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.