Be careful who you buy a graphics card from on Amazon: a manufacturer warns of scams

The existence of thousands of third-party sellers makes Amazon a source of scams, which are difficult to detect. Amazon works hard to remove them, but it is sometimes difficult because cybercriminals often change names and accounts. It is quite common in a highly demanded and expensive product, such as graphics cards.

The manufacturer Sapphire already warned in mid-October, before Black Friday, of the proliferation of scams with its Radeon graphics cardson Amazon:

Although Amazon was already alerted, the scams have continued to occur throughout the month of November.

So Sapphire has warned again, asking its clients to make a controversial decision: buy alone graphics cards sold and shipped directly by Amazon:

It is a controversial measure, because unfairly penalizes honest third-party sellers, which there are also, and they are the majority. But objectively, the only way to be 100% sure that you are not scammed is to buy directly from Amazon, since the store sources directly from the manufacturer.

What are graphics card scams?

The graphics card market is in real chaos, after the decline of cryptocurrency mining and the rise of artificial intelligence, where some use gaming cards, instead of the AI-focused GPUs manufactured by NVIDIA.

Now the second-hand market is flooded with used and exhausted graphics cards from cryptocurrency mining, especially in Asia. And many scammers try to sell them as new on international markets.

Many different tricks are used. From change the graphics card case for a new one and a more powerful model to, directly, paint the chips to make them look new.

The problem is that the graphics cards from cryptocurrency mining have been running for months, 24 hours a day, at maximum power. So your hardware is exhausted, they could break down at any time.

These scams are sometimes easy to detect, because the card is sold as new, but costs 30 or 40% less. But in many cases they only have a discount of 10 or 15%, so as not to raise suspicions.

The manufacturer Sapphire asks to buy its graphics cards directly from Amazon, to avoid scams. An unfair measure for honest third-party sellers. If you want to trust one of them, make sure that they have many positive ratings and good product reviews, and that they have been selling for a long time, although that is not a definitive guarantee either.