The negative feedback is struck through and comes with Amazon’s added disclaimer: “This item was fulfilled by Amazon, and we take responsibility for this fulfillment experience.” It doesn't affect the seller's reputation. It appears the seller is blatantly exploiting Amazon’s FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) program. If you're unfamiliar with FBA, it’s a program where sellers ship their products directly to Amazon’s warehouses. From there, Amazon handles every aspect of the transaction: storage, packing, shipping, customer service, and product returns.
Since Amazon assumes responsibility for FBA orders, affected customers have likely been reimbursed. However, it remains unclear whether Amazon is absorbing the financial blow from these fraudulent transactions or if the seller is ultimately held accountable. It's baffling and concerning that Amazon has yet to take decisive action and suspend the seller.
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Zhiye Liu News Editor, RAM Reviewer & SSD Technician Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
Shiznizzle Amazons customer review system is a mess, as sellers are allowed to sell multiple, physically different, items and all reviews get lumped together into one. You can essentially sell rubic cubes and then have those numbers appear as positive for 499 dollar MSI Oled's. For expensive yet cheaper than anywhere else tech items i film from delivery at the door to the opening of said items. So far so good. The GPU i bought last year for 379 pounds was there. Imagine if you made a fake persona complete with bank account and duped 42 people each out of 1000 dollars. That must be a ton of money in rural china. And the person if careful is not likely to get caught. What are people doing buying that GPU at that price though? No flags went up? That would send flags up for me right away. Reply
txfeinbergs If you aren't going to do your due diligence when making a purchase, expect to get scammed. These are the same people that fall for the bitcoin ATM scams. Reply
Jabberwocky79 Shiznizzle said: Amazons customer review system is a mess, as sellers are allowed to sell multiple, physically different, items and all reviews get lumped together into one. You can essentially sell rubic cubes and then have those numbers appear as positive for 499 dollar MSI Oled's. Exactly this. It's sooo stupid and frustrating when you are trying to evaluate a purchase. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these victims are younger gamers with less life experience. As the article stated, anyone with a pulse on the market and fully developed prefrontal cortex would smell a rat. Reply
ejolson Some time ago I received two stickers instead of two Ryzen 5800X3D processors. It was a similar story where a highly rated seller suddenly started scamming their customers on Amazon. I think it's a business model. Even though I was not the only customer complaining, it took about 6 months and multiple phone calls for Amazon to refund my purchase. Reply
vanadiel007 People should know that nobody is going to sell brand new 5090's for half MSRP. I mean, it's obvious there's some kind of catch…. Reply
thewindmind I'm happy to know that I reported this scam to Amazon. I didn't fall for it, but I did fall for a 4tb NVMe M2 SSD scam and I'm committed to revenge against all scammers, now. Reply
Notton Shiznizzle said: Amazons customer review system is a mess, as sellers are allowed to sell multiple, physically different, items and all reviews get lumped together into one. You can essentially sell rubic cubes and then have those numbers appear as positive for 499 dollar MSI Oled's. It's actually worse than that. As a seller, you can recycle old ASINs. Presumably, Amazon did this so sellers didn't have to start a new product launch with zero reviews -you need 4.5/5 average to get boosted by the algorithm- but it didn't take long to figure out how to abuse it. Reply
Jame5 The GeForce RTX 5090 launched at a staggering $1,999, but the ongoing global NAND shortage has sent prices for this Blackwell gaming flagship soaring to unprecedented heights. Pretty sure the NAND shortage has nothing to do with the price of GPUs consuming large amounts of RAM . Did you mean RAM shortage? Reply
gdmaclew Amazon is too big to worry about blowback. Period. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/usd999-rtx-5090-gpu-scam-claims-42-victims-fanny-pack-bait-and-switch-tactic-employed-by-top-rated-amazon-seller#main
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.