Toshiba should sue Amazon over this. Them selling the drives as new and them not working hurts their brand reputation and that's directly caused by Amazon.
Actually I love this idea lol. For one it would be an easy case for them to win in court and second it would open up amazon to either more cases or face fixing the problem.
Actually, I read a few YEARS ago that Amazon was selling fake Sandisk microSD cards, and I wanted the new 1tb for my Switch. I ended up ordering DIRECT from Western Digital, SAME price, and I was 100% sure it was NOT used or a fake.
They need to get what google is getting. Its possible google might get broken up (like chrome on its own, android on its own, youtube and so on) and I think thats perfect for amazon too. In a world where amazon the store front needs to stand on its own I bet we would see them being a lot more customer friendly since they would be way more at the customers mercy.
Antitrust is exactly how Amazon happened this way. Remember when Amazon didn't have 💩party sellers? Back in 2013 's administration said it was monopoly and forced Amazon to put 💩party sellers on the platform. And then in 2017 Amazon started mixing inventory, from their proper channels and from the 💩party sellers.
Louis, I really enjoy the fact that you can take a garbage experience for yourself and turn it into an educational experience for everyone else. Not that I think you could if you wanted to, but, don’t ever change.
Amazon is much like a utility. Amazon is largely a shipping service and collection of server space for sale through AWS. Antitrust would be good for them.
Meanwhile, as a used bookseller Amazon asked me recently for wholesale invoices and letters of authorization from publishers to sell books that are 75+ years old. You can't make this stuff up.
That makes it even funnier since it started as a marketplace for books, and they even own Kindle. Makes me wonder if that's because they want to make it harder to sell books, so they can push their Kindle and accompanying eBooks.
@@jazuqua The books are 75 years old, they'd rather they were digital, and DRM'd up the ass so they can sell you the same shit multiple times, see also, the music industry. Or how the games industry fought tooth and nail to make it harder to resell the games you bought. Or even better, charge a monthly subscription for access to "books" "music" or "games", wait, Shamazon already do that.
@@zeggyiv Nintendo. One of the worst offenders for selling the same games to you on every generation of console. They make you pay a subscription to access them now, and a lot of games you buy you need to buy Nintendo Online to play them fully. It's such a pity because they do make some of the best games. I always buy physical copies when I can, of anything like books, music, movies or games. But even some physical games require Nintendo Online to play fully. It sucks. Oh, yes, and they also sell download cards in physical game cases. No game card. That sucks even more.
@@CGGS_0 It wasn't always that way. A few years ago, it was 50 years. But honestly, it definitely makes no difference whether it would be 30, 50, 70 or 100.
Well that explains it. A few years ago I bought a 1tb toshiba drive, it showed up and it was actually only 128mb when I plugged it in. I returned it, and got my refund. And a few months later they re charged me saying I sent them back a fake one. I have a habit of recording myself opening packages and things so I sent them the recording of me opening the package from them, plugging it in and it showing it wasn't a real thing. They refunded me and closed/deleted my account lol.
I love that. Send you a fake and then claim you are the one sending them a fake. If only you could track those people down and meet them face to face for a bit of hard drive installation
I'm due soon, really thinking about it. I can't use their Prime video at all because of almost total VPN bans. I called them and had it out with some of them, and one guy just hung up on me. Awful place.
Me too. They ripped most of Top Gear out of the offering, no more specials. AND I have to watch ads for the same money. AND none of the good movies are still available or you have to "buy" or "rent" them for extra money. No thanks . I am done.
@@Envinite The thing is for small items to get delivered fast, the Prime system is great. On time, and good prices. But you're selling your soul for it lol. I can't wait to see how bad their Alexa with AI will do for $100 a year or whatever they're gonna try.
When Amazon ban a customer of 26 years from leaving any more reviews because that customer (me) left an honest but critical review of a book you know the system is broken
Bought some memory from Amazon, what arrived was two bits of plywood in very convincing branded packaging. Phoned up Amazon and reported, and they said they would send replacement. Great. They then proceeded to go to the same shelf where they picked up the wood, pulled another couple of branded packages off the shelf and sent the to me... and... yup you guessed it, they were wood too.
Reminds me of the time I ordered some new pants and what I got were overalls! I thought that they mixed up the order and asked for a replacement. You can imagine my face when the new package arrives and it's another pair of overalls!
they are really earning the title "Scamazon". i recently ordered a very specific tool called an internal pipe wrench. its a very simple design that has been around since the 80's at least. the tool has literally two moving parts, one of them being a hardened steel wheel with cut knurling to grip the inside of a pipe. i even have one of the originals, but its too small so i ordered more from the mfr. what i got was a CAST REPLICA. someone literally stuck the original tool in sand and did a zinc sand casting of a KNURLED PART. the knurling was smooth as baby shit and couldn't grip 40 grit sand paper. i wrote a scathing review on how its clearly a scam, and its clearly a sand cast ripoff of the original tool. i even measured the old one i have vs the same size in the set that i bought, and sure enough the new one is a bit smaller like you get with castings. what a fucking joke. the icing on the cake was amazon deleted my review calling them out as a scam!
That’s the equivalent of going to a flea market and saying “hey this fruit is made of plastic” and security throws you out like a bag of hitachi drives. I just thought about it and the last I had heard about hitachi was for their trash knives. I just thought that was funny
I've had one of my negative reviews deleted as well. So, the presence of negative reviews have become a part of my vetting process. If I see an Amazon product that nobody has anything bad to say about, that means all of the bad reviews have been deleted.
After they shipped me fake apple earbuds, i did the same. Negative reviews are deleted/ignored, and anything you say, is not true. They acussed me of sending a fake product for a refund. Took me 9 months to get my money back (9 months of trolling in reddit, blogs, everywhere). Will never again recommend scAmazon. BTW, posting scathing review with 5 stars allowed me to post the story 🤣
@@IvnSoft that is brilliant! I didn't think of this and that also explains why occasionally see a complaint about a product but the reviewer is still gave a lot of stars
As CinemaStar was for DVR or surveillance applications, this HDD was not in a Notebook. Notebooks had the TravelStar, it begins with HTS. At 12:25, you can see the HDD type "Hitachi HCC543216A7A380". The beginning HCC is Hitachi CinemaStar, the numbers 54 (5400rpm), 32 (maximum 320GB of this series) and 16 (160GB of this drive), the 7 for 7mm height, the 380, it is 3 for SATA with 300Mbyte/sec and 80 for 8MByte Cache. If you read just the model number, you know it is only a 160GB Drive, means it writes, and writes maybe until this 160GB and then crashes as it cannot write further, and as GB is not GiBi, it crashes after 149GBytes effective.
It's a VERY remarkable operation to repackage those as new. If they were trying to be clever they would just transpose the labels of the actual drives. I wonder if they can track any of this to figure it out. Someone must have bought a ton of old surveillance equipment to make it worthwhile.
