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I semi-recently bought a Samsung 970 EVO from Amazon, except new (and not from a third-party seller). Instead I received a security blanket: https://i.imgur.com
by Log1x 6y ago
I semi-recently bought a Samsung 970 EVO from Amazon, except new (and not from a third-party seller). Instead I received a security blanket: https://i.imgur.com/DTPdhAn.jpg https://i.imgur.com/DTPdhAn.jpg
The SSD box was seemingly factory sealed.
I also bought a Dyson fan recently and what came was an obviously used, yellow stained, disgustingly old model of a Dyson fan. I hopped on Live Chat, they apologized, initiated a return - few weeks later I get a semi-threatening email from Amazon telling me that the Dyson fan I sent back "wasn't sent back in its original condition" - I hopped on Live Chat and made sure everything was ok with my account (it was) - but still, ..wtf. this is a problem.
- AnssiH 6y agoMy guess: The chat agent selected an incorrect reason for the return, causing Amazon to expect the actual item back. Whenever possible, I always initiate the return myself to avoid customer service messing things up (there is a specific return reason "received incorrect item" in the dropdown).
- paulcole 6y agoSimilarly I had to get a refund on a 10-pack of items when I only received a 5-pack. Months later I get an email saying I didn't return all 10 that I had ordered. No shit, that was the problem!
- Gibbon1 6y agoI once ordered a rail of Atmel Microcontrollers from Digikey. Got four 74HC00's. Called them, sent them back. And then Digikey sent the $28 bill to collections. I complained and they politely told me to fuck off.
- stygiansonic 6y agoThere are scammers who will buy the item, open the shrink wrap and remove the item before rewrapping it to make it look like they never opened it. This becomes more difficult if there are security seals. See: https://lawyerrant.wordpress.com/favorite-scams/the-empty-box-return/ https://lawyerrant.wordpress.com/favorite-scams/the-empty-bo...
- EE84M3i 6y agoDoes Amazon really maintain a database of products -> security seals and verify them when they come in?
- dointheatl 6y agoOh wow, I had literally the exact same thing happen to me last June: https://imgur.com/a/qzVDuJr https://imgur.com/a/qzVDuJr
- pintxo 6y agoNow we all wonder if this is actually the same blanket ... I propose to add some markings to these products to explore how often Amazon will try to sell the same non-product.
- dointheatl 6y agoUnlikely to be the same blanket, as Amazon did not request that I send it back to them as I recall.
- wiml 6y agoThis could be a really entertaining version of Wheresgeorge/Bookcrossing, but with returned Amazon shipments...
- milesvp 6y agoYears ago, when I worked as a hall tech. I'd mark certain parts that had intermittent errors, whenever I RMA'd them, so that when I got them back later, I would immediately know. Because it was SOP to replace parts until the PC worked (not every tech was particularly good at troubleshooting), parts would end up coming back pretty regularly, since there was often nothing wrong with them. But it was super frustrating to get back the motherboard you knew had a faulty dimm slot, only to see that dimm slot fail for another machine replacement.
- Log1x 6y agolol wow!
- blitmap 6y agoI know sometimes they use weight to detect if the right item is in the box. I would still expect a visual check though.
- sgerenser 6y agoChecking weight makes sense, maybe that’s why more than one person received an emergency blanket in an ssd box. Someone discovered it weighed about the same as the ssd.
- CaptainBern 6y agoThere seems to be a real problem with those Samsung SSD's on Amazon. There's quite a few reviews where people even received a fake SSD, the only thing that gives it away is the connector[0]! I decided I wouldn't take the risk and bought mine elsewhere. [0]: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71u2ZnjYcWL._CR0,161,978,978_UX256.jpg https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71u2ZnjYcWL...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jonny_eh 6y agoCould there be a crime ring in the factory?
- icedchai 6y agoA shrink wrap machine is relatively cheap and does wonders for people running these operations. Nobody is going to check inside a "factory sealed" box. Folks were running scams like this in the 90's. I remember a friend of mine bought a hard drive from CompUSA. Turned out it was actually a brick sealed in a box.
