(Part of)What gives the PC community a Toxic name(in my opinion). Yes this has to stop.

[Jae Tee]

2 minutes ago, Arika S said:

sorry, you think THIS is what gives the PC community a toxic name? lel

If I siad I saw the world through someone else's eyes, i'd be lying.

I can only say about what I know.

[Reytime]

I wouldn't necessarily label this as toxicity within the PC or even tech community. Stuff like this happens everywhere. There are people with good and bad intentions everywhere.

 

My employer is constantly donating mid-range Intel 9th gen i3's and i5's , DDR3 memory and 1TB hard drives to Goodwill (a company that will sell these items and use the generated revenue to support employment opportunities within your community).

 

It all comes down to the individual.

[Roswell]

You really shouldn't be posting pictures of internal systems publicly, Amazon will can you quicker than you can blink if someone forwards it to them.

[WereCatf]

Won't be catching me doing something like this. Hell, I feel uneasy even just from people I know trying to gift me something and often decline such, and it's even more unlikely I'd accept a gift from someone I'm not that familiar with; I can't imagine any situation where I'd willingly scam someone into getting me free stuff.

[JoeCoke]

3 hours ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

This is why I don't want to sell on eBay. What's stopping a scammer from claiming I sent them a defective part and demanding a refund? eBay/PayPal favor the buyer over the seller.

Been there, done it. eBay is a shit hole, the buyer always wins. A seller who's been there for 5 years with hundreds or thousands of sales and 100% feedback will lose to some buyer who just made their account yesterday and isn't verified in any way. Fuck ebay.

 

Also OP, this happens in any industry... Sell ANYTHING online and this will eventually happen to you. Once I sold a pair of shoes with the size clearly listed in like 5 different areas on the auction. Buyer wanted a refund because "I sent the wrong size", won and proceeded to send me back a different pair of shoes. BTW Their account was 2 weeks old and already had 1 negative buying feedback... But they were believed, not me.

[Jae Tee]

2 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

You really shouldn't be posting pictures of internal systems publicly, Amazon will can you quicker than you can blink if someone forwards it to them.

Yeah i gave that a thought, however non of what you're seeing as far as I'm aware is proprietary. 

[Roswell]

1 minute ago, Jae Tee said:

Yeah i gave that a thought, however non of what you're seeing as far as I'm aware is proprietary. 

More so exposing customer order numbers and communication. 

[atxcyclist]

6 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

This isn't prevalent in the PC community, but rather in the tech industry in general when it comes to Amazon.

 

A few years ago there was a YTber that showed how each and every DSLR camera (specific model) he was ordering was only containing rocks ... so yeah ...

I remember this, a motovlogger by the name of chaseontwowheels made the videos. $6k of rocks in the box, twice. 

[atxcyclist]

6 hours ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

This is why I don't want to sell on eBay. What's stopping a scammer from claiming I sent them a defective part and demanding a refund? eBay/PayPal favor the buyer over the seller.

 

I've been buying and selling stuff on eBay since '99, never had this issue yet. I have had sellers send me defective products, but they're usually happy to exchange them or refund. I did have one buyer give me the run-around, but they didn't read my shipping information and caused the problem themselves, it ultimately got sorted out and they got the item.

[Crunchy Dragon]

6 hours ago, DildorTheDecent said:

I've had good success with selling on eBay.

 

Then again I've only sold two items and they were monitors. So there's not really much that can go massively wrong there.

 

I am concerned with selling more computer hardware such as my old CPU, Motherboard and GPU. Wouldn't take much for someone to demand a refund for a "faulty" part. And having had to get refunds in the past I know that it is all to easy.

Stuff like this is why I'm hesitant to sell stuff on Ebay to offload old/unused tech.

 

Especially since my old hardware is mostly made up of motherboards, CPUs, and RAM.

[Beerzerker]

When I finally go to get rid of what I have I'll either just toss it or send it to a certain someone that knows what to do with it related to dispersement of it all.
I have well over 100 CPU's and at least 50+ boards, 30+ GPU's and so on here.

 

No way I could sell it all on Ebay even though I'm sure a few of these pieces would fetch a few bucks to say the least of it.