Fun fact: Amazon's choice in external hard drives by Toshiba right now is a shared listing. One seller is Amazon, another is a third party seller that has them "on sale" for cheaper. Both are labeled Amazon's choice. Both show up in the Toshiba Store on Amazon.
And when one of there vans gets in an accident. "Oh, he's an independent contractor, not an amazon employee. Oh the van is owned by DSP, not our insurance. Please don't call anymore."
Realistically, it's not like we really need to hear these tales to know that corporate is comfortable with keeping things unchanged. Anyone who has actually tried to use the site search in the last decade knows it's nearly useless. When something so fundamental to such a site is permanently broken, you don't expect good things.
@@PSUQDPICHQIEIWC That's why I quit doing business with these clowns a while ago and I had to explain to my own 50 something year old mom why they're garbage. Prime is useless now as you don't get same day shipping in many places anymore and the discount's so minimal to be not worth it.
@@Ziko577 The cost is the same as elsewhere because Amazon requires vendors who have prime eligible products to keep the price on amazon the same as any other website, and pay for the shipping of the product as well. Prime doesn't get you free shipping, the price of shipping is included in the sale price.
The thing I find most deplorable is how they custom-raise the price of an item just for you if you looked at it before, or their algorithm predicts you are likely to just buy it.
They don't do that as it would be illegal and easily provable - they are sneakier than that, they can predict market demand spikes and gradually raise the price or selectively create 'deals' (after gradually rising the prices) to increase revenue and margins. They hold no particular interest for individual purchases...
I could prove this. As a "dealhunter" I sometimes get items 90% off. If I add any of those items to my cart the price will adjust to competitive prices in about 15 minutes. I keep them all open in tabs (not added to cart) so the system doesnt adjust.
Yeah, it's all about getting products to a customer as fast as possible, so if the reseller stock is 20 miles away and you ordered the legit one and paid more for it and that is 100 miles away, you're getting the reseller one. I'm dropping my Prime membership after having it for almost as long as its been offered.
In the UK Ebuyer sent me a 4tb hard drive which looked new, I did a full format that took hours and seemed fine then went to transfer data and the drive clicked, sent it back and was accused of scamming as the drive was one they sold to a different customer the year before going by the serial number, what was most likely was they got sent back a DOA drive and then put it back in the warehouse as a return rather than a RMA
Me too. Every review I'd ever left since they were a bookseller instantly deleted and they say it's due to suspicious activity on your account....despite every review having gone through their editorial review. I'm convinced they've got an internal saboteur or are just on a pathway to self destruction. I instantly cancelled prime and have literally spent tens of thousands at their competitor....you can get everything with lower free shipping thresholds or free pickup at Walmart, Home Depot or Target. Have never looked back. I should really thank them for saving me so much money and all that packing and damage they're causing to the environment.
I wonder if that's Amazon's code-monkeys taking that personally. Tech jobs around America are being stolen by people sneaking in from India to chase their supposed 'dream', after all.
This is an old scam. I remember it being there like over a decade ago with flash drives. But the fact that it's becoming a new normal on Amazon is quite annoying. Well, Amazon doesn't seem to care. Seems like they pay attention to short-term profitability.
Exactly, like selling 10tb thumb drives. Been around a long time. Look at the sold and shipped and make sure they are both Amazon and you won't have this issue.
@@Ryan_DeWitt No, they mix inventory and ship the unit that is closest to you. If the counterfeit unit is in an Amazon warehouse 20 miles away from you and the legit unit is 100 miles away, they're sending the counterfeit one since shipping time is faster and they think both units are exactly the same and not counterfeit. The only way to ensure that doesn't happen is to buy with shipped being from an authorized dealer and ensure that authorized dealer fulfills orders that are placed on Amazon.
Thank you for this. I can't express enough how happy it makes me to see you guys exposing what has been going on there at an increasing rate. I feel like I've been screaming into the wind for years now. I even considered creating a channel dedicated to this, how sellers manipulate the platform and to simply cover what others have experienced. I'd normally be hesitant to put most the blame on a platform but at this point it's clear as day they're intentionally making it easy to abuse the system. In many ways the changes they have implemented only made things worse yet they continue to get away with it.
Loved how you spoke about accounting ability and self reflection. I have someone in my own life that believes they don't have control and as a result, I am being dragged into their mess. I cannot fathom how having a fixed mentality of no matter what happens "It's not my fault, therefore I shouldn't have to think about how I ended up in this situation" has helped in any situation.
fr I no longer buy my skincare products/ shampoo/ toothpaste etc from amazon because I can never be sure it's not some cheap knockoff. I got toothpaste a few months ago that started flaking off paint when I curled the tube that would stick to my fingers until I scrapped it off. Extra scary cause I wear contacts and if I happened to brush my teeth before taking off my contacts without noticing that and got it in my eyes I'd be sol Amazon is no longer the more convenient option for me
I just installed a new 2TB Timetec SSD in a customers laptop .. realized that it didn't pop up in disk management like normal . but I formatted it .. then realized that it came up as 119GB . took the drive out of the laptop and checked it on my computer and realize that the part number matches the 128GB SSD . looked at the label 2TB .. but it's been swapped .. so amazon sold me a returned item .. unless their employee did it
Amazon employee doesn't have time to pee in the bathroom. They have to pee in bottles. They definitely don't have time to swap out SSDs. The 2 most likely scenarios: - Someone bought it, swapped it out, returned it. Amazon sold it without checking it. Unlikely employees who process returns know what to look for. - Amazon mix their good inventory from legit distributors with the inventory sent in from their marketplace sellers. Fraudulent seller can send it a bunch of counterfeit item and it'll get mixed in with all the other inventory. So Amazon can accidentally sent out counterfeit while the fraudulent seller gets to sell legitmate goods. Not trying to defend Amazon (fuck them), but that's how it can happen. I basically don't buy any tech from Amazon anymore.
@@monsieurlee I can confirm. Sometimes Amazon does not return returned goods to the seller, even if you have specified this, but instead puts it back in your pile of new stock. You'd be surprised how often customers swap out shit to save some bucks and how often you get the craziest stuff returned from Amazon's warehouse (e.g., some other companies' products).
@@monsieurlee A mechanic I watch did a short video where he received some rear axle seals from a parts place he uses often and the seals were very obviously previously installed and then mangled to remove them. Businesses are not opening "returned, wrong item", just restocking and shuffling the theft off on someone else.
Most likely return fraud by an Amazon customer, coupled with Amazon's unwillingness to check the returned item before putting it back on the shelf. I've had the pleasure of rooting through Amazon returns like a wild boar - the number of good-looking boxes containing seemingly the right item, but actually something cheaper or broken, was astounding.
I'm a business owner also. I agree with you 100% on what you said. It all comes to me if there's a issue with the work done for a customer. I absolutely enjoy your show and calling out bad business practices. Thank you very much for having a voice for us that don't have a format to put out our disatification of a product or a bad business practices.
