Another victim has been impacted by Amazon's loose return policy and ended up with a product they did not want — if you can even call it a product. Bigmancal420 on the PCBuildHelp subreddit shared their story of how they ended up with a 3D-printed base, but a real IHS of a Ryzen 9 9950X3D after initially buying what they thought was a real used 9950X3D from a local Amazon warehouse for just €163 after VAT.
The victim showed images of the "product" revealing a 3D-printed backplate with no CPU inside whatsoever. The IHS was from a real Ryzen 9000 series chip, which was apparently enough to fool the Amazon employees into thinking the product was untampered.
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Bigmancal420 bought the chip from a local Amazon returns warehouse, noting that they were not allowed to look into the box before buying it. The buyer admitted they knew it was a risk to buy a 9950X3D for just €163, but it was a risky gamble that he lost nonetheless. For reference, a new Ryzen 9 9950X3D goes for $659 on Amazon at the time of writing.
The Redditor's story is another example of why it pays to be cautious when looking for used CPUs that are not yet a generation old, especially popular chips such as AMD's Ryzen X3D parts that are priced significantly below MSRP. Amazon's return policy has become very lenient, making it easy for customers to return counterfeit items without Amazon employees noticing.
We covered a very similar story a few months ago, where an Amazon customer bought an open-box "like new" Ryzen 9 9900X3D from an Amazon warehouse, only to find the chip they actually got was a Ryzen 9 3900X. If you're looking for a used CPU, it would be best to steer clear of Amazon's return sales until Amazon gets more strict with its return policy. CPUs aren't the only products being counterfeited, as we've seen counterfeit GPUs as well, including one case where 42 Amazon RTX 5090 customers were served with fanny packs instead of the GPU they ordered.
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