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, Beerzerker said:

When I finally go to get rid of what I have I'll either just toss it or send it to a certain someone that knows what to do with it related to dispersement of it all.
I have well over 100 CPU's and at least 50+ boards, 30+ GPU's and so on here.

 

No way I could sell it all on Ebay even though I'm sure a few of these pieces would fetch a few bucks to say the least of it.

You could definitely sell that stuff on Ebay. CPUs and motherboards are worth a fair bit still for the most part.

[Beerzerker]

It's mostly legacy related stuff and that's why but I do have a decent collection going here.

 

[mr moose]

Jeeez guys, the OP didn't say this was the only, single, biggest cause and nothing else is a problem.  He simply said this does give the community a toxic name,  and he's right,  getting returns like that does produce that reputation.

[Belac F]

19 hours ago, Jae Tee said:

So I work for an online retail company, and my primary job is to deal with returns.  So to day like any other day I open up the most recent Amazon Box and go through the contents. What surprised me however was this....

 

  Already I was not happy, as simply put  If you do not properly package A CPU it can get extremely damaged, as the pins have been(not pictured). Further more As to my knowledge we have never sold an athlon CPU. So naturally I go through the proper steps to find out what the return was. And i found this....

As you can see from the bottom of the screen we sold this person a Ryzen 3 2200g.  So clearly the customer has purposely swapped out a cheap CPU so to get themself a new one. However it did not end there,  The reason for the return goes as follows....

 At in of itself over clocking A CPU automatically voids the warranty, and there is no guarantee that it will be successful. This person was obviously trying to trick the seller(our company)  And thought they can get away with this .

 This is far from the 1st time it has happened and it seems most prevalent on PC hardware and gaming peripherals.

 

I urge all of you to take upon yourself to Only participate in proper business practices. Thank you.

As with every group of people there will be bad eggs. I sell laptops, and I have some pretty scummy customers too, but I think its a problem with people in general. Those people are jackasses and deserve to be treated as such, but the vast majority of the PC community would never do such a thing. 

[Touch My Hamm]

Looks like amazon return. Isn't this more an issue with someone trying to scam and the return policy more than the PC community as a whole? You cannot blame some people for the mass. this would lead in widespread issues. This could even have repercussions on race and political nature. Sounds like someone who needed more discipline as a child. Or maybe the person put the wrong cpu in the bag. This could be the case though unlikely. I try to see the best in someone because we never know who the other person is, maybe they were having a bad day, week, year. Stay positive and your worldview usually gets better

[Stu_Bear]

This happens in retail shops too...thought i was buying a 15amp battery charger from wally world...when I opened the box at home it had a VERY used, scratched up 10amp battery charger in it.  Someone had obviously returned their purchase wanting a "refund", but had placed their old battery charger in the box...the return desk obviously never opened the box   When I went to return it...they looked at me like I was trying to pull a scam on them...

[Kisai]

13 hours ago, Beerzerker said:

When I finally go to get rid of what I have I'll either just toss it or send it to a certain someone that knows what to do with it related to dispersement of it all.
I have well over 100 CPU's and at least 50+ boards, 30+ GPU's and so on here.

 

No way I could sell it all on Ebay even though I'm sure a few of these pieces would fetch a few bucks to say the least of it.

Selling it and Shipping it are two separate issues. Because it's highway robbery to ship anything bigger than a postcard, especially internationally, if it's not worth at least $100, it's not worth the effort to have shipped. That's why people will basically ignore anything that isn't free shipping, and the only companies that can afford to do free shipping move so much volume that it doesn't matter.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Kisai said:

Selling it and Shipping it are two separate issues. Because it's highway robbery to ship anything bigger than a postcard, especially internationally, if it's not worth at least $100, it's not worth the effort to have shipped. That's why people will basically ignore anything that isn't free shipping, and the only companies that can afford to do free shipping move so much volume that it doesn't matter.

There’s a limited loophole in that one having to do with bey very old postage laws and developing countries.  The result is that things are vastly cheaper to ship from countries that have that status.  Like China.

[Kisai]

8 minutes ago, Stu_Bear said:

This happens in retail shops too...thought i was buying a 15amp battery charger from wally world...when I opened the box at home it had a VERY used, scratched up 10amp battery charger in it.  Someone had obviously returned their purchase wanting a "refund", but had placed their old battery charger in the box...the return desk obviously never opened the box   When I went to return it...they looked at me like I was trying to pull a scam on them...