In the video at 10:23 we can see "Compatibility" is clearly mis-spelled as "Compatibiliy" on the back of the box. This is a common indicator of a counterfeit product. Scammers often have a convincing package but with one or more subtle signs of their scam.
I have an old IT client that had a server running RAID 10 with 8 3TB Seagate drives. The server goes down, and he flies me out on an emergency basis. Turns out both drives in a stripe failed. He had eight other "new" drives he had picked up off Amazon sitting on the side. 6 out of 8 of those were dead, and we ended up just decomissioning the server.
People wanted to fast forward commercials, so the media industry invented product replacement. This is "koi placement" I will randomize the appearance throughout the screen in future videos so they are impossible to block. Sponsorblock can get rekt
@@rossmanngroup Let's not blame sponsorblock for people submitting shitty anti-fish timestamps. Unless you mean the plugin as a whole, in which case, lol, too bad.
Haha. I'm totally fine with this. Actually, it's kinda cool. Hope you didn't take my comment on the sponsorblock post as anything but a polite advocation for the addon used properly (with manual skipping). @@rossmanngroup
One other thing that Amazon is lacking that eBay does (and why I primarily switched to them) is choosing item location. I’m more likely to buy from a U.S. based seller rather than an overseas seller. They communicate thru eBay and help out with any returns/wrong parts or items, and ship faster. Plus you can choose for free shipped items rather than free shipping on ‘orders over $35’.
I like this option, and is why I do use ebay over Amazon, but occasionally the product is still shipped from China. Especially if it has a CA or sometimes TX address. They all just rent out a 1x1 foot closet some place and use that as their US Address (I'm guessing on this). Usually you can tell by item transit time. Or when you see 25 different sellers, with the exact product, and their listing page even looks exactly the same, copy and paste. I mainly just select US Seller, but ignore all CA addresses.
The item location feature on ebay has been broken for years. So many fungible items that are in the UK, but have shipping times that are suspiciously the same as the item with exactly the same images and description thats shipped from shenzen. All the internet flea markets are full of this sort of crap.
I always wondered why when I'm buying one product with a huge amount of good reviews all the good reviews mention a different product and not the one I'm buying SMH, I thought they were all drunk people but wow this is insane...that makes perfect sense.
One thing I learned was never buy anything that wasn't directly sold by Amazon. The marketplace is just full of sleazy vendors that Amazon doesn't stand behind.
Last year I bought two sticks of RAM and they sent me a sealed plastic envelope with nothing in it. When I got the notification that it was delivered, there was a picture of the package under my doormat and I thought it looked suspiciously empty. I get that we want to protect our privacy so the couriers shouldn't be opening our packages but did it really not throw up any flags for anyone who handled the envelope that it was clearly completely empty?
They often don't care to look at returned goods and just re-sell them as new. I recently read a review where somebody had gotten a "new" electric toothbrush that had stains of dried toothpaste on it. Yuck
This isn't a 'scam' it's retail fraud. Somebody ordered these, shucked the drives, as you did, and returned them with dead ones. Amazon, or whoever they came from, doesn't have any checks in place to validate the customer claim, or process it as defective and return to toshiba, or just didn't follow the process in place. I've gotten a bunch of drives like this from my local wal-marts. All they ever do is check the serial number, and even if i tell them it's defective, i've still had times that they tried to sell me returned drive(seals weren't intact). got so bad, i started marking the box with a green precision sharpie. I've found my returns on the shelf 3 times since then. Funniest is when they put them in the 'security box' to try to prevent theft. Absolute worst one was when i opened the box, and it had superglue around the edges where the clips that hold it together are. Pretty damn obvious they'd tampered with it, but the retail folks at walmart(and probably amazon) have no clue what to look for. Probably the funniest one was getting an ssd, that i thought was bit heavy, and turned out that they'd swapped the ssd for HDD and just put the label on from the ssd on the HDD. There's just too many level of stupid in retail these days. edit:Crap, i remembered you talking about your mom doing this with other products and her 'life time warranty' right after i got done writing this. Had to bring that up.
Yep, especially considering it's from "Amazon warehouse" 4:00 that is not normal brand new stock but returned products, with damaged packaging or something else off from normal brand new stock.
I remember a pretty wide-spread fraud a few years ago (something like Ryzen 1000 or 2000 era) where people were buying CPUs, replacing the one in the box with an old one with replaced lid (so that it looks right on first glance) and then carefully re-sealing the box so that the guys at the store take it as a return of an unopened product without questions. Maybe this is a return of that? Though this one seems a lot less elaborate.
@@Tomas9970_1 It was intel's that got the most notoriety, but both started having this issue as soon as they stopped soldering the lids on. It got worse once companies started making delidding tools and youtube videos about that came out. Really though, this is just something that hits the news cycle periodically. It's far more widespread than most people are aware of.
You're both much more forgiving and much harsher to your employees than I could ever be. Holy Moses, if Chris survives this, in 20 years when he's running his own shop, he's going to tell his employees about the worst fuckup of his life.
I bought a Lenovo laptop for my kids as a Christmas gift, planning to upgrade it before wrapping it. To my shock, the laptop felt cheap and off. When I opened it to add more RAM, I discovered it was completely different from the original specs listed on the Lenovo website. Everything inside was cheap, fake, and non-upgradable. Fortunately, I was still within the return window and got a refund. I'll never again purchase something important on Amazon. I own multiple original Thinkpad so I knew it was fake almost instantly
The newest T14 laptops are indeed cheap anyway. Buying in bulk directly from Lenovo, you cannot upgrade the RAM anymore, it's all soldered to the mainboard.
So thankful for seeing your video today. I had been thinking about buying an external hard drive. One of the places I had been looking on was Amazon. Due to this video definitely won't be buying from Amazon. I would rather pay a bit extra and avoid a scam like that.
With your analogy of being in control or not, I believe it's a bit of both just like with real traffic. We are in the driver's seat, but sometimes things happen outside of the car that force us in a direction we don't want and there's nothing we can do about it. Roadblocks, accidents, bridges collapsing, all things we cannot control or fix that cause us to have to steer a different direction and sometimes block us entirely from where we want to go. The issue is the 2nd type of people who think they are not in control think that EVERY obstacle is a fallen bridge that completely separates them from their desired destination.
Ending convenient, in-person retail and replacing it with inconvenient, slow, online-only, scamming retail is one of the worst things that has happened to today's economy. I hate ordering crap online.
@@craneology Maybe because westerner onlinestore is a sh1th0le I might live in third world country, but online store here are very stringent about application requirement, requiring both verified address and citizen ID to make. You can fake address but you can't fake ID, because ours are centralized. Trying scam like this is fast tracked ticket to the caged hotel.
