NewEgg is a bit better, but don't buy refurbished drives. Provantage is another reputable vendor that usually has decent prices.
If you're local to the SF bay area, check out Central Computers. King Star USA also works if you're a business customer making a large purchase.
There's been oh-so-many reports that even if you're buying from the official store of any known brand, with FBA, then you might as well still receive a knock-off, due to the inventory co-mingling issue. Have they ever resolved this for good, or is noone really bothers to even pay any attention to this anymore?
It is cheaper than almost every other computer store in the UK for the same parts, deliver next day and they don't tend to shaft you on delivery cost (if it costs anything at all).
Unless you are near one of the large online shops and need something delivered next day there is no other option than Amazon.
Run your next purchasing decision through Google shopping. You may be surprised.
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/Hy97YJ/msi-b450-tomahawk...
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/Y6Crxr/fractal-design-me...
etc.
It sometimes makes sense to spread the parts buy across a couple of vendors to save costs - of course too many vendors and delivery costs eat into the savings. But it's quite rare that I've ended up buying anything other than monitors and the occasional component from Amazon.
As far as I know it doesn't happen in the UK at all. I have placed 200+ orders with Amazon in last year alone and haven't had any issues except for a couple deliveries which were a day late(Amazon extended my prime by a month each time). 99% of my deliveries arrive in 1 day as promised. They have exemplary customer service as well. In a way, I don't understand why you'd buy from anyone else but amazon :P
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/16/647377213/fake-bike-helmets-c...
Amazon itself has admitted it has a counterfeit problem to it's investors
https://qz.com/1542839/amazon-has-finally-admitted-to-invest...
Beyond that there's been documented cases by manufacturers such as Birkenstock and Apple plus the eclipse sunglasses.
One aspect is that not everything has counterfeit counterparts, e.g. there is no counter-counterfeit to, specific counterfeits, products that require exotic parts, or foods.
I’ve never seen a 4-cell(Lipo) knockoff battery for Lenovo X200 and I know the reason is because it is not easily possible to source appropriate components.
So there could be specific usage model for Amazon of a person that could completely avoid receiving unexpected items.
In case anyone's wondering, the fake i7 was some sort of Celeron with an i7 sticker on top - the real one is engraved/printed and has a different shape.
Sometimes waiting too long for your personal trust to be broken (after seeing them drop on others) can be a lot worse than just a broken toy.
Anything food/supplement related always has reviews mentioning mold, substitutions etc. Cables and electronics are often counterfeit or of questionable quality. I've seen threads here on HN about counterfeit new books. Just not worth the headache of trying to find something that you think is legit and then hoping that co-mingled products alleged to be that don't get shipped to you instead.
And the solution for the whole industry is the same thing with some distributed ledger or some very light centralized authority (like MAC or UPC vendor assignments) plus vendor-specific databases.
Also, Amazon charges $0.05/UNIT for this!
Source: I am a consultant for Amazon Suppliers. The problem is not as bad as OC exclaims, but its slightly annoying.
Later, sellers attempting to co-mingle inventory are provided a seller-specific SKU that is matched to the parent and they're required to use. This ties all issues on their orders back to their store.
This still requires lots of human intervention, which sucks.
My experiences with Amazon have been amazing; I bought two 1TB 970 pro's when they just came out (hella expensive), and one of them was faulty. After explaining my troubleshoot, they were like: ok, sounds like you know what you are doing, we'll send you a new one, be sure to return the one that's faulty in the next few days. I was blown away, amazing experience for me and certainly a reason for me to look at Amazon first when I need something else.
Be very careful even buying new drives from party vendors on Newegg. I've gotten quite a few that were advertised as new but report over 30,000 hours of power-on time.
It turns out my experience is far from unique. Basically, very few people will check the SMART data, so the vast majority of the reviews are fine. If you do happen to catch it, Newegg will of course ultimately step in and force the vendor to fix it -- but that's about it. The first vendor that scammed me appears to still be doing brisk business on the site over a year later, with mostly 4 and 5 star reviews.
Don't buy from https://www.newegg.com/TEKDEALZ to start with.
I'm pretty sure there's no real warranty, I have no idea where these drives even came from, I have no trust in "Amazon Renewed," and I have a fear the drives are actually a bit smaller, but run a hacked firmware. But I saved $120 on the pair, so rolling the dice...
I assume the seller just sources defective drives from somewhere and directly resells them as refurbished, letting the buyer do the actual testing. I assume this must work because some drives might erroneously been marked defective when it was really a sofstware issue, or other hw problem, like faulty sata cable, mainboard, loose connection, and then obviously there are drives with minor issues, like just a few reallocated sectors, that the naive buyer might not be aware of.
Honestly, if price isn't a motivating factor CDW still exists (and if you're making large business purchases you'll definitely get better pricing).
It's worth doing a warranty check with the manufacturer as soon as you receive the drive if there's any possibility at all it might not be up and up, so that you have an opportunity to return the drive if you want to.
Even if the drive is legitimate, a vendor might sell you an OEM drive which means having to go through that vendor for warranty service instead of direct with the manufacturer. That might be too much of a hassle.
DVD/BluRay implement a lot of the distribution layer of segmentation in hardware and software, but the notion exists in lots of goods, such as in the marketing of high-end watches to different countries.