Get a 'brick' when buying an expensive graphics card

One Amazon customer said they received an old battery wrapped in an anti-static bag instead of an RTX 5080 graphics card, highlighting the risks of stock swapping.

A customer received a brick when purchasing a GPU on Amazon. Photo: GlassHistorial5303 .

On Reddit, an Amazon customer shared a shocking experience when instead of the RTX 5080 graphics card he had just ordered, he received a brick wrapped in an anti-static bag.

A user named GlassHistorical5303 said that he bought a PNY GeForce RTX 5080 card from the company's official store on Amazon. However, when he opened the box, the product inside was just an industrial battery, packaged exactly like a real GPU. The incident shows that the product was likely swapped before reaching the customer.

The popular theory is that the fraudster may have purchased a genuine card, removed it from the box, and replaced it with an item of equal weight before returning it to Amazon. When the warehouse system shuffles inventory, which combines products from multiple sellers to streamline operations, the swapped item is re-entered into circulation. The need to simply balance the box weight makes this fraud difficult to detect.

In this case, it is possible that the box containing the fake GPU should have been discovered in the warehouse but “slipped through the net”. Alternatively, the warehouse staff directly took advantage of the loophole to swap the product. Regardless of the cause, the customer is still the one who suffers. The user in question has filed a refund request with Amazon and is waiting for it to be resolved.

Similar incidents are not uncommon. In the past, many customers have received boxes of instant noodles, rice, or even a bag of salt instead of high-end graphics cards. One case of a GPU purchased from Newegg was even "bricked" instead of the ordered product. These incidents often become jokes in the community but cause buyers to lose both money and time waiting for customer service.

Experts warn that the trend of “inventory mix-up” scams is on the rise. Consumers, even when buying from official stores on major e-commerce platforms, may still face risks.

Source: https://znews.vn/nhan-ve-cuc-gach-khi-mua-hang-tren-amazon-post1587727.html