@@craneology except when it doesn't get delivered, or when it does, you open the box and it's broken, or it dies within the warranty period and you want to return it, or when it's not the thing that you thought it was because the pics or description were misleading or not detailed enough so you thought you were buying something different than what they sold
@@craneologyThere is obviously convenience to it, but there is some inconvenience too. Having to wait multiple days and being unable to pick it up yourself if you want/need it fast. Also, being unable to view the item in person before buying. It's not all positives.
Im seriously considering cancelling my Amazon Prime. More and more I find myself driving to the store for random things like cables because I'm worried the Amazon one is gonna be crap.
I buy Amazon returns including lots of FBA cables Amazon didn't sell for whatever reason and the seller didn't want to pay to recover. Why? Because nearly all of it is junk. It may have a very fancy package and look legit. My favorite are HDMI cables that come in a shiny vacuum-sealed package. Looks amazing sitting there. Wow they went to effort to protect this cable like it was food. It must be great! No. It is vacuum-packed because the metal is very cheap and oxidizes in days. The plastics can't handle oxygen and crumble while smelling bad. I paid a dollar for it but I feel for people who spent real money on the same thing.
Does forcing an employee to work off of an old used Toshiba spinning rust drive count as Cruel and Unusual Punishment? Did Louis just break the eighth amendment?
@@Clickworker101 honestly... realistically it probably won't matter. Spinning rust will probably only effect his desktop experience since (presumably) it's his boot drive, I have even gamed off of a 7200rpm Seagate drive somewhat recently and the performance difference wasn't very noticable when compared to games off of my SSD. But then again I don't know his daily schedule/responsibilities so it depends.
Like I feel like it will mostly effect time to launch applications, web browsing, and download/upload speed. Launching apps is slightly annoying but a few extra seconds probably isn't gonna kill you, Web browsing? Practically every child in the 1st world has a device capable of a decent web browsing in their pocket. The Data transfer is probably the only one that might be an issue depending on what his tasks are, but honestly if he's doing data recovery or something (keep in mind I am not super familiar with what this job *actually* entails) wasn't the spinning rust they are dumping the data onto already significantly slowing down the process compared to it's theoretical most time efficient method? I'd hate it personally but honestly as long as that thing is 7200rpm I would consider myself lucky. If it's slower tho... yeah maybe I would be hurting.
So I work for a third party company that works on the sanitation of a Amazon warehouse, I fired some people 6, one of them did a de@th threat towards me. Now Amazon is asking for me to be fired, asking my company to fire me, and Alas I got fired, so yes fck amazon.. hope this comment isn't deleted
So you got the same treatment you gave others, what's your problem? You don't mind firing others but when others fire you, all of a sudden you're disgusted? You're sick.
I was sold a micro SD card that wasn’t good. Many bad clusters in one month use several gigs of the card was no longer useable. I tried to get a refund and they said no. Giving me some excuses. Several months passed I’m at 50% of the card unusable. I cancelled my prime too. I’m done with Amazon. I will purposely dish out more money to get it elsewhere they pay less and get crap from Amazon. I don’t care about them anymore. And I’m done fighting them myself. I have a binder of BBB complaints and consumer protection complaints. I did everything short of a law suit. And they have shown me the middle finger and how they will not listen and even less care. They’re too rich for their own good. So they can afford to screw everyone else over and get away with it. Gotta love the power of money.
BBB is just a private company. Why bother. The only thing a BBB complaint does is maybe change the company’s rating on BBB. These ratings mean nothing whatsoever to like 99.99% of people.
@@NuchiAsaki scam? I've used it with many companies in the past and in my experience it's worked for me. For example version. I had their fiber service then had an issue where they charged me for equipment I had returned and also refused to prorate me for the month I wasn't using. Built a BBB compliant sent it 2 days later received a reply saying that equipment charge was reversed and refunded and that month I was not using was prorated and refunded. Problem completely resolved. Had an issue with hyundai motors and same thing sent a BBB compliant and got issue resolved. So i can't really agree with the scam statement as some do take it seriously and resolve complaints. I think that the issue why some companies don't care is because they know the BBB isn't a federal branch and can't twist their arms to get this resolved. So they just don't care. At least in my experience based on the success I've had myself in the past.
It should be noted Toshiba does lend their name out. Bought a Toshiba AC and it looked very suspiciously like the Midea AC that was already in the house and it was. Even the apps where interchangeable and used the same account.
They dont. In case of AC, toshiba put their compressor(in best case) inside OEM AC and sell it outside japan to keep brand influence for cheap. Made in Japan AC cost atleast 3 times more then chinese one(outside japan ofc), so they cant compete, but who would not choose toshiba over midea for little more price, despite being identical inside. For HHD, i dont think japanese HDD makers produce it outside japan in first place(hikvision rebrand WD/Seagate HDD for example for their sales). Sneaky chinese who produce HDD on videos, have molds(or some small, like 5000-10000 pcs stock of cases) for toshiba hdds and put inside what ever working they have, usualy they dont even bother to make new sticker(usually they bother in order to scam importer "partner")
Commenting to boost the algorithm. Haven't bought a product off Amazon in years and I will continue not to. Thanks for the great videos as always, Louis.
@@Floofie_boiit's not explicitly ilegal because the FDA does not regulate supplements. Although I'd guess it probably falls under fraud but then you have to do the litigation yourself to get them to stop.
They allow vendors to do it all the time. I bought a PC speaker system listed as new, but when it arrived it was obviously refurbished with dents and dings AND it didnt work.
This is a pretty classic chinese scam. The more extreme versions of these are a literal USB flashdrive hotglued inside an external hard drive case with faked capacity. You think you get a 1TB drive but in reality it is just an 8GB flashdrive. Guess the only difference between Amazon and Aliexpress these days is the fact that Amazon is not called Aliexpress.
STILL no Micro Center presence on the west coast (except the one store in so cal). I still make it a point to pilgrimage there whenever it's time for a new build.
@@snojetsst9420 Unlike Amazon, a brick and mortar shop would get sued into oblivion if they filled their shelves with products obtained from unauthorized dealers.
I would love to see Toshiba sue Amazon. I’ve bought their products, great. They shouldn’t have their reputation trashed by this scam. Thank you, Louis and Chris!
Toshiba has been selling Canvio drives with Hitachi relabeled drives in them for almost a decade. Source: I've sold plenty, and can find info online about people wanting data recovery on these drives. Smaller capacity drives may have Hitachi drives inside. Where they source them now, I don't know, since WD discontinued Hitachi's 2.5" class drives. Maybe they sold the tech to Toshiba (I can't find anything saying they did) or maybe it is some Chinese conspiracy, who knows. But this likely isn't some Amazon scam.
can confirm. a few weeks ago, i ordered a new replacement toshiba 2.5" hdd for a ps4 since it was the same specs as the original. went to install it & the PS4 OS wouldn't even install. sent it back & used a solid state drive instead.
