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Some Newegg Customers Received Fake Intel Core i7s
Several readers have mentioned the strange goods that some customers received from Newegg in place of the Intel Core i7 920 processor they ordered. Word on the problem first surfaced on TribalWar on Thursday evening. Newegg still hasn't commented on this. It's not known whether it happened as a result fraud by another Newegg customer, in shipping, or where. The "processors" are made of aluminum, and the "fans" are some kind of synthetic molded material. The "factory seal" was printed onto the box; the holographic stickers on the boxes were also faked. The first part of this video shows the bogus goods. At this writing Google News lists a handful of blogs mentioning the fakes.
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This reminds me of the time that I ordered a notebook hard drive from Newegg and the unit that I received came in an opened protective sleeve. The drive failed the first read/write test that I use to check all new hard drives. So I think that Newegg sometimes ships out used equipment, which is not a good idea with a company like this whose tech-savvy customers know when they receive something that does not work.
I once bought a Lexar 4GB USB flash drive from a major online store. When it arrived and I plugged it in, it was a 16MB flash drive within a Lexar case.
Fake USB flash drives seem not to be uncommon. I have heard it happen to some of my friends too.
Sometimes they will even hack the FAT to make it look like a much larger drive, although obviously you will start getting errors if you try to write beyond its actual capacity... A lot of people get caught out by this because it takes them some time to fill the drive.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
This is what Intel gets from assembling these boxes in Elbonia. The CPUs are $300, and the pay to the Elbonian packer is $0.17. You were hired from the mud farm, and told to put these little green squares with metal into a box with a plastic propeller in it. Now you discover that these squares you are handling is worth 1 full years salary, and your family is starving.
Maybe your even think the little squares you make will work just as fine as the original ones, and that the end user will not notice. Your cousin tiled his entire bathroom with all the extra P4, and to him, they where all the same. And for the fan, a little plastic toy is pretty much the same whether the car wheels spin around or not, as long as it looks fine.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
That's a very interesting case of customer service via twitter.
http://twitter.com/Newegg/
Looks pretty much like it's replacing a contact number. Contact support and complain to your friends at the same time!
I was at a swap meet a month ago and saw a *pallet* of Core I7 processors. I used Red Laser to scan the UPC codes (they were "Extreme" models selling for $650+ on the open market), and a quick volume computation (the pallet was about 12 high, about 20 horizontal each way) suggested that I was looking at about $3 million worth of processors.
Except, they weren't actual processors. According to the person selling them, they were "fake" processors, but the heatsinks and fans were real and could be used with other processors and motherboards.
Uh-huh. Carrying the original UPC codes. I'm still not sure what to make of it.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
I'm a customer (or I was in the past, or a potential customer) and I have little time on my hands for such foolishness. The typical customer has time on his hands so he fakes return merchandise? With a plastic mold of a cpu fan, a clearly fake aluminum cpu, and a clearly fake intel seal? I don't think so. That's an operation, you don't make ONE fake shrink wrap of product with all that plus misspelled words. That's a Chinese or Singaporean designed to deceive vendors with pallets of faked merchandise.This was designed to appear as a shipment of valid goods, not one returned product.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
We had a problem with some Intel dual port gig cards and NewEgg about five years ago. We had ordered them shipped directly out to the data center (800 miles away) because of an urgent need, but upon installation, we were seeing various odd problems. Suspecting a driver issue, we left them in and returned home. Never resolved the problems. Pulled them a few months later on the next visit. Further research showed that they were phony Intel cards. Apparently several resellers had been hit with these. However, NewEgg maintained that it was no longer their problem because of their return policy (30 days, maybe, I don't remember), and refused to make an exception for goods that they knew were knock-offs. This was really too bad, as we started buying less stuff from them after that.
Gamestop is worse, in my opinion. Because they sell new games for a higher price than the used games, but they remove all of the games from the cases. So both new and used games are out of the shrinkwrap and they expect you to trust that your game is one of the new ones. Also, there is no option to return the game because it was taken out of the shrinkwrap before you bought it. Is that even legal?
