Warning - Beware of fake GPUs

Hostile_18 · 25 Mar 2025 at 10:17

Matthew Hunt said:
I stopped buying computer components from the Rainforest due to being sent a different board.
I ordered an ASUS ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi II board from them and in the box was clearly a scam return of a ASUS ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi original.
So someone bought the II and then returned their I, which also had a couple of bent pins.

I contacted them and stated they sent me the wrong board and they just said return it.

2 weeks later I received this:-
"We received incorrect item , instead of the correct Item : ASUS ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi II (Intel 14th, 13th & 12th Gen) LGA 1700 ATX motherboard, 18+1 power stages, DDR5 slots, five M.2 slots, PCIe 5.0, WiFi 7, USB 20Gbps w/ PD 3.0 up to 30W , in your return of order # 026-3547989-4270716. Since the incorrect item was returned, Per Amazon's return policy, Amazon does not store mistakenly sent items, and no compensation is provided for incorrect items sent to Amazon. We're happy to accept the return of the correct item at your earliest convenience.

If you would like to appeal this decision, please reply to this email to reach an Account Specialist. Our Customer Service team can only confirm that we sent this message and help you with technical issues. They cannot reverse this decision or share more details on this matter."

I appealed and they just responded with exactly the same email back - So had to do a chargeback on the credit card, which took 3 months but eventually won.

Pretty much me with the swapped out/incorrect ssd they sent me. if you do charge backs though then you risk them closing your account, which would result in bricked Alexa's and Kindles. So they send you the wrong item, refuse to allow the "incorrect" item back and your stuck.

stuartharrison · 25 Mar 2025 at 10:36

Hostile_18 said:
Pretty much me with the swapped out/incorrect ssd they sent me. if you do charge backs though then you risk them closing your account, which would result in bricked Alexa's and Kindles. So they send you the wrong item, refuse to allow the "incorrect" item back and your stuck.

I haven't had a problem with returns to them but it might help that I have a business account with them. I haven't had to deal with the swaparoo though, when someone dishonestly returns an item and switches it with their old POS.

VPalermo · 26 Mar 2025 at 20:06

I managed to get my refund. I can finally breathe a sigh of relief...

Dontrocktheboat · 26 Mar 2025 at 21:06

VPalermo said:
I managed to get my refund. I can finally breathe a sigh of relief...

I feel for you.

That's a lot of cash on the line. I had a similar problem just days ago.

Gigabyte 9070 XT was meant to arrive. When it eventually came, it had stickers strategically placed across the barcode, the specification sheet and 9070 logo. All to designed so it disguised the fact that it was just a plain old Gigabyte vanilla 9070. not an XT.

How crazy is that? This wasn't a third party seller - this was straight from the source, straight from warehouse.

Troezar · 26 Mar 2025 at 21:14

Dontrocktheboat said:
I feel for you. That's a lot of cash on the line. I had a similar problem just days ago.

Gigabyte 9070 XT was meant to arrive. When it eventually came, it had stickers strategically placed across the barcode, the specification sheet and 9070 logo. All to designed so it disguised the fact that it was just a plain old Gigabyte vanilla 9070. not an XT.

How crazy is that? This wasn't a third party seller - this was straight from the source, straight from warehouse.

Inside swaparoo job?

VPalermo · 26 Mar 2025 at 21:45

Dontrocktheboat said:
I feel for you. That's a lot of cash on the line. I had a similar problem just days ago.

Gigabyte 9070 XT was meant to arrive. When it eventually came, it had stickers strategically placed across the barcode, the specification sheet and 9070 logo. All to designed so it disguised the fact that it was just a plain old Gigabyte vanilla 9070. not an XT.

How crazy is that? This wasn't a third party seller - this was straight from the source, straight from warehouse.

Wow. Glad to hear it's not only me. I hope you got it sorted?

Dontrocktheboat · 26 Mar 2025 at 21:51

Troezar said:
Inside swaparoo job?

Looks that way,....

VPalermo said:
Wow. Glad to hear it's not only me. I hope you got it sorted?

Still waiting on the refund.....UPS just picked it up yesterday, I took a lot of pics, didnt even open it... best i can do really.

Gray2233 · 26 Mar 2025 at 21:58

Dontrocktheboat said:
I feel for you. That's a lot of cash on the line. I had a similar problem just days ago.

Gigabyte 9070 XT was meant to arrive. When it eventually came, it had stickers strategically placed across the barcode, the specification sheet and 9070 logo. All to designed so it disguised the fact that it was just a plain old Gigabyte vanilla 9070. not an XT.

How crazy is that? This wasn't a third party seller - this was straight from the source, straight from warehouse.

It's crazy the lengths the people pulling scams like this will go to.

Glad you caught it, the sad thing is the average joe might miss this entirely and not even realise they've ended up with a lesser card.

Gerard · 26 Mar 2025 at 23:43

Troezar said:
Inside swaparoo job?

Probably returned then sold as new, that's common with amazon.

BS Dave · 26 Mar 2025 at 23:54

So are we talking about sold and dispatched by the rainforest or 3rd party sellers? I may have ordered a 9070xt from there...thinking about canceling my order now...(they've taken the money already...)