Can you use this video as reinforcement if they denied you replacement for your motherboard? "It's not like this DOESN'T happen on Amazon or something!"
Thanks for showing your fish tank. My 1 year old daughter is very entertained and keeps saying "fish" while making swimming motions. 10/10 for both our entertainment
One time I bought a WD SSD from Walmart and I found an old IDE drive in the package. Luckily I had opened the package before I even left the parking lot. I don't know why I checked it, but I'm glad I did, because when I went back in the store the employee was already giving me a hard time about replacing it for me.
Hey Louis Rossmann I wanted to let you know, as someone who sees a lot of these scam drives, you should be able to get them working normally most times but you have to format them usimg DiskPart, they will not format via this PC or Disk Manager through usual methods. You have to first "clean" the drive then recreate the partition.
Also, direct connect via SATA should help. USB controller and drivers can act up in windows. So, the diskpart and sata connection should resolve the issue.
Amazon sold me (2) counterfeit Sandisk 128gb from the literal Sandisk store. (No platic seal, slightly different font, different cardboard) A non experienced person probably wouldn’t have noticed.
@@timmholl9238 Don't make me defend puzzle games where people struggle to put two things together and think CEO is the actual boss and not the real boss hidden far away in a private plane, on a yacht, in a mansion gleefully giggling at people who think CEOs are the final boss in a corporation.
Louis, your public awareness videos on Amazon are taking traction with me - I already quit using Amazon as my go-to platform to order anything I need. I've started ordering any tech equipment directly from the manufacturer or an authorized dealer again. Also I discourage my wife from ordering high-end beauty products on Amazon because there are often issues with those as well.
About 3 of the items I purchased as "new" on prime day were clearly used and had to be returned. I bought a "new" toaster that came in an already open box with fingerprints and crumbs in it. Fortunately they honored my returns which is currently their only saving grace for me. Sadly, I'm almost certain that took that return and just relisted it again hoping the next customer will be too lazy to deal with the return process. As long as they honor the returns they're still the cheapest way to get stuff shipped to my house. But they are increasingly unreliable and I hesitate to make any serious/important purchase from them.
They did the same with a Western Digital 5TB drive I bought. The original I had bought was 5400rpm then I bought another, same model, same SKU and all, and it came in as an unidentified drive and 4800rpm, I took the offer of a coupon for 10-15 bucks off my future purchase but this is certainly concerning.
I get when Rossmann says that he is fully responsible for his life, his business, and his videos. However, it is important to remember responsibility is a two-way street. Employers have the responsibility of operating their business and managing its success. Employees have the responsibility to do their best and take accountability for their learning and mistakes also. The accountability of Rossmann, along with the commitment and dedication of his employees, are what makes his company a success.
Nope, you're thinking about it wrong. They're not responsible for you just because you say so, or just because you pay them. They're responsible for them, you're responsible for you, and if they want to eat tonight, they'll be thinking about how to keep getting that paycheck. If they want your business to be successful, they'll be thinking about that too. You've granted them the responsibility, but it's up to you to convince them to take that responsibility seriously.
I would think filing a complaint with your particular state's Attorney General would be better. Enough complaints against them either the AG gets involved, or the AG gets to retire on some nice fat bribes from Amazon & others.
So look at it this way. A bad person purchased 10 Toshiba drives from Amazon, yes all new, perfect working order. He replaces the said drives with his fake 128Meg ones, and returns all as unwanted for a full refund (no questions asked!). All 10, Amazon returns opens the package and see yep, brand new unopened so returns them back to stock. Enter customer 2 purchases said drives and bingo we have a Rossmann Video! Who would like to give the way in which we can stop this? AFAIK Amazon do not track any serial numbers of these kinds of items, and scammer knows it, and wins everytime.
Just ordered an S20 off of Amazon that admittedly says it was refurbished but they ended up putting in like the worst quality screen missing half of the screws on the inside and almost none of the replacement parts were OEM. And icing on top is the seller had flashed the U model as U1 and was claiming it was the U1.
10:22 The fraudsters do not appear to be able to spell "Compatibily" correctly. There are other inconsistencies in what is printed that I'll leave up to the viewer to discern.
These typos are a clear indication of some Chinese knock-off product. In no way this is a genuine Toshiba packaging. The typesetting is done by people who don’t speak nor understand english language.
in life you either see yourself as being in the driver seat or passenger seat, but boy does it feel like sometimes you're tied in the fucking trunk
Only the people who sponsorblocked the koi
@@rossmanngroupbased sponsorblock submitters
@@rossmanngroupwait koicam sections were actually sponsorblocked by someone?😢
@@microwaveoven2 ig some ppl are shitty with sponsorblock that's why i have the channel whitelisted
@@HaxxorElite It's the anti-koi people you should be worried about.
Toshiba should sue Amazon over this. Them selling the drives as new and them not working hurts their brand reputation and that's directly caused by Amazon.
Actually I love this idea lol. For one it would be an easy case for them to win in court and second it would open up amazon to either more cases or face fixing the problem.
Wonderful idea!
@@CGGS_0 That's the flash division spin off dude. Toshiba as a large entity is still around.
Next step is to raise a stink and contact Toshiba.
Actually, I read a few YEARS ago that Amazon was selling fake Sandisk microSD cards, and I wanted the new 1tb for my Switch. I ended up ordering DIRECT from Western Digital, SAME price, and I was 100% sure it was NOT used or a fake.
Amazon has become the flea market we always thought eBay was.
Whats funny is there seems to be better quality control at an actual flea market hahahha
At least you know if you're getting a bootleg or a knockoff on Ebay lol
@@MeltedElf Amazon at this point is basically just Aliexpress with less honesty and somewhat faster shipping.
AWS the only part of their business that makes sense.
@@conscript900 as a kid I would always get the flea market knockoff beyblades they were actually better LOL
Time for Amazon to get an anti-trust suit. Overdue, frankly.
They need to get what google is getting. Its possible google might get broken up (like chrome on its own, android on its own, youtube and so on) and I think thats perfect for amazon too. In a world where amazon the store front needs to stand on its own I bet we would see them being a lot more customer friendly since they would be way more at the customers mercy.
Antitrust is exactly how Amazon happened this way. Remember when Amazon didn't have 💩party sellers? Back in 2013 's administration said it was monopoly and forced Amazon to put 💩party sellers on the platform. And then in 2017 Amazon started mixing inventory, from their proper channels and from the 💩party sellers.
Louis, I really enjoy the fact that you can take a garbage experience for yourself and turn it into an educational experience for everyone else. Not that I think you could if you wanted to, but, don’t ever change.
Amazon is much like a utility. Amazon is largely a shipping service and collection of server space for sale through AWS. Antitrust would be good for them.
