A gamer ordered an RTX 4080 on Amazon. But when he opens his package, he finds out that it doesn’t work properly.
A player wanted to save money and ordered a used RTX 4080 directly through Amazon. But instead of the graphics card, he receives only the air cooler. The board with the graphics chip is missing. This is reported by the user on reddit.com.
Why can’t he do anything with it? Important calculations or rendering of data are handled by the graphics chip. The entire cooling system is only there to keep the graphics chip cool so that it doesn’t overheat under heavy load. Normally, the cooling element is the cheapest component of the graphics card. And the cooling system can’t really be used outside of a GPU either.
Buyers remove the graphics chip and return the cooler
What is the problem? Some users order a graphics card for their computer on Amazon. However, those who want to equip their graphics card with a water cooler don’t need the air cooler. They then return this air cooler to Amazon. Some users believe: Amazon only checks products for their external appearance and not whether they actually work. Therefore, it goes unnoticed if the board with the graphics chip is missing upon return.
Another user on reddit adds that many sellers or shipping employees at Amazon probably cannot distinguish a cooler from a complete graphics card. He explains:
Most people don’t even know what hardware is supposed to look like. A random Amazon employee probably doesn’t know what they are looking at, let alone what should be in the packaging.
He himself once bought a power supply on Amazon and found a completely different model in the box. He noticed that when unpacking.
Such fake products on Amazon are indeed not unusual and it happens regularly, that gamers order a graphics card and instead receive a wrong product.
Scams and fraud with graphics cards are increasingly common on Amazon
What is the problem with such fraud? At first glance, the purchased product and the seller seem reliable. The next buyer might only notice the exchange in the box under the worst circumstances.
And this person has a problem if the purchased product doesn’t work or isn’t present at all. Because in the worst case, the seller considers this buyer to be a fraudster. This happened to a father who wanted to report a fake graphics card on Amazon.
Can one protect oneself against such things? Many people now recommend making a video when unpacking particularly expensive hardware:
- Because if you then hold fake goods or simply the wrong product in your hands, you at least have the evidence on your side.
- Moreover, you can prove that you did not swap the goods, but that someone else must have been the villain before you.
But there is also good news about Amazon. One user, for instance, reported that he managed to get a high-end graphics card on Amazon for surprisingly little money. How he did that, you can read in the following article on MeinMMO:
