I'm glad it was resolved, but it's something that shouldn't have needed resolving in the first place really! I too am interested to know how this happened!
I've only ever bought 2 GPU's from OCUK (8800GT and 280x) and both were sealed boxes thankfully.
It happens simply because of many possibilities which apply to all Etailors/Resellers worldwide:-
1. Stock was opened and inspected due to maybe try to ID the product as correct revision/type, happens rarely but does happen. But to do this there should be no finger prints on the card to be honest.
2. The card was inspected at distribution level potentially for same reasons above.
3. Not all brands seal their cards.
4. Someone made a genuine mistake and put a DSR'd/returned card back into new stock and not B-grade. Again distribution may have also done this as well.
We don't bin graphics cards as well we don't actually pre-overclock any graphics cards.
When it comes to 8 Pack we are supplied cards from the manufacturer or will actually request the manufacturer does some binning for us. Trust me we've had over 30pc of various 290's now and 6pc of 295 X2 as samples. Similar for NVIDIA.
OcUK is actually one of the biggest Etailors in the UK for VGA sales, in Q1 alone this year we have sold 15,000 graphics cards which gives you an idea of how small this issue truly is.
Although not all manufacturers seal their boxes, we are very easy to work with and give excellent service so if your ever not happy with a purchase for any reason we shall take it back.
