As the price of graphics cards continues to fall in the past few months, I believe many people want to buy graphics cards at bargain prices. You may want to be more careful. Recently, some graphics card fraud news has begun to appear abroad. One user bought an RTX 3090 Ti but received a box of sand. Although another user was lucky to get a graphics card, it was a lower-end model (and it is not known whether it is brand new). So when buying a graphics card now, you need to look around and don’t place an order when you see a bargain. If possible, it is best to buy from an officially authorized store.
Photo credit: Patrick J Kennedy
Be careful when buying graphics cards online! Many cases of graphics card fraud occurred abroad
Foreign users bought RTX 3090 Ti and received a box of sand.
According to foreign media reports, a Brazilian Mauricio Takeda user recently purchased the current NVIDIA flagship graphics card GeForce RTX 3090 Ti from Amazon. When he received the package, he felt something was not right, so he asked his wife to help record an unboxing video, just in case there was evidence.
It was later confirmed that this was indeed the case. He shared the video on the TikTok platform. It can be seen that after he opened the package, although there was a seal, the graphics card outer box was obviously not brand new. There were bumps on the corners. It was true. After opening the inner box, there were three bottles of sand inside, and there was no NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card:
https://www.tiktok.com/@maurisousa_/video/7119666408211942661?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7117176805707007490
What’s even worse is that he bought this RTX 3090 Ti for 14,500 BRL, which is about NT$78,500 when converted to Taiwan dollars. Now that the graphics card has fallen like this, you can buy it for around NT$50,000 in Taiwan, so he really spent a lot of money and was deceived. Moreover, he bought it during Amazon Prime Days, and it didn’t feel cheap at all.
For this reason, Mauricio Takeda also contacted Amazon officials, but did not receive active assistance. After trying to call the customer service number many times, he received an email a few days later. The result was not a solution, but the link to the Amazon account was permanently deleted. Then he filed a lawsuit in court. Now that the incident has made headlines in Brazil, Amazon is willing to start addressing the issue.
https://www.tiktok.com/@maurisousa_/video/7121324447608360198?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7117176805707007490
One thing we can learn from Mauricio Takeda’s experience is that when you receive a suspicious or incorrect package, it is best to record it as evidence so that there will be evidence for subsequent application disputes.
Bought RTX 3090 but received RTX 3070
There is also Patrick from a foreign media. He also purchased the brand new EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 from Amazon (also during the Prime Days promotion). Although the outer packaging is RTX 3090, it turns out to be RTX 3070 after opening. This card is officially sold by Amazon.com, so it’s really a bit of a stretch:
Scammed by Amazon. Bought a new @TEAMEVGA @NVIDIA RTX 3090 (Amazon seller.) It arrived. Box seals broken. Inside was a RTX 3070. 🙁 pic.twitter.com/ECMyn0eEfP
— Patrick J Kennedy (@Patrick1Kennedy) July 21, 2022
When he received this RTX 3090, the tape seal had been damaged, so it was obviously exchanged secretly. However, this was shipped from Amazon’s warehouse, not from another seller or second-hand store. He felt that this situation was exaggerated. You can watch this sharing video for details:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jHxBeUYskY
Source: KOCPC Chinese