@@igelbofh 2013's administration didn't force Amazon to fill the platform of scammers, just an FYI
Meanwhile, as a used bookseller Amazon asked me recently for wholesale invoices and letters of authorization from publishers to sell books that are 75+ years old. You can't make this stuff up.
They sure know how to pick their battles, and favorites.
That makes it even funnier since it started as a marketplace for books, and they even own Kindle.
Makes me wonder if that's because they want to make it harder to sell books, so they can push their Kindle and accompanying eBooks.
@@jazuqua The books are 75 years old, they'd rather they were digital, and DRM'd up the ass so they can sell you the same shit multiple times, see also, the music industry. Or how the games industry fought tooth and nail to make it harder to resell the games you bought.
Or even better, charge a monthly subscription for access to "books" "music" or "games", wait, Shamazon already do that.
@@zeggyiv Nintendo. One of the worst offenders for selling the same games to you on every generation of console. They make you pay a subscription to access them now, and a lot of games you buy you need to buy Nintendo Online to play them fully. It's such a pity because they do make some of the best games. I always buy physical copies when I can, of anything like books, music, movies or games. But even some physical games require Nintendo Online to play fully. It sucks. Oh, yes, and they also sell download cards in physical game cases. No game card. That sucks even more.
@@CGGS_0 It wasn't always that way. A few years ago, it was 50 years. But honestly, it definitely makes no difference whether it would be 30, 50, 70 or 100.
Your shop in Austin TX is amazing. Very grateful for your employees for taking care of me, disabled Army veteran. Truly amazing.
Well that explains it. A few years ago I bought a 1tb toshiba drive, it showed up and it was actually only 128mb when I plugged it in. I returned it, and got my refund. And a few months later they re charged me saying I sent them back a fake one. I have a habit of recording myself opening packages and things so I sent them the recording of me opening the package from them, plugging it in and it showing it wasn't a real thing. They refunded me and closed/deleted my account lol.
I love that. Send you a fake and then claim you are the one sending them a fake. If only you could track those people down and meet them face to face for a bit of hard drive installation
"deleted my account lol."
Wasn't it nice of them to save you the bother?
They did that to me with a kids shirt! And I have no proof so I'm just screwed.
Wish we didn't have to record our entire lives to win against ripoff artists.
liar
Canceled my Prime subscription this week.
I'm due soon, really thinking about it. I can't use their Prime video at all because of almost total VPN bans. I called them and had it out with some of them, and one guy just hung up on me. Awful place.
@Totttty55 no way to get through to a US person now. All Indians that make $15/day and arnt authorized to do shiet
Me too. They ripped most of Top Gear out of the offering, no more specials. AND I have to watch ads for the same money. AND none of the good movies are still available or you have to "buy" or "rent" them for extra money. No thanks . I am done.
Like a crack addict blocking his dealer number
@@Envinite The thing is for small items to get delivered fast, the Prime system is great. On time, and good prices. But you're selling your soul for it lol. I can't wait to see how bad their Alexa with AI will do for $100 a year or whatever they're gonna try.
When Amazon ban a customer of 26 years from leaving any more reviews because that customer (me) left an honest but critical review of a book you know the system is broken
Martin
Bought some memory from Amazon, what arrived was two bits of plywood in very convincing branded packaging. Phoned up Amazon and reported, and they said they would send replacement. Great. They then proceeded to go to the same shelf where they picked up the wood, pulled another couple of branded packages off the shelf and sent the to me... and... yup you guessed it, they were wood too.
Reminds me of the time I ordered some new pants and what I got were overalls! I thought that they mixed up the order and asked for a replacement. You can imagine my face when the new package arrives and it's another pair of overalls!
I remember hearing about how Danzig's "Devil's Child" album sold like hotcakes because of various listeners wanting in on a potluck.
That is amazing LMAO
they are really earning the title "Scamazon". i recently ordered a very specific tool called an internal pipe wrench. its a very simple design that has been around since the 80's at least. the tool has literally two moving parts, one of them being a hardened steel wheel with cut knurling to grip the inside of a pipe. i even have one of the originals, but its too small so i ordered more from the mfr. what i got was a CAST REPLICA. someone literally stuck the original tool in sand and did a zinc sand casting of a KNURLED PART. the knurling was smooth as baby shit and couldn't grip 40 grit sand paper. i wrote a scathing review on how its clearly a scam, and its clearly a sand cast ripoff of the original tool. i even measured the old one i have vs the same size in the set that i bought, and sure enough the new one is a bit smaller like you get with castings. what a fucking joke. the icing on the cake was amazon deleted my review calling them out as a scam!
That’s the equivalent of going to a flea market and saying “hey this fruit is made of plastic” and security throws you out like a bag of hitachi drives. I just thought about it and the last I had heard about hitachi was for their trash knives. I just thought that was funny
I've had one of my negative reviews deleted as well. So, the presence of negative reviews have become a part of my vetting process. If I see an Amazon product that nobody has anything bad to say about, that means all of the bad reviews have been deleted.
Nothing in this world is universally loved...except for maybe Keanu Reeves :-)
After they shipped me fake apple earbuds, i did the same.
Negative reviews are deleted/ignored, and anything you say, is not true. They acussed me of sending a fake product for a refund.
Took me 9 months to get my money back (9 months of trolling in reddit, blogs, everywhere).
Will never again recommend scAmazon.
BTW, posting scathing review with 5 stars allowed me to post the story 🤣
@@IvnSoft that is brilliant! I didn't think of this and that also explains why occasionally see a complaint about a product but the reviewer is still gave a lot of stars
Amazon is legit trash. Done with them.
and i rather not work at their Warehouses either. Terrible people.
I think of Amazon as the US version of Aliexpress. You can get good things, but you can also get absolute garbage that's genuinely dangerous to use.
If only us poor people had that option :/
@@IntegerOfDoom I would LOVE to help but I have an even better way ...
Good on you. I've been done since 2019 as a boycott, but now they're just peddling junk!
Class action lawsuit against Amazon is a must
heeeeeey ;)
to get 5$ in 2030 and fine them 0.0001% of their yearly income? Class actions are a meme
Completely besides the point, but that is some refined taste you got there... 👍
Who has the time or money to do that? 🙃
@@3nertia lawyers
As CinemaStar was for DVR or surveillance applications, this HDD was not in a Notebook.
Notebooks had the TravelStar, it begins with HTS.
At 12:25, you can see the HDD type "Hitachi HCC543216A7A380". The beginning HCC is Hitachi CinemaStar, the numbers 54 (5400rpm), 32 (maximum 320GB of this series) and 16 (160GB of this drive), the 7 for 7mm height, the 380, it is 3 for SATA with 300Mbyte/sec and 80 for 8MByte Cache.
If you read just the model number, you know it is only a 160GB Drive, means it writes, and writes maybe until this 160GB and then crashes as it cannot write further, and as GB is not GiBi, it crashes after 149GBytes effective.
