Is it SAFE to buy parts from AMAZON?

[Fluuwu]

I'm somewhat concerned about ordering PC parts from Amazon. I've seen people order let's say a case and receiving a broken or used one, although they ordered a brand new one.
This makes me worry even more when it comes to things like Motherboards, RAM, etc.

What are your experience?
Is it safe to buy PC parts off of Amazon?

[Needfuldoer]

3 minutes ago, Fluuwu said:

Is it safe to buy PC parts off of Amazon?

As safe as buying anything else off Amazon.

 

Anecdotally, I've bought a bunch of computer parts from them and they've been fine.

 

3 minutes ago, Fluuwu said:

I've seen people order let's say a case and receiving a broken or used one, although they ordered a brand new one.

Things get damaged in shipping no matter who you mail-order from and which carrier you use. 

 

If anything happens, that's what customer support is for. 

[OhioYJ]

I don't do it often, but when Amazon is the seller / shipper it doesn't bother me at all really. 

 

If it's a third party seller,  odds are I'm not touching it. That's typically where most of these stories come from. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

If it's anything in a retail box it's fine, though it did piss me off when I ordered a mechanical hard drive from amazon that was supposed to be retail box and instead came as bare drive in box without the better packing you'd get buying a drive in a retail box at say Best Buy. Always hate getting a bare drive in a non-retail box after spending a good amount on Western Digital Blacks from newegg and having two of them die within a year.

[thrasher_565]

ammazon is fine but there stuff from ammazon and stuff from seller and that can make a difrancs

used stuff thow is mixed some times you win some times iys broken or missing parts... they kinda disable the listing for used stuff but you can still find it on normal listings. and when there is damage is vage about it so a gable. i lost many times...

 

on ebay same thing thow

[PDifolco]

31 minutes ago, Fluuwu said:

I'm somewhat concerned about ordering PC parts from Amazon. I've seen people order let's say a case and receiving a broken or used one, although they ordered a brand new one.
This makes me worry even more when it comes to things like Motherboards, RAM, etc.

What are your experience?
Is it safe to buy PC parts off of Amazon?

I've ordered nearly everything for 3 builds at Amazon (.fr) over years and I'm totally satisfied

Anyway if something bad occurs you send back the stuff and are refunded

Only real risk is buying from non reputable external sellers and then have issues, and waste time before settling it, just be careful to pick either Amazon stuff or reputable sellers

[abit-sean]

Bought a few motherboards and SSDs never had a problem. Heard of few people who had missing CPUs, they had received an empty box.

[Blasty Blosty]

I have bought my entire PC from Amazon

[GuiltySpark_]

I've been buying things from Amazon since, had to look it up, 2006. PC parts included. 

 

I wouldn't hesitate, but I only buy things Sold and Shipped by Amazon.

[8tg]

I try not to because of how many times I bought an item listed as new and got someone else’s return, it happened too many times for me to trust the platform as a whole.

I try to order from Newegg for most new pc hardware, though that has its own caveats of terrible customer service supposedly, I’ve never had to use it so I’m not certain on that front, but they never sent me someone else’s return item.

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

As safe as buying anything else off Amazon.

 

Anecdotally, I've bought a bunch of computer parts from them and they've been fine.

 

Things get damaged in shipping no matter who you mail-order from and which carrier you use. 

 

If anything happens, that's what customer support is for. 

yeah,  but one thing... especially if its expensive stuff i wouldn't buy from random sellers , only sold and shipped by Amazon. because while Amazon generally helps with returns and warranties - there can still be issues with random seller, for example they could trick you into not contacting Amazon for a refund etc, or ask for extremely high "return fees" etc. 

[Needfuldoer]

6 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

yeah,  but one thing... especially if its expensive stuff i wouldn't buy from random sellers , only sold and shipped by Amazon. because while Amazon generally helps with returns and warranties - there can still be issues with random seller, for example they could trick you into not contacting Amazon for a refund etc, or ask for extremely high "return fees" etc. 

I only buy things that are at least fulfilled by Amazon, if not shipped from and sold by them, just for that reason.

 

If it's shipped from and sold by a third party, I'll find another listing or order it from eBay.

[silenttwalker]

the short answer is NO as I've bought items that never get posted or turned out to have been sold illegally. But it is very rare. The only advice is if it looks too good to be true it usually is.

[atarione]

No... Amazon sent a motherboard and a ssd in a unpadded plastic bag...   the motherboard was inundated with a chemical perfume smell which cause me to have an asthmatic reaction and sent me scrambling for a rescue inhaler...

 

They wouldn't come to my home to get the contaminated package, so I had to seal it in a couple plastic bags and take it to the return location.... I put this in the bed of my truck as I was going to be gawd d*mned if I let this smelly motherboard box get inside the cab of my truck...

 

To add insult to injury I had ordered parts for a full upgrade, (and in retrospect I should have just returned everything?) ... I used a gift card I had gotten for my birthday for part of the purchase and my CC for the remaining balance... The D*ckheads would only refund the motherboard to my giftcard balance instead of my CC ... so I had a $200~ GC I didn't want and spent another $200 ordering the motherboard from elsewhere...  

 

There are manifold reasons to reason to actively avoid amazon purchases for the myriad of economic and societal ills their monopolistic practices cause.     Even if you choose to not care about these, they can and likely will send you expensive delicate electronics in wholly inadequate  (your RMA to the manufacture would be denied if you sent it to them as amazon sent it to you) packaging... 

 

I absolutely loath amazon.  

 

(edit per GuiltySpark_ post :: all items in my case were sold and shipped by amazon).