I got one of these fakes on Thursday from newegg...
They don't seem to be in a hurry to refund my money.
----
I've been a D&H customer for years, I personally know several members of the family that owns the majority interest in the company and based on my firsthand knowledge and experience, I sincerely doubt that D&H is buying gray market product as was suggested. They have way too much at stake to do such a thing and they have been a very ethical company for too many years to throw away the keys to their success like a mom and pop shop located in a strip mall might do. The story that was referenced at http://hardocp.com/article/2010/03/05/newegg_selling_fake_intel_cpus is based on "sources". Here is a word of caution. Unless the person who reports things from "sources" has independently investigated and corroborated what they heard as hear-say, they are treading on very thin ice by making the statements that are posted at that link. It is unwise to besmirch someone's reputation unless you can prove what you say. Something very wrong occurred here without a doubt. I think we can speculate about it until the cows come home, but unless we get a definitive and honest statement from Newegg, there is likely no one on this thread who can shed light on what actually happened.
I think if they said investigations were still ongoing, they would be lying - mainly for the reasons the parent post gave you but also probably just because their reason (or excuse if you prefer) might actually be true.
It is entirely probable that these items were just 'demo units' meant for store windows and displays (I'm not saying this is legal where you are, but in some parts of the world it is) - over here in Asia some businesses will line entire walls with CPU boxes as a form of advertising. They have to look a little bit legitimate for this purpose, but I can easily see a situation where this kind of display would be far too expensive to obtain directly from Intel itself. The same thing happens with cell phones, not too many people will fill their glass cabinets with the real deal, instead they use fake look-a-likes that are very convincing in every detail, other than the fact they don't turn on when you hit the power button.
When it comes time to buy a CPU, they go out the back and get it from the real stock.
They even do this with games like World of Warcraft, where the CD key itself is what's worth the price on the box, and removing the discs from the sealed box lets anyone with access to the discs to see the key. I bought a copy like this, and while it worked out OK, I was rather suspicious and considered going elsewhere to get it.
I had something like this, but more recently.
I went to a large well-known brick and mortar store to pick up a 2TB hard drive I needed right away. On the shelf, there were three WD 2TB green drives. Two were shrink-wrapped, while the third was not. I picked up one of the shrink-wrapped drives, bought it, and left. I had some other errands to run around town, so I didn't get to it right away.
I finally get home and open the box, and pull out the contents. There is an unsealed (never sealed on the end, not sealed and torn) anti-static bag with a drive in it. inside the bag is also a yellow warranty paper, which is conveniently covering up the model numbers. I take them out of the bag and discover an old 30GB PATA drive with lots of dust and scratches.
Pissed off, I check the store's closing time and find I have just over 30 minutes, which is about how long it takes to get there. I put everything back in the box and bust ass getting back up there. The girl at the returns counter was a little baffled at my claim, and called for a manager. They deliberate for a minute or two in a back room, and I am told to get another drive off the shelf. I go grab the other shrink-wrapped box. The girl at the returns counter opened it, and the contents of THAT box were the same as the one I had taken home. She then tells me to get another, and I do. The last box, without shrinkwrap, contained the proper drive.
I have no idea how those old, used PATA drives ended up in "new" 2TB SATA drive boxes. A month or two later, I happened to notice that all of WD's boxes of that design HAVE NO SHRINKWRAP. Just a seal on the flaps at the top and bottom of the drive. If you're getting a WD retail drive at a B&M, and the box is of the 2.5 by 5 by 7.5 inch size, be suspicious if it is in shrink wrap.
They have three warehouses. Here you can see a tour.. it's pretty neat:
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2694
It's the magic of supply chains. People buy from other people for almost everything.
Newegg may buy some items directly from Intel, and others from other vendors who get a better wholesale price.
I'd suspect one of their suppliers offered a slightly better price and/or earlier shipping date, so they bough X pallets of them. Who knows where they were injected into the supply chain. Products aren't opened (or even uncased) until the get to the destination.