Gray2233 · 27 Mar 2025 at 00:15

BS Dave said:
So are we talking about sold and dispatched by the rainforest or 3rd party sellers? I may have ordered a 9070xt from there...thinking about canceling my order now...(they've taken the money already...)

It's complicated.

Third party are obviously a concern, but "sold by Amazon" are too for a few reasons in terms of pretty much anything you might buy on there.

1. If you return a product to Amazon and it's fully sealed there's a good chance they'll relist it as new, and it's really not difficult to make that seem to be the case. They shouldn't be doing it, but they and other market places tend to have the same problems of doing so for whatever reasons.
2. Third party selling on any marketplace is going to be a concern, people think that's diminished by the fact Amazon might host the product in their warehouses and deliver it but it's prone to to the same or worse issues. There are third party sellers using Amazon that can be trusted, for example "Polar Audio" when buying Beyerdynamic headphones, they're the main UK outlet for the brand with their own website, but they do sell via other means such as eBay and Amazon. However, do not assume simply because Amazon hosts and provides delivery services that the company is super trustworthy, they do exactly that for metric tons of dodgy Chinese slop products.

If it's being sold specifically by Amazon you might still get a dodgy product, but it's so commonplace that returning things are very rarely a problem while oddly being rare enough you'd be unlucky to get a dodgy product. Take a video recording of opening the parcel and then box and examine it fully if worried, it will probably be fine but if not there's no harm in being certain. I've bought PC hardware from companies like that before without issue and would again, and for all the faults of said company their return/refund policies are generally very good. GPU's are like hens teeth right now, I'd not cancel personally and chances are you'll be fine.

Rroff · 27 Mar 2025 at 01:39

Gray2233 said:
It's crazy the lengths the people pulling scams like this will go to.

Glad you caught it, the sad thing is the average joe might miss this entirely and not even realise they've ended up with a lesser card.

In some companies unfortunately it goes quite high up the chain, not just customers trying it on.

Gray2233 · 27 Mar 2025 at 01:50

Rroff said:
In some companies unfortunately it goes quite high up the chain, not just customers trying it on.

I know of a couple of instances where certain warehouse staff from the floor to mid management level for the building were hired for that sort of thing in a particular, and it ultimately went up a few rungs into regional management and sometimes beyond. I'm not just talking Amazon here either, there's full on enterprises doing dodgy dealings and the demand for staff in poor working conditions (aka big company warehouse delivery platforms) means almost anyone can get hired.

I wont waffle on too much as it's a bit of a rabbit hole but suffice it to say there's a lot of weird and concerning things going on with our "product" suppliers.

Rroff · 27 Mar 2025 at 01:53

Gray2233 said:
I know of a couple of instances where certain warehouse staff from the floor to mid management level for the building were hired for that sort of thing in a particular, and it ultimately went up a few rungs into regional management and sometimes beyond. I'm not just talking Amazon here either, there's full on enterprises doing dodgy dealings and the demand for staff in poor working conditions (aka big company warehouse delivery platforms) means almost anyone can get hired.

I wont waffle on too much as it's a bit of a rabbit hole but suffice it to say there's a lot of weird and concerning things going on with our "product" suppliers.

I work in distribution, I can't really say anything other than in general terms, but it ain't pretty - too many companies would rather eat losses to a certain point than deal with the situation

which has only encouraged it in recent years.

AthlonXP1800 · 24 May 2025 at 18:13

https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/1kuczh9/amazon_sold_me_a_5090_turned_out_it_was_a_4090/

I felt very awful for poor buyer ordered Gigabyte RTX 5090 AORUS Master, very nasty scammer swapped graphic card with Gigabyte RTX 4090 AERO slapped with fake AORUS and RTX 5090 serial stickers.

Tetras · 24 May 2025 at 18:35

AthlonXP1800 said:
very nasty scammer swapped graphic card with Gigabyte RTX 4090 AERO slapped with fake AORUS and RTX 5090 serial stickers.

That's what I'd call a nice scammer, a nasty scammer would swap it for something like a GTX 570

Tykey · 24 May 2025 at 18:57

I've bought a 3090 and a 4090 from Amazon without a problem. I've bought a 5080 and 2 high end gaming PC's from Overclockers without a problem. I have full faith in both tbh. I'll be buying a 5090 or 5080 Super/TI this year and it'll be from here at the moment. Glad OP got refunded, must have been pretty stressful.

Azrael1 · 25 May 2025 at 09:23

Was it ever confirmed the OP bought it brand new from them and not Like New from them - sounds like the classic swap thing but you expect that buying used stuff from there.

mmj_uk · 25 May 2025 at 13:44

I once bought a memory kit from the rainforest that had a stick or two missing, it's obvious that they don't check returns very thoroughly and scammers are exploiting it. It was sold as new as well.

Tetras · 25 May 2025 at 14:22

Azrael1 said:
Was it ever confirmed the OP bought it brand new from them and not Like New from them - sounds like the classic swap thing but you expect that buying used stuff from there.

It can happen with new items, the CPU switches are usually sold as new, for example.