Buyer Receives Fake Core i9-13900K With i7-13700K Guts From Amazon

It takes a bit of effort to avoid amazon, and it does cost a bit more in money and convenience, but it is possible to not buy from them.

(It's virtually impossible not to use their web services though unless you are a member of an uncontacted tribe in the, you guessed it, Amazon jungle).

I can't figure out how they facilitate fraud and violate consumer laws, en mass, and nothing's been done about it... I mean, apart from the blatant capitalist oligarchies we live in.

I second the other commenter just stop using it. I haven't order anything from Amazon for the better half of a decade. There's no product worth buying that can't be found off Amazon.

You have no duty to reward poor practices with your business.

Not always, some warehouses (like the one I used to be at) stow products based off size. For example, could have RAM, ball point pens, phone cases, chocolate bars and everything else that fits into a small pull out cubby on a shelf shoved into one space.

So the stower scans the item, then scans the space on the shelf space they think they can fit it in. The Picker who bundles orders together is given the task to find the RAM you ordered. They are told it's in X aisle in X cubby. They have to dig through the most random garbage that is shoved into this space because the stower before is given like 2 minutes per item to find space.

Sometimes just to keep their efficiency numbers up the stower will scan the item, scan the space, and never put the item on the shelf bc space was limited. So that item ends up in an adjacent space that they eventually found room for the item and the picker is unaware so they may just have scanned whatever item was closest they could get away with and kept it moving so they don't get backed up. It was a mess of a way to do things.

Same. I just go straight to AliExpress now and know what I'm going to get.

Hey man, I've got your cable right here: 10m 5m 3m 2m 1m HDMI 1.4 2.0 2.1 cable male female for Xbox 360 One Series S X PS3 PS4 PS5 Wii U Switch Apple PC iPhone iPad 4K 4:4:4 16:9 1080p 60Hz 120Hz.

It'd worse than things like Temu. With that you just know you're buying cheap knockoffs with let's say questionable quality. On Amazon, you don't know what quality you're getting, for a worse price, and even worse delivery times (my last purchase from Amazon took 2 months to deliver. For a book!).

I've always bought cables from Monoprice first and Amazon second.

Bought some plant stuff for the wifes bday and the company name on Amazon was XXXtenacion...wtf does that even mean? Why xxx? I don't know, but there are thousands of these ai generated/poorly translated brandings going on.

Yep, just bought a new pixel directly from the Google store on Amazon. They shipped me a refurbished one that was carrier locked to Verizon. It's been 3 weeks since I shipped it back and they still haven't checked it in n for a refund. Prob never buying anything worth more 200 bucks from them again.

I've seen so many Amazon drop ship listings on ebay. They don't even use different pictures.

I just got straight to the source on Ali for all my chinesium stuff, although if you don't want to wade through the express it can be a chore. And express vendors can be as expensive as Amazon.

Ebays not bad, especially for used gizmos. And anything important I just get it from a legitimate retailer.

It really is. On eBay the seller has a rating. On Amazon the item has a rating. You're just sort of randomly buying the thing you want and hope to get a good seller.

For a lot of it its a couple of steps away from ali express atleast. So much so that most of it is just ali express but 10 times more expensive with next day delivery.

Hey man I've had quality knockoffs from Wish. Wish is great if it's not much and you wanna gamble a little.

But, so is Amazon, now. Better return policy, but you pay full price so the gamble is way worse.

Wow. I thought you were heading towards it being self-published with fake accreditation or something. Did not expect this.

Did they have the same ISBN?

Except worse because they mix inventory so it's easier for sellers to get away with scams

Ha! The put my copy of It's OK to be Angry About Capitalism in a huge box with a 40lbs box of cat litter. The book got compressed like an accordion.

B&H seems to be the best bet since Newegg went down the drain. I'd always gone to them for camera gear and never had issues. I'll be going to them for electronics from now on.

Ever heard of MicroCenter? There's only a few but if you live nearish one, go check them out. It's like a toy store for tech nerds.

