Triple Check Any PC Hardware You Buy on Amazon
Okay geeks. You shopped on Amazon Prime Day last week, closed some good deals for some PC hardware, and you’re ready to unpack the fruits of your digital labor and start upgrading (or building) your PC. But not so fast. If you’re shopping on Amazon – whether it’s a giant sale or just some old day – you should always take the time to check what you bought before opening it.
It sounds ominous than it should be. I’m not talking about checking the packaging for physical deformations – although you should, too, you can probably very quickly determine if someone (or a robotic sorting machine) has played hockey with your transport box.
Instead, you’ll want to open Amazon’s shipping box, take out whatever you’ve bought, and stop. Do not open these boxes; but take a moment to take a look at your item and then open your account on the Amazon website to confirm that you received exactly what you ordered. If everything seems clear, make sure you do the same after you open the box in case someone has changed the actual product in any way.
While you can probably remember if you order the 850W PSU instead of the 750W PSU you received, quarantine brain fog is a reality. You might not think you could have bought a particular RAM for your system. And you shouldn’t just assume that Amazon did the right thing. As some Redditors recently reported , Amazon sent them the wrong RAM packages they ordered on Prime Day.
I have no doubt that you will notice that your system is only loaded with 8 GB of memory instead of the ordered 32 GB – this one predicament Redditor, – but you will be more difficult to prove that you got the wrong memory, if or when you break the package and drive it into your system.
I understand that this sounds quite simple. Who doesn’t check what they have ordered? But I can also imagine myself just absentmindedly opening some new hardware – memory, processor, microSD card, hard drive – and don’t realize it’s the wrong item until it’s too late. And yes, this problem occurs more often than you think.
For instance:
“It’s common for them – I once got an old 500GB hard drive from them when I ordered a 4TB drive. Someone opened it, pulled it out, sealed the box again and sent it back. “
“As a person who now works in an order fulfillment center … Wow. This is a huge problem that my building is facing, just like any other building. I mean, you’re lucky to have rams at all, but I know for a fact that it sucks. In most cases, the order is not fulfilled because it is a completely wrong product and its weight is different enough for the computer to understand that something is wrong. Which also sucks because how do people even put the wrong sticker on the wrong item? “
“I stopped buying SD cards from Amazon a while ago because of this. And no matter where you get your SD card from, ALWAYS test it for full capacity before trusting it with your data. I have received 3 fake SD cards from Amazon in the last 4 years. “
“The same thing happened with my friend. He bought a similar Crucial Ballistix kit a few months ago where he bought a 3000 or 3200 MHz E-die, but instead got a crappy 2666 MHz kit due to a wrong sticker on the box. They would only return the set instead of exchanging it for the one he bought, which was no longer at the same price. Basically he was told that he had to spend + $ 15 for their mistake and the new computer would have to fail within 2 weeks. Since his old computer was disassembled for use in a new build, he couldn’t wait two weeks and now he is stuck on it. “
I could copy and paste various comments, but you get the idea. While you don’t have to deliver everything you buy on Amazon to Sherlock Holmes, I wouldn’t blindly open the boxes of PC components before I double-checked if Amazon is correct.
And if you are one of the lucky buyers who receive an incorrectly labeled item, feel free to bother Amazon until you get what you want. For example, one customer service agent might ask you to ship back an entire shipment for a full refund, depriving you of any sales or discounts you may have enjoyed since they expired. Another customer service agent may provide you with some sort of advertising balance for an amount equal to the value of the item at purchase versus what it is worth at the return.
And once you head out to return a listed item, it doesn’t hurt to leave a small note in the box explaining to Amazon what the problem is. This is especially true if the wrong item has been mistakenly marked as correct; you will be doing your fanatic friends a favor.