Buyer Beware! Reports Of Fake Ryzen CPUs Popping Up On Retail Sites

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kenjitamura

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Going to echo the sentiment of not purchasing from third party sellers on Amazon if they don't have extensive (3000+) positive feedback. I bought a monitor from a retailer with a few hundred positive reviews and never received it. Passes the shipping window and I leave them a message. No reply to the message and go back to their ratings page and find that as of a few days earlier it had received dozens of 1 star ratings about not getting the items.

Also filed an a to z claim with Amazon for a refund and still have yet to see it in my bank account, been well over a week.
 


Call them directly, Amazon don't waste time with scammers. They will refund you on the go. Happened to me in the past. They have the best customer service out there... since they don't pay taxes to governments >XD
 
On a side note. I really hate that Newegg and Walmart have third party sellers. If I wanted to deal with a third party I'd go to Amazon or eBay. If I go to Newegg or Walmart. It is because I want to deal with them.

Of course the only reason I look at the Walmart website is to see if they carry something at my local store.
 
As if purchasing a vehicle or even trying to get one repaired isn't enough to scare the general public now we have, and have had for quite a while, other items, or should I say sellers, that we must do research on. It is bad enough we need to do so much homework on the right components for our needs but now it is as vital that we do homework on who has the product. And here I thought the homework ended when we graduated from school/collage.

As for the third party sellers, I recently purchased a new mouse because mine was starting to act up. I went on Newegg and the one I wanted was only sold by some Chinese company that I have never heard of so I just bit the bullet and ordered the same mouse from Best Buy and it turned out cheaper by $25. For around 4-5 years now Newegg has leaned more and more on the third party sellers and this has most recently forced me to rethink on where I should purchase my hardware from. At least Best Buy is local and I trust them more than an anonymous Chinese vender.
 
Recently while browsing Amazon, I have noticed a lot of sellers asking you to contact them BEFORE buying the item. These sellers are usually new to Amazon as well. That should be a dead giveaway right there. Still, it's ashame this kind of crap goes on, but we all know it will never stop. They'll find other ways to scam us.
 
more of these things happen the more I am happy I have a fry's electronics and a micro center store in my area.
though eBay with PayPal doesn't mess around with scammers. so eBay is never out of touch either, but like crossing the street you need to look left and right for hidden car that may just try to run you down....
 
^^I use Micro Center for my CPU/motherboard upgrades solely. Their bundle deals beat NewEgg even with their no sales tax and free or low cost shipping by a long shot. And I'm on Fry's daily deal mailing list which can score you a killer deal. For example, the last killer deal I got was a Thrustmaster T300RS wheel for $269 which retails for $399. The amount of money I've saved between those two stores, let alone their liberal return policies, is phenomenal. Only on certain items of course. New Egg and B&H Photo still beat them on things like GPU*, memory, and SSD prices.

*Historic reference before the Ethereum mining craze jacked everything up.
 

mapesdhs

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The giant autoplay advert is annoying. Much more productive and useful to the content of the article would be an example picture or two of the kind of fake CPUs to which the article refers.

Ian.
 

COLGeek

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Only after being installed in a compatible motherboard.

Won't help beforehand and very likely to NOT fit into the AM4 motherboard purchased for the (expected) Ryzen system.
 

spdragoo

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Have to agree with you there. Not that I don't like using Amazon -- it's been a great way to get hard-to-find books, or to find some new, relatively inexpensive gift that you can't always find in a store. And I like being able to research parts information online.

But for big purchases, especially electronics & computer parts? I would much rather go to a brick-and-mortar store to get them. I love having a Micro Center that's almost right on my way home from work (my brother-in-law is even luckier, as his local Micro Center is right at the freeway exit where he works). Makes it very convenient, & if I ever had to return something I would have a lot less hassle.
 

bloodroses

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With Amazon, if you get scammed by a seller, call Amazon.

I had ordered something from a reseller because the price seemed to be too good to be true (it was claimed a clearance closeout). Sure enough, it was too good to be true. I called Amazon about it, they tried to contact the reseller about the product, but got no reply. I ended up getting refunded the amount, and replaced my credit card just in case.

I also had another case where I never received a product I ordered. Called Amazon, they contacted the seller. Amazon contacted me back and asked if I'd like the item reshipped completely for free or to cancel the order. I asked to have it reshipped and it was overnighted for free.

Amazon, like most retail businesses, will try to do what it can to keep it's customers.
 

dstarr3

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Not sure why this is being downvoted, because Amazon has always given me great service. There have been a few times where I've accidentally bought 3rd-party and there have been problems, Amazon has always been very eager to refund/replace problem orders. I even used to have a problem with packages being stolen in a previous apartment complex, and Amazon replaced those packages free of charge each time.

I know it's trendy to hate on mega-corporations, and for good reason, but honestly Amazon's customer service really is top-notch from my experience.
 

bloodroses

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Honestly, the only reason why I could see a downvote is the comment about not paying taxes to the governments. While that is true, most businesses don't pay taxes. Stupid loophole system. :(
 

Brian_R170

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Don't think you're safe when buying local. I bought a gaming mouse from Fry's that was new in a shrink-wrapped box. I got it home and opened the package and it looked like it had seen a couple years worth of use. The cord was frayed, the gold plating was worn off the USB connector, the gliders were all completely worn off and all of the seams were full of dirt. Went back the next day to return it. I explained what happened and the Fry's "associate" accused me of trying to scam them.
 

bloodroses

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That is 100% true. I used to know people who would do bait and switch tactics such as that with places like Walmart, etc all the time.
Having worked in retail at one point in time, more often than not employees just re-shrinkwrap the product if the box looks good (even though they're supposed to check the product) and put it back on the shelves. I think it has gotten to the point now though that anything returned just gets shipped back to a warehouse instead of just locally and checked to help prevent bait-and-switch products from affecting normal customers.
 

dstarr3

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Yeah, DIY shrinkwrapping is very easy. Not to mention the wide variety of retail jobs that give people access to an actual shrinkwrapping machine. Any person so inclined can just buy a thing, take the product out, put a rock in its place, shrinkwrap it, and return it "unopened" without any difficulty.

There used to be a wave of scams where people would buy those coffee mugs that looked like expensive camera lenses, then buy those lenses the mugs looked like, and return the lenses with the mugs in their place. The people checking returns would see something that looked like a lens in the box and move on, and the scammer would walk away with a $2k camera lens for the cost of a coffee mug.
 


And this is only if you try to put it into a compatible motherboard. If they use an old Celeron CPU it will not fit in the socket for an AMD Ryzen chip.
 
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