- Spooky23 6y agoLol. I worked there in college and someone had the great idea to put things like hard disks and video cards on the shelf instead of behind the counter to reduce labor costs. People ran all sorts of scams, most commonly putting a $500 video card in a $20 box. I’d catch them all of the time, but if you reported it you had a chance of losing commissions when loss prevention people interviewed you. Solution: avoid the aisle. The other crazy one was what we called the crime bus. A charter bus of Asian people, usually Chinese, would pull up and flood the store with like 30 people on a weekday, pinning down every employee with stupid questions. Another group would loot the aisles of hard disks, various video/other cards and certain inks. I was there for one — it was absolutely insane. They put that stuff back behind the counter a few months later.
- icedchai 6y agoThey'd also accept returns of software if you gave a plausible excuse. My friend would usually say one of the floppies had a read/write error, and he changed his mind. Too bad they went broke! In the 90's, CompUSA was one of the only local places that had a large selection of computer parts.
- reilly3000 6y agoThis is why we can't have nice things like local computer stores :/
- mjayhn 6y agoLosing the ability to rent PC games when I was about 8 rocked my world. I'll never forget the last game I ever rented, SimTown. Going to that rental store was almost as exciting as walking through a computer expo.
- rajup 6y agoElectronics on Amazon in general seems to be a hit-or-miss made worse by inventory commingling. Recently bought a PS4 controller from Amazon (purportedly from Sony). Did not last 3 months. The original controller I got with the PS4 itself still works great after more than 2 years.
- TazeTSchnitzel 6y agoUnfortunately I suspect everything on Amazon is unreliable now, we just notice technology item issues first because we know them better.
- LordDragonfang 6y agoNot necessarily; tech items have huge margins compared to raw materials cost, most of the expense is design and QC. Binned/inferior components marked as the genuine article are worth counterfeiting in a way that other items aren't, besides the other known exceptions (e.g. fashion items)
- prashnts 6y agoInteresting. I tore one down recently. It was a gift for my nephew but didn't work out of the box. Well, it did "work", as in, it identified as genuine controller; had all "real stuff" look, but buttons skipped, lagged, or just didn't work. The insides revealed a mix of genuine components (probably off of scrap?) and an assembly-line quality bodge-work. (I didn't take any pictures, but I still have it -- so I can post some pictures if anyone's interested.)
- Spooky23 6y agoMy brother has the opposite problem. He ordered a pan and got a very expensive Samsung SSD — 3 times.
- Bombthecat 6y agoLol what? But... Why?
- PTOB 6y agoBecause the pan took Teflon to get there.
- jimmyspice 6y agoI would like to have that problem, which pan is it?
- arthurcolle 6y agoWhat a terrible problem! What's the pan?
- userbinator 6y agoThat's probably not a scam, and due to something like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22285099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22285099
- rayhendricks 6y agoI got a paperlike screen protector from Amazon warehouse. When it arrived it had obviously been ripped off another iPad Pro and set on the floor. There was a pubic/pet/?? Hair under it and it was obviously unusable. Of course it still had the factory inspected seal though bc amazon drones dgaf. Amazon did refund, but made me resend the item rather than throwing in the trash. Proof: https://photos.app.goo.gl/f1jxjvooWAPVuh4DA https://photos.app.goo.gl/f1jxjvooWAPVuh4DA
- bartread 6y ago> Of course it still had the factory inspected seal though bc amazon drones dgaf. Given the purported working conditions in their warehouses, is it that much of a surprise?
- sli 6y agoEven ignoring the horrible working conditions in Amazon warehouses, this is not a problem we can reasonably expect the warehouse staff to solve or even approach in any meaningful way. They have absolutely no power over Amazon's internal problems. Amazon will simply fire warehouse staff if they take too long fulfilling orders because they're questioning the legitimacy of items in the warehouse.
- megablast 6y agoPeople who shop Amazon really don’t care about the people who work there. Only they stuff they buy.
- greedo 6y agoI was worried about getting ripped when I bought my last Samsung, so I ordered directly from their site. I don't think they use Amazon for fulfillment (unlike Anker), and all was well. Every time I order something from Anker, I worry about getting hosed.