Don't use B & H. They have had numerous discrimination lawsuits filed against them and don't seem to be changing their behavior. It's just a different kind of evil than Amazon.

B&H

what's the full name?

Microcenter is my go to. I live about 45 minutes from one but any PC parts that are expensive I get there, I also open in store to check for GPUs that were returned to the store to make sure someone didn’t swap out with a cheaper part. I don’t build too often so I don’t make my way over there too often.

I've been getting some PC peripherals from GameStop's site lately since Amazon's lack of reliability has me unwilling to trust them for electronics

I didn't realize how many issues there were with Amazon, I've never had a problem, guess I've been lucky. Unfortunately, while there is finally a microcenter being built in Charlotte, it's not going to be open for a few years. In the meantime, what I can't get at eBay is still easy to get at Amazon, and return it if it's a fake.

Edit: nevermind, microcenter in Charlotte is slated to open by early 2024!!

Thanks for the heads up. I've been dealing with a gym membership that got transferred to a different gym without any notification to us and no way to cancel the contract.

Appreciate the advice I didn’t think about the CFPB.

Manufacturers who sell both directly and via retail usually offer lower prices to retailers (and usually don't disclose those prices publicly), asking the retailers to sell at a suggested price (MSRP, often same as the direct sales price). So if you buy direct the manufacturer has a notably higher profit margin.

Big retailers can often get volume pricing which allows them to keep the prices even lower (if they're willing to reduce profit margins - and yes they do need good logistics to pull this off). Typically the retailers try to make up for the lower margin in volume of sales (and/or by convincing you to buy other higher margin stuff from them too), like when an electronics store selling you an iPhone tries to sell you insurance and accessories to increase their margin since that range of phones are low margin items.

Fraudulent parts on Amazon is a mix clever and just plain dumb I got bricks instead of a GPU. For work I’ve gotten a handful of hard to notice frauds. We got some Samsung SSDs the older sata drives not NVMe. One was a different shade of black and looked altered. It had the guts of a USB drive with a usb to sata homebrew conversion. That one Amazon took back no questions but it was a company purchase so they probably treat those differently.

For Legos if they were frauds I would imagine it would be noticeable. It’s probably a discount because of the volume they purchase.

If you buy legos often I’ve had some good luck going to goodwill stores and getting them super cheap. It’s not going to be a set. Usually it’s mixed pieces in a vacuum sealed bag or bin if there are a lot.

Considering how expensive individual components can be, it’s always a good idea to ensure you got the exact model you paid for while there’s still a chance to return it or report fraud to your credit card company. Even with NiB items mistakes can be made and the wrong item could be shipped out.

“Trust, but verify”

Theoretically possible? Yes, of course. Well beyond the ability of most people including those that print a different model number on the heat shroud? Also yes

With GPUs you can do things like dump its BIOS, alter the identification string, and then re-flash the card.

I've modified a lot of GPU BIOSes to tweak GPU and memory clock timings or enable Mac support.

CPUs aren't that easy to modify. I am not aware of any consumer tools that can simply re-write CPU's internal code.

Regardless, the first time you run a benchmark and it shows that your CPU is really X and not Y, you will know something is wrong.

Yeah, I think this is the real danger. "I don't know why this i9 isn't performing like expected" is a problem where the cause may be much harder to trace if people can reliably change what the processor reports itself as. And even then, the question only even gets asked by those who actually benchmark it.

Throw in the buyer never mentions if the product came from amazon or a third party as written in the article. Amazon should be verifying the quality of the 3rd party sellers, it is shit not to, but come on. To not know? It says Sold By: in the main section if the sale. If it says sold by Elite 100 and not amazon... it is sold by Elite 100.

Example: https://www.amazon.com/Intel-i9-13900K-Desktop-Processor-P-cores/dp/B0BCF54SR1/ref=mp_s_a_1_16?crid=3H73JQQ7TJBCD&keywords=cpu&qid=1693852349&sprefix=cpu%2Caps%2C183&sr=8-16