, and it sucked.
 
So far, for items that I learned are usually counterfeit - NICs for example - I go eBay and buy North American. That's not because I equal a chinese seller to a fake - after all, they were/are the dumpster of the world for most IT junk, so it's only reasonable to expect any older gear being scavenged and sold from there, which I think is really smart on their part - but because it takes forever to arrive, sometimes past the point of return, so I would rather not risk it.

Now CPUs... well... is this counterfeit in the sense that looks like one but is DOA, or was it supposed to work and pretend it is what it is except for the fact it's not? I remember the second scenario being quite common during the early Pentium days, and it sucked.
Yes, eBay for used gear is reasonable. Periodically there are a flood of "new" high end NICs that if you look are missing all the validation or packaged differently than they should be. Typically are 50-80% cost of new. My guess is the are fakes or were actually used and repackaged.
 
Ironically I have had less issues with both ebay and craigslist then I have had with amazon. I haven't seen faked high end hardware before and would never really expect say a 1080ti being faked. with that said look up vamery gpu if you want to see some pretty elaberate fakes.
 
Beware of fake processors being sold at retail sites

a user on Twitter posted pictures of what he claims is a Core 2 Duo processor masquerading as a much faster (and decidedly more expensive) Core i9-9900K...Jaime Sanchez, the person who fell for the apparent ruse, warned that "someone is taking and delidding old Core 2 Duo" CPUs and replacing the integrated heatspreader (IHS) with a Core i9 lid...he further claims he purchased the phony CPU on Amazon...

https://www.pcgamer.com/psa-beware-of-fake-processors-being-sold-at-retail-sites/
 
I initially thought that the fake stuff only came from third party resellers on Amazon but evidently, it can happen when the order is fulfilled by Amazon themselves. There was a round of fake EOTech holographic weapon sights being sold on the site. Those aren't as expensive as some CPU's, but $500 isn't cheap either. And of course, you probably guessed it. They were of Chinese origin.
 
I initially thought that the fake stuff only came from third party resellers on Amazon but evidently, it can happen when the order is fulfilled by Amazon themselves. There was a round of fake EOTech holographic weapon sights being sold on the site. Those aren't as expensive as some CPU's, but $500 isn't cheap either. And of course, you probably guessed it. They were of Chinese origin.

Amazon comingles inventory. That is why it really doesn't matter. As soon as fake product makes it into Amazon's channel in anyway it can pop up anywhere.
 
Beware of fake processors being sold at retail sites

a user on Twitter posted pictures of what he claims is a Core 2 Duo processor masquerading as a much faster (and decidedly more expensive) Core i9-9900K...Jaime Sanchez, the person who fell for the apparent ruse, warned that "someone is taking and delidding old Core 2 Duo" CPUs and replacing the integrated heatspreader (IHS) with a Core i9 lid...he further claims he purchased the phony CPU on Amazon...

https://www.pcgamer.com/psa-beware-of-fake-processors-being-sold-at-retail-sites/

Yeah after that I had to check mine as it's still in the packaging. Seems to be good to me
 
I bought some high quality Bnise binoculars from Amazon, fulfilled by Amazon.
They are good enough quality if awkward to use but later when I looked them up on the Bnise website, these have never existed.
During that search I found many many people selling exactly the same binocs under different brand names.

I've been stung by Amazon too many times now that I mostly use them to find products and buy them elsewhere.
I stopped using Ebay years ago because most things I bought from them were dodgy in some way but because of Amazon I use them again and am having much better luck now.
It pays to research heavily before buying these days.
 
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