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Comment by bserge | Hacker News Reader

Just great. I mean, drives are the only things I'd rather buy new, but how hard can it be to fake the whole packaging these days.

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Miners frequently retain the full packaging for return fraud/resale purposes.

Dumpster divers are also recovering packaging for re-use.

I've actually read your comment as return/fraud/resale on the first glance.

Step 4: Profit

Buy direct from manufacturer. Samsung, Western Digital, etc all have their own online stores.

Having purchased an "in stock" SSD directly from WD at the end of last year, it's not something I'm keen to repeat.

Their store seemed to operate primarily on incompetence.

I finally got my invoice two weeks later, still with no working shipping information, and the drive turned up days later still.

On top of their scummy behaviour around SMR disks, and their NAS solution, I think I'll be steering as clear as possible.

One of my worst experiences was ordering direct from a little vendor (not HDD) to avoid Amazon scams.

The vendor added a markup to Amazon prices, and fulfilled with Amazon. I'm pretty sure I got a fake, ordering direct from the manufacturer.

I'll withhold names, so as not to embarrass anyone.

I'm confused how you seem concerned about the embarrassment to the perpetrators of a fraud you have been victim of. The effect is inevitably damaging to consumer confidence in general by not identifying the criminal company and creating additional unfounded caution wherever else, so your protection is not a free gesture at all.

My perception is both the manufacturer and I were the victims of fraud, while Amazon was the enabler. Now, I wish the company didn't fulfill through Amazon, but that's not a crime or a fraud.

Shame away!

That's actually a brilliant arbitrage plan in the short term. If the trademark-infringing knockoffs on Amazon come from a country where the trademark cannot be enforced and the original manufacturer cannot compete, the original manufacturer could slow the collapse of their business by reselling knockoffs.

And sidestep the monopolist at the same time. Its a win-win!

Or from firms like Bestbuy they won't have the hassle of manufacturers or the cheating/fraud with Amazon.

I've had obviously used disks "fulfilled by Amazon" before

it was pretty obvious when you've bought 5 disks and one has completely different (crappy) packaging

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