It's almost like the writing on the wall was trying to tell us something! Amazon is a bloated poorly self-regulated market with a low barrier to entry that prioritizes convenience over quality, while obfuscating the truth of the seller you do business with.
I sincerely can’t figure out how to use Amazon anymore and I’m very tech literate. Top that off with their labor practices literally being criminal and you have a spicy pizza pie.
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 like when you pay extra to avoid them, and the other site just orders from Amazon anyway and has it shipped to you.
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.
Ha, here in Austria the government has effectively made it impossible for small vendors to sell their stuff. Amazon is pretty much all that's left.
What did the government do to cause that?
It's a new packaging law. Every non-Austrian merchant who wants to ship goods to Austria has to have a local notary acting as a representative who has to register the packaging used for shipments with the local authorities and is personally held liable for this. There are local notaries that offer this service for foreign merchants for about €800 per year. However, Austria is such a small market that this most likely eats up all of the revenue from Austrian customers for small merchants, so most just stopped shipping to the country. Of course, large merchants like Amazon easily can handle that fee.
haha, in germany it often times is just cheaper to order elsewhere these days
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.
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.
Yeah, I recently ordered something on AliExpress and noticed that I felt less suspicious about their listings than I usually feel when I browse Amazon.
Same. I just go straight to AliExpress now and know what I'm going to get.
Amazon turned out really weird. I feel like the idea of Amazon should be consolidating reputable retailers together, but they decided to open the floodgates to random people and now it's little better than wish.com. Maybe they should split the site up and push all the random sellers onto a different platform.
It used to be the safe alternative to eBay... Nowadays maybe it's the opposite
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.
Bet it wasn't google, it was something 'xingwang productions' calling themselves google.
Raspberry pi had loads of these during the shortage (still does, I think).. the listing has 'Raspberry Pi model 4B' and 'Visit the raspberry pi store' and '#1 best seller' and you dig a little and find it's a reseller who's shifting at a markup.
Amazon do nothing to prevent companies masquerading as others.
The problem is Amazon puts everything with the same SKU in the same bin. So your "xingwang productions" Pixel phones are in the same place as the official "Google Store" stuff.
I basically stopped buying on Amazon unless there's no other way to get what I want (or it doesn't matter that much) because of this. Definitely not touching any food, skin cream, etc from there or expensive electronics.
See, this is weird. Normally I get a refund the moment I drop it off at UPS/Kohls/USPS. They don’t even wait for the item to actually reach their warehouse most of the time. This includes a $4k laptop with a DOA thunderbolt port.
I've seen so many Amazon drop ship listings on ebay. They don't even use different pictures.
I ordered four m.2 chips for a raid and one of them was not like the others. Clearly a diff brand chip with a sticker transferred to it. Had I not bought multiple chips I might not have caught on.
Fuck amazon for anything of value. I now use it only for things like books and cat litter.
I now use it only for things like books
Regarding that ... I recently bought a hefty biography on Oppenheimer - should have had more than 500 pages, great reviews. What arrived was a 50-page small format booklet. Not even books are a "safe buy" on Amazon.
Wow. I thought you were heading towards it being self-published with fake accreditation or something. Did not expect this.
Amazon damaged their brand name once they started acting like a third-party marketplace. Now it's basically almost like ebay.
Except worse because they mix inventory so it's easier for sellers to get away with scams
If you're building systems, I would assume you're the kind of person that knows how they work.
The system tells you what CPU it has on boot.
The BIOS tells you what CPU you have.
MemTest86 would have told you what CPU you had when you tested it after assembling your system.
Windows tells you what you have in Settings > About and Task Manager.
Apps like CPU-Z have been downloaded a billion times and tell you what CPU you have.
Geekbench would have told you what CPU you have and how it performs.
The article mentions someone paying a bunch for a specific CPU back in April, but then never bothered actually checking it until recently... What the CPU had written on it is meaningless. I couldn't even tell you what my current CPU looked like before I installed it. It could have said Pentium 2 or 486SX or Core i-13. What mattered was that it physically fit, the system booted, and my software said "yup, this is what you paid for."
The issue is if it never occurred to you that you might have been scammed you might not ever think to look.
I built my first computer last year, with all NiB internals, my main concerns when assembling it was does it work. If it underperformed (due to a bootleg part) I might not have been able to appreciate due to a lack of reference point.
This kind of practice is perfect for targeting the person using PC part picker to build a computer without an indepth knowledge or a relative buying it as a gift for someone else.
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”
Would it not be possible to fake most of those by spoofing the model the CPU reports, like what happens with GPUs?
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
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The pricing didn't raise any red flags since the user paid close to MSRP for the 24-core chip.
Switching the IHS on a cheap chip to sell it as a higher-tier SKU is the oldest tactic in the playbook.
There are many ways to spot a fake processor; however, the typical consumer doesn't check the product's authenticity.
In the Redditor's case, he bought the phony Core i9-13900K in April and evidently hasn't noticed that he was scammed until now.
The fraudster only receives a $180 profit from the operation, leading to a discussion among Redditors on the genuineness of the case.
The fact that you're buying a product from a big retailer, such as Amazon or Newegg, can sometimes give you a certain level of confidence.
The original article contains 416 words, the summary contains 126 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This reminds me of the black market IC thing that caused so much chaos about 15 years ago.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