When I worked at a retail store a long time ago, I once caught someone shoplifting, as they placed the empty box back on the shelf and it promptly fell to the floor.

 

The major tell in a store that something isn't right is that the exterior of the box shows signs of being opened with someone's hands (Eg dog eared corners and all) this is why before you buy something that looks like it's been opened, take it to the customer service desk and ask to open it in front of them. They should not be putting opened products back on the shelf. If something is returned unopened, that's one thing, but it's been opened, it should be marked down and in the "scratch and dent" bin somewhere, or have been thrown in the trash compactor.

[Kisai]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

There’s a limited loophole in that one having to do with bey very old postage laws and developing countries.  The result is that things are vastly cheaper to ship from countries that have that status.  Like China.

I'm aware of that, and that pretty much only applies to China, and you will know it's from china because it takes 8 weeks to deliver. And because of that, they get away with murder on feedback since you can't leave feedback or file a dispute after 30 days.

[Bombastinator]

8 minutes ago, Kisai said:

I'm aware of that, and that pretty much only applies to China, and you will know it's from china because it takes 8 weeks to deliver. And because of that, they get away with murder on feedback since you can't leave feedback or file a dispute after 30 days.

China definitely gets a lot more mileage out of it than anyone else.  It applies to any country on the list though.  Iirc Bangladesh is on it.  India may also be.  The issue with China is parts of the country are developed and parts aren’t.  This allows them to sell things mail order that an undeveloped country wouldn’t be able to because they wouldn’t have the infrastructure to make the stuff in the first place.

[Spotty]

28 minutes ago, Stu_Bear said:

This happens in retail shops too...thought i was buying a 15amp battery charger from wally world...when I opened the box at home it had a VERY used, scratched up 10amp battery charger in it.  Someone had obviously returned their purchase wanting a "refund", but had placed their old battery charger in the box...the return desk obviously never opened the box   When I went to return it...they looked at me like I was trying to pull a scam on them...

This isn't something limited to Tech either.

Back when I was working in a liquor store years ago I had people try to return a carton of beer (Corona) where they had drunk all the beer, refilled it with water, sealed the bottles, and then glue the flaps on the box closed. Anyone picking up the box would think it was just a normal unopened box. It was pretty easy to catch because in all my years working there that was the only time someone tried returning beer.

 

Another scam people pull would be to rummage through the trash near the store to find old receipts, then they'd come in to the store, find the items from the receipt and bring them to the counter and ask for a refund (or shoplift them and then return a few hours later) Again pretty easy to catch as returns in retail liquor are extremely rare.

 

27 minutes ago, Kisai said:

When I worked at a retail store a long time ago, I once caught someone shoplifting, as they placed the empty box back on the shelf and it promptly fell to the floor.

That doesn't surprise me. Finding empty boxes was a daily occurrence for me. Lots of spirits come in cardboard gift boxes so people would take the bottle out, shove it down their underwear and put the empty cardboard box back on the shelf. 

At least once per shift I used to go through and run my hand along the top of all the boxes as you can feel the empty boxes move. Or the thieves would get lazy and put the empty box on a different shelf or toss it under the shelves. At least the empty boxes made it easy to know what had been stolen and how much to adjust the stock count by.

 

 

This thread title is misleading though. Should really be titled more like "What gives Amazon customers who abuse the returns policy a bad name", something that has been covered a lot in media with reports of Amazon banning offenders as well as police arrests for fraudsters.

Also @Jae Tee you may want to be careful about what information you reveal and what you show. From what you've posted it would be possible for your employer to identify you.

[Curious Pineapple]

2 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Another scam people pull would be to rummage through the trash near the store to find old receipts, then they'd come in to the store, find the items from the receipt and bring them to the counter and ask for a refund (or shoplift them and then return a few hours later) Again pretty easy to catch as returns in retail liquor are extremely rare.

Can beat that, here in the UK a bloke walked into Aldi, picked up a TV, took it to a till and got a refund. No reciept was needed as it was an own brand.

[NumLock21]

There are scammer everywhere not just for PCs. Scammers will always scam at every opportunity they can get, even to the point one might think that's impossible or they're just making it up.