No way they are scamming with hdds like china does with flash memory 😳
Well spotted! A real antique!
I was just looking through the comments to see if someone had already noticed that detail.
It's a VERY remarkable operation to repackage those as new. If they were trying to be clever they would just transpose the labels of the actual drives. I wonder if they can track any of this to figure it out. Someone must have bought a ton of old surveillance equipment to make it worthwhile.
Fun fact: Amazon's choice in external hard drives by Toshiba right now is a shared listing. One seller is Amazon, another is a third party seller that has them "on sale" for cheaper. Both are labeled Amazon's choice. Both show up in the Toshiba Store on Amazon.
Every video on Amazon refusing to fix their site is further vindication for cancelling my Amazon Prime subscription.
And when one of there vans gets in an accident. "Oh, he's an independent contractor, not an amazon employee. Oh the van is owned by DSP, not our insurance. Please don't call anymore."
Realistically, it's not like we really need to hear these tales to know that corporate is comfortable with keeping things unchanged. Anyone who has actually tried to use the site search in the last decade knows it's nearly useless. When something so fundamental to such a site is permanently broken, you don't expect good things.
@@PSUQDPICHQIEIWC That's why I quit doing business with these clowns a while ago and I had to explain to my own 50 something year old mom why they're garbage. Prime is useless now as you don't get same day shipping in many places anymore and the discount's so minimal to be not worth it.
@@Ziko577 The cost is the same as elsewhere because Amazon requires vendors who have prime eligible products to keep the price on amazon the same as any other website, and pay for the shipping of the product as well. Prime doesn't get you free shipping, the price of shipping is included in the sale price.
Same, cancelled and don’t miss it.
The thing I find most deplorable is how they custom-raise the price of an item just for you if you looked at it before, or their algorithm predicts you are likely to just buy it.
They don't do that as it would be illegal and easily provable - they are sneakier than that, they can predict market demand spikes and gradually raise the price or selectively create 'deals' (after gradually rising the prices) to increase revenue and margins. They hold no particular interest for individual purchases...
@@zwerko I’ve seen it, particularly on their “Amazon Resale” items
I could prove this. As a "dealhunter" I sometimes get items 90% off. If I add any of those items to my cart the price will adjust to competitive prices in about 15 minutes. I keep them all open in tabs (not added to cart) so the system doesnt adjust.
@@zwerko Bud, do you really think Amazon gives a rat's ass if something is illegal?
@@zwerko Funny thing about trend predictions: they are made *based on individual data, purchases, etc*
Amazon mixing actual stock with reseller stock is causing this mess. But they don't care because it's easy money for them regardless.
Yeah, it's all about getting products to a customer as fast as possible, so if the reseller stock is 20 miles away and you ordered the legit one and paid more for it and that is 100 miles away, you're getting the reseller one.
I'm dropping my Prime membership after having it for almost as long as its been offered.
Years ago, NewEgg sent me FIVE hard drives (2TB HDD) with more than 30,000 hours on them. They were advertised as NEW.
Fair point. This scam isn't unique to Amazon, but their complacent practices make it so easy there.
In the UK Ebuyer sent me a 4tb hard drive which looked new, I did a full format that took hours and seemed fine then went to transfer data and the drive clicked, sent it back and was accused of scamming as the drive was one they sold to a different customer the year before going by the serial number, what was most likely was they got sent back a DOA drive and then put it back in the warehouse as a return rather than a RMA
toshiba should file a BIG lawsuit against amazon for defamation.
They ban you from reviewing if you call the seller a scammer... Happened to me a decade ago and i still can't review anything.
Me too. Every review I'd ever left since they were a bookseller instantly deleted and they say it's due to suspicious activity on your account....despite every review having gone through their editorial review.
I'm convinced they've got an internal saboteur or are just on a pathway to self destruction.
I instantly cancelled prime and have literally spent tens of thousands at their competitor....you can get everything with lower free shipping thresholds or free pickup at Walmart, Home Depot or Target.
Have never looked back.
I should really thank them for saving me so much money and all that packing and damage they're causing to the environment.
wtf, that's crazy
Same here. I called out a laser pointer that was over-volted and dangerous to people's eyes!!!!
I wonder if that's Amazon's code-monkeys taking that personally. Tech jobs around America are being stolen by people sneaking in from India to chase their supposed 'dream', after all.
I got one of those for my cat!
This is an old scam. I remember it being there like over a decade ago with flash drives. But the fact that it's becoming a new normal on Amazon is quite annoying. Well, Amazon doesn't seem to care. Seems like they pay attention to short-term profitability.
What large companies don't look at short term?
@@Soundsaboutright42 The privately owned ones.
Exactly, like selling 10tb thumb drives. Been around a long time. Look at the sold and shipped and make sure they are both Amazon and you won't have this issue.
i have a fake 128gb sandisk microsd card from that era. sold to me by amazon themselves and not a 3rd party.
@@Ryan_DeWitt No, they mix inventory and ship the unit that is closest to you. If the counterfeit unit is in an Amazon warehouse 20 miles away from you and the legit unit is 100 miles away, they're sending the counterfeit one since shipping time is faster and they think both units are exactly the same and not counterfeit.
The only way to ensure that doesn't happen is to buy with shipped being from an authorized dealer and ensure that authorized dealer fulfills orders that are placed on Amazon.
Amazon hits a new low, selling used hard drives as new
Thank you for this. I can't express enough how happy it makes me to see you guys exposing what has been going on there at an increasing rate. I feel like I've been screaming into the wind for years now. I even considered creating a channel dedicated to this, how sellers manipulate the platform and to simply cover what others have experienced.
I'd normally be hesitant to put most the blame on a platform but at this point it's clear as day they're intentionally making it easy to abuse the system. In many ways the changes they have implemented only made things worse yet they continue to get away with it.
Loved how you spoke about accounting ability and self reflection. I have someone in my own life that believes they don't have control and as a result, I am being dragged into their mess.
I cannot fathom how having a fixed mentality of no matter what happens "It's not my fault, therefore I shouldn't have to think about how I ended up in this situation" has helped in any situation.
Amazon is making a great argument in favor of brick and mortar stores to make a comeback,.
Or... What about an online "brick and mortar" ? :)
@@AlahuSnackbaror a brick and mortar shop where you can interact with the product
fr I no longer buy my skincare products/ shampoo/ toothpaste etc from amazon because I can never be sure it's not some cheap knockoff. I got toothpaste a few months ago that started flaking off paint when I curled the tube that would stick to my fingers until I scrapped it off. Extra scary cause I wear contacts and if I happened to brush my teeth before taking off my contacts without noticing that and got it in my eyes I'd be sol
Amazon is no longer the more convenient option for me
@@AlahuSnackbar What is online brick and mortar? You sure you get what brick and mortar store means?
They're making an argument for someone to come in and eat their lunch one way or another.
