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Devastated PC builder orders DDR5 RAM from Amazon, receives DDR2 and some weights — counterfeit 32GB kit a worrying sign of rising return and sales fraud (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 215 points 8 months ago (33 children)

Buying from a reputable operation spares you from a lot of this. Amazon is all hot garbage across the board.

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  • [–] 62 points 8 months ago (26 children)

    It wasn't technology, but i ordered a new mad lib style book for my kid from Amazon. The book arrived with cellophane around it and a nice label that clearly said new. Once opened, it was very obvious the book was used, since the last kid had already filled out the whole damn thing including his name and address inside the cover.

    I'm not mad at the kid, although his parents are probably bad people for returning the book at that point. I am livid that Amazon didn't flip to any random page in the book too determine if the book was used or not.

    Fuck Amazon.

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  • [–] 32 points 8 months ago (24 children)

    Iirc correctly, Amazon actually doesn't resell their returns. At least not through their storefront.

    They have "return auctions" where returns are put onto a pallet and then people bid on them to purchase. Apparently this is cheaper than having a workflow for their returns, checking them to make sure they are resellable, and then stocking them back into their warehouse.

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  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago (20 children)

    So are all these people who say they are buying from Amazon actually buying from 3rd party sellers on Amazon? I'm always confused by these stories with used items being delivered.

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  • [–] 42 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    The principal issue is this, Amazon commingles stock. This means that there is one box for a particular SKU. If a seller sends product to Amazon for fulfillment it gets dumped into the bin with everyone else's.

    This means that if a seller sends counterfeit or poor products to Amazon it gets mixed in with the real ones from other sellers or Amazon's own stock. This causes major problems as you can see.

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  • [–] 26 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Yup, this is the real answer. Verified vendors’ stock isn’t kept separate from the shitty scammers’ stock. Vendor has 10 good memory cards in stock, and a scammer has 5 fakes? The bin will have all 15 cards… So buying from the vendor doesn’t guarantee you get a real memory card, because the counterfeits are in the same bin.

    Every professional photographer knows that good SD cards are Sandisk branded and come from B&H Photo Supply… While bad SD cards are Sandisk branded and come from Amazon.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Many years ago it used to be very obvious when you were buying from Amazon vs 3rd party sellers. Today the only difference is a small bit of text that says “Shipped and sold by Amazon”. The fact that you can even get prime shipping on items from third party sellers makes it so that people often don’t realize.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (12 children)

    Its all the same, you search for something on Amazon, find it, and buy. Not obvious if it is a 3rd party seller or no. It feels like all the same thing.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (10 children)

    You can see on the right side of the screen who the seller is though? It is annoying there isn't a proper filter but you can kind of use the qualified for free shipping filter to filter out third parties.

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  • [–] 13 points 8 months ago

    As I understand it, if any seller is using Amazon fulfillment centers, the product you're given is picked out of the same box regardless of the named seller. That makes it impossible to buy confidently from Amazon based on the reputation of the seller, and makes Amazon themselves an unreputable seller.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago* (4 children)

    Basically if you filter by "prime delivery" you're sure it comes from amazon

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    You can be sure it comes out of an Amazon warehouse. And that's not the same thing.

    Although frankly, it should be. I don't know how they've got this cushy position where they take items from others, store them, and then ship them out for enormous fees without taking on any retailer responsibility.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    By having a convenient website that everybody knows about?

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    Yeah, but what I mean is Tesco and Walmart are a convenient stores that everyone knows about, but if I buy an Ali Express quality fire hazard from those, they'd get into trouble for it.

    While Amazon will ask you to take it up with UFTNGDNH Ltd, who conveniently can't be contacted any more, but here's CVBXDFXE Inc selling the exact same items under a different "brand".

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago*

    I bought a 3 pack of Corsair LL120 RGB case fans directly from Amazon-dot-com (as the seller) before and got a 3 pack of someone's old case fans instead (the old swapperoo). So Amazon told me to just keep them after I sent them many photos of the box and the LPN sticker on it, and they sent me another. Take a guess what was in that box? Yup, more swapperoos. But this was back in 2016-2017 so they may have changed up how they handle returns since then, or how they isolate their own products from 3rd party 'FBA' sellers

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    You don't know that Amazon is a marketplace? So is Walmart and Target. Com for example. You can open a store on any of these platforms and sell while using them for advertisement, warehousing, and shipping. You are responsible for fees and sales etc, but they handle everything else. Yes, they have their own products as well, but most their sales come from vendors on their platform.

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  • [–] 47 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Yeah this stuff is why i never buy tech from Amazon, you never know if you're gonna get a counterfeit item

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Recommendations?

    Newegg has been shit for a decade now (new owners fucked it to hell) and I don't have a Microcenter closer than a 2-hour drive.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    Anywhere that has an actual supply chain instead of website that's just a front for individual resellers. Places like best buy, or if you could get shipped from microcenter.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    Supporting giant evil DOES sometimes get you free stuff… I know folks who have accidentally been shipped multiple of what they’re ordering (in two cases, the items were quite expensive) and when they’ve brought it up, they were told to keep the extras.

    Maybe not worth the evil, but hey, free stuff is cool.

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