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 Post subject: Amazon shocker.
 Post Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:49 pm 
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First off, let me state that i have no idea if this is due to Amazon inadvertently buying counterfeit stock or if it was the actions of a rogue employee... it could equally have been the result of an Amazon customer pulling a 'fast one' on Amazon.

Whatever the cause, the whole experience has left a sour taste... the attitude of the Amazon Customer Service droid didn't help :(

On new years day i ordered a Crucial MX300 275GB SSD drive "Dispatched and sold by Amazon", it arrived today, i plugged it into my PC and was surprised to see it listed in Device Manager & Drive Management, speccy, AS SDD etc as a "V Series 120GB Sata SSD Drive" with only 120GB of free space.

cf.
V Series:
http://amzn.eu/1Yubop5
MX300:
http://amzn.eu/2gIzYvn

Thinking Win7 had probably picked up the drive wrong i set about trying to rectify the Windows error, suffice to say that it quickly became clear something wasn't right when i removed the drive from Device Manager, rebooted and it still picked up the drive as a "V Series"... checked the 'Hardware id" in device properties and that too identified it as a 'V Series'. Checked the firmware version and that was "2.7"... now i was really suspicious, Crucial don't name firmware builds that simple, i.e the latest firmware for the MX300 275GB is labelled "M0CR060".

I turned my attention to the packaging and the condition it arrived in... apart form some smudging on a corner of the seal on the OEM packaging i really didn't think there was anything to be alarmed about, after all that could've happened when amazon boxed it... the final straw when i put it all together was the spacer that most if not all SSD's come with... this SSD came with a spacer already attached, and another 'spare' unused one in the box, in fact to get the SSD to fit in the spare SSD slot in my tower i had to remove the attached spacer.

I then turned my attention to the Serial Number which i assumed would be on the box, it wasn't.

The SSD was in my PC at this point and I'd had enough of messing around, i phoned Crucial UK to ask if it's normal for them to supply drives without the Serial Number on the box... he said no but without seeing the packaging himself he couldn't say for certain it wasn't there if the number of barcodes and numbers i described to him was correct.

The clincher came when i said i already owned another Crucial SSD, a CT250BX1, that was silver, as were all other pictures of the BX and MX series as far as i could tell... my "MX300" is black, did you ever make a black MX300?

He replied, no, never, they did supply a black M4 drive about 4 years ago but ALL the MX series are silver.

Bingo!

I phoned amazon to tell them the drive they supplied is not what was in the box or what i ordered, his response, send the faulty one back and we'll send you a replacement as soon as we receive the faulty one.

My immediate reply was (trying my best to be polite) you're having a laugh?!.... I've paid you for a product and you haven't supplied it yet I'm supposed to sit here twiddling my thumbs while i go out and return your error to you before you'll rectify your error?? No, I'm sorry but that's not good enough. YOU send me a replacement and i'll hand the FAKE goods to your courier when he delivers the replacement.... our couriers aren't allowed to accept returns (something that's news to me and likely millions of others worldwide because I've done it when they've specifically requested it!)... as this was going nowhere i decided to throw him an olive branch, tell you what, you send the replacement and email me a return label and i'll return the parcel to you in the post tomorrow... he agreed to this but flatly refused to offer me compensation when i then threw in the caveat about being reimbursed for my time spent returning what was clearly their responsibility.

As the conversation was quickly turning into farce... he actually believed that was an acceptable outcome... i retorted, so if you went to your local store and bought a 55 inch TV only to get home and find out it was only 10 inches you'd be perfectly happy to drag the TV all the way back to the store and then wait for as long as it took the store to decide to send you a replacement and in all that time they'd have your money in their bank? you'd be happy with that? He said, yes....

Oh please, this phone call is clearly a complaint and it's going nowhere, escalate this to a manager or supervisor, anyone but you... placed on hold... droid returns after speaking to manager... I've been authorised to offer you a 15% discount and to expedite you a replacement as fast as possible.

I agreed but not before i made my intentions absolutely clear that if my PC has been infected by any form of malicious software as a result of connecting their dubious hardware to my pc, 15% will be the least of their worries.

It annoys the hell out of me when large companies try to sweep, what for a small company could well put them out of business, under the carpet so I've yet to decide if i'll let this end here.

:shock: :evil:


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 Post subject: Re: Amazon shocker.
 Post Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2018 6:03 pm 
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Forgot to say, the closer i look, the more obvious it is the labels on the SSD itself have been replaced.

It may be a one-off but i'm now wondering how much attention people actually pay to internal hardware, especially to SSD's which are pretty much plug it in and so long as it works forget about it.


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 Post subject: Re: Amazon shocker.
 Post Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2018 6:53 pm 
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Sounds like a 'fun' phone call. ;)

I have to admit that I very rarely buy through Amazon. For me it is a last resort after Newegg and Tiger Direct.

