I wanted to put a warning out there for others like myself planning to build a new PC. I started using pcpartpicker and after enough price comparisons, I ended up buying a CPU from Amazon. Keeping an eye on the tracking updates, I pulled it inside as soon as it arrived so it wouldn’t be stolen off my porch.
Something was off as soon as I opened the Amazon box. I’ve built PC’s before and this didn’t look like a CPU box from AMD. Being suspicious, I took photos of the entire process of opening it and found it was completely empty. This apparently happens a lot with certain sellers on Amazon, even if it is sold and shipped by Amazon. I found some posts from others that appear to have had the same problem, but with a different color plastic packaging.
As soon as I noticed, I opened a chat support case with Amazon explaining the situation. I told them I had photos of the unboxing and could provide them if need be. Maybe I got lucky, but after asking for a replacement, the chat agent immediately opened up a replacement without question.
This was the first time I had seen or experienced something like this. Normally I buy exclusively from Newegg, but just happened to find a CPU that was ~30% off for some reason and thought it was too good to be true.
Turns out it was.
Keep in mind that newegg sold out in 2016 to a Chinese company. They used to be great but have been going downhill ever since. I only purchase in person at my local MicroCenter and just pull out my phone and have them pricematch. They will pricematch anything sold and shipped by Amazon for example. Dunno if you have a local store, but that’s the way to go.
This is the way. Online purchases are always a gamble and most local stores will price match.