[GuiltySpark_]

I feel like everyone who's had a problem with Amazon should post the Sold by Shipped by of the listing they bought from. Shit happens, of course, but I'm willing to bet a large percentage never pay attention to that section of a listing and are unknowingly buying from 3rd party marketplace listings. 

[TetraSky]

I'd argue it's safer to buy on Amazon than elsewhere, simply due to being able to return nearly anything no questions asked without any restocking fees.

As long as it is sold and shipped by Amazon, it should be quite safe.

[Erioch]

I've never had a single problem and I've spent enough to put Bezo's four kids through college.

 

State college but still.

[nether1234]

Never had any issues.

[Kisai]

There is nothing wrong with buying things off Amazon, that are sold BY amazon as long as they are in your local warehouse.

 

The problem comes when it's NOT actually in the local warehouse. I can find items that are 5$ USD on amazon.com but 150$ on amazon.ca. Why? Because the item isn't in Canada.

 

Here:

 

I tried to buy another one of these for my desktop:

https://www.bequiet.com/en/accessories/4427

Right, now actually try to find it on amazon.ca , it's not there, 

So I select the US stores and it also lists newegg:

 

 

okay, so what about Amazon.com or amazon.ca?

 

Doesn't exist. Amazon.com only has a third party that charges 3 times the item's value to ship it.

HDD Cage 2 does not exist on Amazon.ca at all.

 

See all the discrepancies? I'm basically being shown products that do not exist in Canada, and if I want it I have to pay 3x the product value in shipping. That's insane.

 

And while I picked a relatively trivial item here, this has happened many other times where I've wanted to buy something but it was only available from a third party in the US. I don't mind that if the shipping is going to be fair, but it is NEVER fair unless you are buying something that ships mediamail in the US.

 

 

[Godlygamer23]

On 5/21/2024 at 10:02 AM, abit-sean said:

Bought a few motherboards and SSDs never had a problem. Heard of few people who had missing CPUs, they had received an empty box.

I had one experience where the shipping pouch was empty, but it was super easy to get a new one. I wasn't even required to send back the original part - good thing too. There was nothing to return.

 

And this was only a GPU support device. Definitely not a major loss, but still would've been annoying lol.

[MootEndymion752]

On 5/21/2024 at 4:23 PM, Fluuwu said:

I'm somewhat concerned about ordering PC parts from Amazon. I've seen people order let's say a case and receiving a broken or used one, although they ordered a brand new one.
This makes me worry even more when it comes to things like Motherboards, RAM, etc.

What are your experience?
Is it safe to buy PC parts off of Amazon?

Depends on the product type and price. Avoid any listings with bad grammar and/or to good to be true listings. If it's a case or a drive cage, you're OK. If it's a CPU, GPU or a hard drive/SSD, you really need to be careful. And if it's God forbid a power supply, you're DOOMED.

[Timotheus865]

It's fine, but you need to keep an eye on the buy box, which is the "industry" term used to denote who on Amazon is selling the product. You can easily see this on the product page above the "Add to Cart" button. 

If it says "Shipped by Amazon" and "Sold by Amazon", this is a situation where a brand sold inventory directly to Amazon & Amazon handles both the Sale & Delivery
If it says "Shipped by Amazon" and "Sold By _____", that is a situation where a 3rd party seller uses Amazon for only the delivery/ order fulfillment.
If it says "Shipped by ____" and "Sold By ____" That is a 3rd party seller that essentially uses Amazon as a storefront and also handles shipping/ fulfillment.

The last two situations will generally offer the best pricing, but keep in mind this is where the highest risk of product quality issues can come from. You can always dig into the seller ratings to see if the seller is reputable, but if you don't want to deal with that, it's generally safer to find "Shipped by & Sold by Amazon" options, which can always be found in the "Other Sellers" Box dropdown if it's not already the default, unless the brand does not directly deal with Amazon at all. In that case you can decide weather it's worth it to deal with amazon or go to another site, or direct to the source.

This coming from someone (me) who has done years of advertising on Amazon for a large company, and has run into a variety of topics when it comes to selling on Amazon.

[Timotheus865]

On 5/22/2024 at 7:26 PM, Kisai said:

There is nothing wrong with buying things off Amazon, that are sold BY amazon as long as they are in your local warehouse.

 

The problem comes when it's NOT actually in the local warehouse. I can find items that are 5$ USD on amazon.com but 150$ on amazon.ca. Why? Because the item isn't in Canada.

 

Here:

 

I tried to buy another one of these for my desktop:

https://www.bequiet.com/en/accessories/4427

Right, now actually try to find it on amazon.ca , it's not there, 

So I select the US stores and it also lists newegg:

 

 

okay, so what about Amazon.com or amazon.ca?

 

Doesn't exist. Amazon.com only has a third party that charges 3 times the item's value to ship it.

HDD Cage 2 does not exist on Amazon.ca at all.

 

See all the discrepancies? I'm basically being shown products that do not exist in Canada, and if I want it I have to pay 3x the product value in shipping. That's insane.

 

And while I picked a relatively trivial item here, this has happened many other times where I've wanted to buy something but it was only available from a third party in the US. I don't mind that if the shipping is going to be fair, but it is NEVER fair unless you are buying something that ships mediamail in the US.

 

 

The reason this happens is because of something called NARF (aka. North America Remote Fulfillment). It's basically Amazon's way of opening up orders for US products in the Canada & Mexico markets. As someone in the states who works in the Amazon side of a large companies business, we hate it too, and most of the time we don't have control over weather or not Amazon does this.