- mountainb 6y agoThis could have been a warehouse error. I would err on the side of warehouse error. A real fraud would have sent you a brick or a worthless tile of the same dimension and weight.
- mbesto 6y agoIsn't this just "cost of doing business" for a company of Amazon's size? Like sure, this does happen but at what rate?
- bartread 6y agoFor the most part I do not buy anything other than media from Amazon any more - books, Kindle, CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, games, and of course streaming. One notable exception is the Amazon Basics range of cables where I tend to go a little nuts. Again, for the most part, these are the things they were originally good for in the 90s and early noughties; these are the things they're still good for now. Everything else is Russian roulette. In the late noughties/early onesies I went through this period where I realised I could just buy anything I wanted that wasn't food from Amazon, and it was briefly great. However, they have had a huge problem with counterfeit, poor quality, seconds, and reconditioned goods for a number of years now. If you need thing X you're much better buying it from a specialist retailer, direct from the manufacturer or - depending on what it is - even from eBay, Gumtree (or its US equivalent Craigslist), particularly for used items. Avoid Amazon like the plague for non-media items.
- dan-robertson 6y agoHonestly I’m not even sure Amazon is a particularly good place to get books anymore. Amazon made it possible for publishers to make out-of-print works widely “available” but when you order such a book you might get one from the original run (printed with offset printing to a generally high standard), or you might get a “print on demand” book with terrible quality with vague, feathered letter shapes and plates which look like they came out of an inkjet printer running low on ink. Apparently Amazon’s own print on demand service produces high quality books but it is impossible to know what sort of book you are getting until it arrives.
- ghostpepper 6y agoIs there another good place to get out-of-print books? Or are you saying that for current books, a brick-and-mortar store is best, and for out-of-print, rolling the dice with Amazon is better than nothing?
- AareyBaba 6y agoTry Powells https://www.powells.com/ https://www.powells.com/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jeanvaljean2463 6y agoI keep telling everyone I come across, STOP BUYING THINGS from Amazon. They know they have a huge problem and refuse to face it. I was injured in 2010 by counterfeit toiletries and since have embargoed them completely. I'm happy to buy things from the manufacture and pay shipping, at least I know with a reasonable confidence that what I am getting is going to be the real thing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- spoopyskelly 6y agoStop buying things because a small percentage of them are broken. Makes sense.
- myvoiceismypass 6y agoIf a fucking toiletry fucks with me... are you even serious? You see nothing remotely wrong with this?
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoStop buying things with high profit margin that are easily adulterated. Everything I buy passes through a filter: How profitable is it to fake this and do I care if it is?
- ASalazarMX 6y agoIf you can't reliably distinguish between genuine and scam vendors, yes, that makes sense.
- bduerst 6y agoThere need to be better indexed shopify and big cartel sites. So many great online stores I've bought from use that as a web front.
- 6y ago
- wil421 6y agoSame thing happened to me with RAM. Security blanket instead of the RAM. The package had a similar graphic but was a completely different size. It was the single most frustrating customer service experience of my life. The return was a nightmare but it wasn’t because of the counterfeit. Some weird glitch with the return label and a terrible call center employee.
- burnte 6y agoThese stories amaze me. I'm not saying they're not true, I believe you're having these experiences. I just stunned because the worst thing that happened to me with Amazon lately is their in-house delivery service has a bad track record of losing things, but I still get it in the end. I rarely have a problem with Amazon orders. Weird.
- perryizgr8 6y agoThis is why I refuse to pre-pay for high value items. I will wait for the delivery guy, inspect the item myself, then pay if everything is alright.
- washadjeffmad 6y agoThis happened to me recently with what was supposed to be an 8GB Raspi 4 in a seemingly factory sealed box. I was trying to figure out how it was swapped, and assuming the original packaging was used, it looked like the glue of one flap may have been slit open with a box cutter and then resealed with low viscosity adhesive. It probably also wouldn't be hard to scan an unfolded box and then print it with an altered barcode on some light container board or card stock, just a lot more effort.