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 Post subject: Re: Amazon shocker.
 Post Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2018 11:13 pm 
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Sounds like a terrible and annoying experience. The supervisor/manager did the right thing in offering you the replacement, cost of return and 15% refund. Personally, despite the annoyance, I would only have expected a replacement with Amazon covering the return shipment costs. I understand that the Amazon courier cannot accept the Return as returns go to a different location for processing than the outbound packages. Unfortunately, if this were an item sold and shipped by Amazon and not a 3rd party seller using Amazon for warehousing/logistics, that Amazon itself was duped by a supplier. That's quite unfortunate.

-steve

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 Post subject: Re: Amazon shocker.
 Post Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2018 12:26 am 
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I've had nothing but good experiences buying from Amazon, knock on wood! I buy most of my DVD/Blu-ray movies from them. I just bought two 10 TB Seagate Ironwolf HDD for movie storage. I bought them on 12/24 and received them on 12/28. I'm also a prime member so I get free shipping.

One thing I did see the other day is that Amazon may be buying a brick and mortar store, Target, some time this year.
??Amazon + Target??

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 Post subject: Re: Amazon shocker.
 Post Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2018 3:15 pm 
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The replacement arrived yesterday, this morning after thoroughly scrutinising the packaging before breaking the seal, and the drive and labels before plugging it in, i conclude i finally got a genuine article! LOL

@Steve
I'm a Prime member so i get 'free shipping' for most things "shipped" by Amazon. Of course it isn't really free because i have to pay an annual membership for that service, part of that service is they 'guarantee' (they use that word loosely) a delivery date and i don't pay a charge for the shipment... it's a contract between myself and Amazon.

As far as I'm concerned if Amazon break that contract by delivering the wrong goods (on this occasion potentially counterfeit goods), or being unreasonably late with the delivery (i personally allow them an additional 24 hours after their 'guaranteed' delivery date before i complain) then i expect to have some form of compensation because I've paid up-front for a service they've promised to supply and have broken that promise.

I don't think that's unreasonable, and from previous experience Amazon didn't either... their normal response used to be to apologise and automatically apply another 30 days credit to my Prime membership without my having to even raise the question of compensation.... kind of begs the question if Amazon UK are feeling the pinch after their not so great record over the Christmas period here in the UK, they got slated in the press and on social media for not meeting the delivery targets they promised to customers.
Put another way, due to delivery issues of one form or another my Prime membership should have expired in September 2017, it now isn't up for renewal until February 2018... an end date that had nothing to do with this thread and which Amazon were readily happy to extend month by month without any request by myself.
[Hmmm, just thinking maybe i spend too much with them! LOL]

Under EU & UK law returns for faulty, not as described, counterfeit goods... it's automatically the responsibility of the seller to pay for returns... there's a lot more to the laws (regulations) than just that but i won't go into that here, if you want to know more (i doubt you do lol) search "Consumer Contracts Regulations", the main points that would likely apply to most consumers in the UK can be found here:
https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights ... egulations


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 Post subject: Re: Amazon shocker.
 Post Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2018 3:43 pm 
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I also have Amazon Prime but more for Prime Videos than the free shipping. Probably won't renew as there is very little that I find on Prime Video that I can't find on Netflix.

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 Post subject: Re: Amazon shocker.
 Post Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2018 9:12 pm 
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I'm aware of Amazon Prime -- I've been a member here in the US for years with similar benefit. The whole situation is pretty unfortunate -- they should have immediately sent you a verified legitimate replacement and a return shipping label for the wrong item.
-steve

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 Post subject: Re: Amazon shocker.
 Post Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2018 4:56 pm 
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I'm a Prime member as well, buy a lot of things and like Doddie I've had an extra month added to my membership if I've had a late delivery.

As for returns I've usually just clicked on the return button on my order page and you're given a return label to print off with a few options of how to send it back. Earlier I bought a kettle that leaked so requested a return, got the label printed and I just had to take it to the nearest Post Office who gave me a proof of posting, after a couple of days I received an email from Amazon to tell me they had refunded the cost.

Another one, last week among other things I'd ordered some coffee, it was for my filter coffee machine and was sold in a pack of 6 250 gram packets. The outer box was perfect but the box containing the coffee had been opened and resealed with sellotape, 3 of the packets inside instead of being solid showing they were vacuum packed were squishy and the other 3 solid as they should be.
I got straight on to Amazon and explained the problem, they gave me a return label and ordered a replacement. The original packet arrived on the Thursday and on the Friday I received the replacement, both delivered by DPD couriers and it was the same driver. :-)

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 Post subject: Re: Amazon shocker.
 Post Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 1:47 pm 
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JoanA wrote:
Another one, last week among other things I'd ordered some coffee, it was for my filter coffee machine and was sold in a pack of 6 250 gram packets. The outer box was perfect but the box containing the coffee had been opened and resealed with sellotape, 3 of the packets inside instead of being solid showing they were vacuum packed were squishy and the other 3 solid as they should be.

There's something very strange going on with Amazon UK these days, your coffee and my SSD drive, in my opinion are the same thing... both supposed to be brand new and unused yet the original packaging has been tampered with and the contents substituted... that simply shouldn't happen with ANY retailer and certainly not with a company the size of Amazon.

I thought my issue was a one off but that you've experienced similar in the same week suggests something deeper, and possibly darker, is happening/going wrong at Amazon UK.


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