There were some very interesting writeups on the same thing happening to the pharmaceutical supply chains. Almost no pharmacies buy directly from the manufacturers. It's more work than the manufacturer is interested in.
The chain can go something like this:
Level 1) Manufacturer, with a few plants.
Level 2) A dozen (or a few dozen) major distributors.
Level 3) Hundreds or thousands of other distributors.
Level 4) Regional distribution companies.
Level 5) Retail distribution centers (like, the DC for CVS/Rite Aid/Walgreens/Walmart/etc/etc/etc)
Level 6) Your local store.
Level 3 may shop around between Level 2 distributors for better pricing.
Level 4 definitely shops around between all the Level 3 distributors.
Level 5 shops level 3 and 4 distributors, depending on the quantities they're ordering.
and Level 6... Well, that's the level Newegg is at. They're just a retail outlet.
If I, producing some counterfeit product, made a contact with a Level 3 distributor, and I could move 10,000 units of a $500 product that cost me $5 to product, it may be worth it to kick back $100k to the "purchaser" to get this in. What salesman wouldn't want to make their regular commission, plus get $100k in small unmarked bills? Sure, you could try to follow the supply chain back, but as the trails run all over the world it'll probably be a lost cause.
Someone's going to eat these losses, and it won't be the guy who injected the counterfeits into the supply chain.
Unfortunately, sales contacts are carefully guarded secrets as you work your way up the chain, so the counterfeiter will just move around without the word getting around too much. They'll change names, locations, and faces, so they won't get caught.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I had a friend of mine who used to work at a gaming store. His job was to steam open the Magic The Gathering card packs, replace the rare cards with bunk and reseal them.
It's not unheard of for a store to just flat out rip people off. I'm not saying this is what Newegg did, I'm a happy customer of theirs - but human nature being what it is I wouldn't be shocked if it turned out to be the case.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Once, during the original Pentium counterfeiting spree (where they'd grind down the ceramic top and re-screen the labels), I was at the Dayton Hamvention.
There was a vendor there that I knew, and trusted, and had bought RAM and CPUs and other commodity silicon from in the past, all of which worked fine.
He was selling counterfeit Pentiums. But they were marked as such. They were cheaper than the genuine product, and he was happy to explain to people what had happened to them. Stuff like "These were all probably Pentium 100's, but they've all checked out at 133, and now they're just marked as such."
And: "We've got real P133's here for you to buy, too."
And he'd explain the difference, and how to tell (the ceramic wasn't as smooth as the real article, for instance).
I stood and watched people at that booth for some time: Some folks, knowingly, bought the counterfeits. Some folks bought the genuine ones. Nobody really seemed to be scared away by the concept or the vendor, though, probably because of his openness, honesty, and willingness to teach.
In retrospect, it looked a whole lot more like the retail overclocking scene does today, than it did of someone trying to cheat someone else.
Kid-proof tablet..
I bought a $50 broken laptop for parts.. The wife searched through the carry case and saw paperwork for an extended warranty (gotta love her). It was on the last month, so I took it back to Best Buy (gotta hate them), who offered the warranty, not the manufacturer. They were being asshats and trying to tell me that they could only give me a replacement that was a very low end no-name laptop with a smaller screen, while the one I had was middle/higher end Toshiba. They using the CPU speed as the only metric, and the "new" one was faster, so it was better, and I was "lucky". I told them I wanted the exact same model (as per the extended warranty paperwork), which was of course, impossible. I just wanted something that was in the same original price range, to be fair, not something half the price.
Long story short, I was polite but direct, didn't get personal, and just happened to have a very loud speaking voice that was asking why they weren't going to honor their own extended warranty, in a reasonable way, over and over, while the place was crowded. After 30 minutes, I walked out with a $1300 gift card, which was the original cost minus warranty/tax. It doesn't matter that I bought it used or knowing it was broken, it was the fact that it had a warranty and I expected them to honor their own agreements.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Indeed, D&H has already tried to send a cease and desist letter to two sites reporting this: http://www.techeye.net/business/company-threatens-journalists-over-fake-intel-cpu-reports