I just installed a new 2TB Timetec SSD in a customers laptop .. realized that it didn't pop up in disk management like normal . but I formatted it .. then realized that it came up as 119GB . took the drive out of the laptop and checked it on my computer and realize that the part number matches the 128GB SSD . looked at the label 2TB .. but it's been swapped .. so amazon sold me a returned item .. unless their employee did it
Amazon employee doesn't have time to pee in the bathroom. They have to pee in bottles. They definitely don't have time to swap out SSDs. The 2 most likely scenarios:
- Someone bought it, swapped it out, returned it. Amazon sold it without checking it. Unlikely employees who process returns know what to look for.
- Amazon mix their good inventory from legit distributors with the inventory sent in from their marketplace sellers. Fraudulent seller can send it a bunch of counterfeit item and it'll get mixed in with all the other inventory. So Amazon can accidentally sent out counterfeit while the fraudulent seller gets to sell legitmate goods.
Not trying to defend Amazon (fuck them), but that's how it can happen. I basically don't buy any tech from Amazon anymore.
@@monsieurlee I can confirm. Sometimes Amazon does not return returned goods to the seller, even if you have specified this, but instead puts it back in your pile of new stock. You'd be surprised how often customers swap out shit to save some bucks and how often you get the craziest stuff returned from Amazon's warehouse (e.g., some other companies' products).
Wife bought a 4070ti. Got a floppy hat. Returned floppy hat. Lost in mail. No refund.
@@monsieurlee A mechanic I watch did a short video where he received some rear axle seals from a parts place he uses often and the seals were very obviously previously installed and then mangled to remove them.
Businesses are not opening "returned, wrong item", just restocking and shuffling the theft off on someone else.
Most likely return fraud by an Amazon customer, coupled with Amazon's unwillingness to check the returned item before putting it back on the shelf. I've had the pleasure of rooting through Amazon returns like a wild boar - the number of good-looking boxes containing seemingly the right item, but actually something cheaper or broken, was astounding.
Today's episode of why doesn't this surprise me anymore
I'm a business owner also. I agree with you 100% on what you said.
It all comes to me if there's a issue with the work done for a customer.
I absolutely enjoy your show and calling out bad business practices.
Thank you very much for having a voice for us that don't have a format to put out our disatification of a product or a bad business practices.
In the video at 10:23 we can see "Compatibility" is clearly mis-spelled as "Compatibiliy" on the back of the box. This is a common indicator of a counterfeit product. Scammers often have a convincing package but with one or more subtle signs of their scam.
That ending. Never change, Louis. 😆
I have an old IT client that had a server running RAID 10 with 8 3TB Seagate drives. The server goes down, and he flies me out on an emergency basis. Turns out both drives in a stripe failed. He had eight other "new" drives he had picked up off Amazon sitting on the side. 6 out of 8 of those were dead, and we ended up just decomissioning the server.
Love seeing the fish just to spite the people who reported them for sponsorblock
People wanted to fast forward commercials, so the media industry invented product replacement.
This is "koi placement"
I will randomize the appearance throughout the screen in future videos so they are impossible to block.
Sponsorblock can get rekt
@@rossmanngroup Let's not blame sponsorblock for people submitting shitty anti-fish timestamps. Unless you mean the plugin as a whole, in which case, lol, too bad.
I dont understand the koi sponsor block thing. did he talk about it in a video? Im just uninformed
Haha. I'm totally fine with this. Actually, it's kinda cool. Hope you didn't take my comment on the sponsorblock post as anything but a polite advocation for the addon used properly (with manual skipping). @@rossmanngroup
@@rossmanngroup I like the koi plz keep them
Louis, you always had my respect. Today you reinforced it just that much more. Thank you for being an honourable man.
One other thing that Amazon is lacking that eBay does (and why I primarily switched to them) is choosing item location. I’m more likely to buy from a U.S. based seller rather than an overseas seller. They communicate thru eBay and help out with any returns/wrong parts or items, and ship faster. Plus you can choose for free shipped items rather than free shipping on ‘orders over $35’.
I like this option, and is why I do use ebay over Amazon, but occasionally the product is still shipped from China. Especially if it has a CA or sometimes TX address. They all just rent out a 1x1 foot closet some place and use that as their US Address (I'm guessing on this). Usually you can tell by item transit time. Or when you see 25 different sellers, with the exact product, and their listing page even looks exactly the same, copy and paste. I mainly just select US Seller, but ignore all CA addresses.
The item location feature on ebay has been broken for years. So many fungible items that are in the UK, but have shipping times that are suspiciously the same as the item with exactly the same images and description thats shipped from shenzen.
All the internet flea markets are full of this sort of crap.
Amazon needs to be broken up
into what??
@@mos8541 more then one company, they control so much
Huh? Who is holding a gun to your head to use Amazon?
@@mos8541 For one I dont think AWS, Whole Foods and Twitch should be under the same entity.
@@jer1776I agree
I always wondered why when I'm buying one product with a huge amount of good reviews all the good reviews mention a different product and not the one I'm buying SMH, I thought they were all drunk people but wow this is insane...that makes perfect sense.
Often they also change the product so they first tell a different product and then change the product on the same spot
@@Clickworker101that's Crazy but it all makes sense now.
hiya, wp, hope you doing okay my man, really enjoy your videos. 😄
Damn Ross, not only our right to repair savior but a motivational speaker as well.
His employee now has to do the "Rossmann-walk-of-shame" with that drive xD
I have ZERO trust for Amazon and buy NOTHING from Amazon.
One thing I learned was never buy anything that wasn't directly sold by Amazon. The marketplace is just full of sleazy vendors that Amazon doesn't stand behind.
I remember reading a Amazon review that included pictures of some RAM a customer bought. He opened the box and it had to sticks of plywood in it.
Last year I bought two sticks of RAM and they sent me a sealed plastic envelope with nothing in it.
When I got the notification that it was delivered, there was a picture of the package under my doormat and I thought it looked suspiciously empty.
I get that we want to protect our privacy so the couriers shouldn't be opening our packages but did it really not throw up any flags for anyone who handled the envelope that it was clearly completely empty?
@@FlexLex Driver wouldn't know what's in a package, could easily be delivering something very tiny.
They often don't care to look at returned goods and just re-sell them as new. I recently read a review where somebody had gotten a "new" electric toothbrush that had stains of dried toothpaste on it. Yuck
This is what happens when they group all the "Toshiba drives" real and fake together. Its a mystery bag of fraud.
This is a great video.
It’s unfortunate that there is so much dishonesty out there, but all we can do is work to expose it like you are doing here.
This isn't a 'scam' it's retail fraud.
Somebody ordered these, shucked the drives, as you did, and returned them with dead ones.
Amazon, or whoever they came from, doesn't have any checks in place to validate the customer claim, or process it as defective and return to toshiba, or just didn't follow the process in place.
I've gotten a bunch of drives like this from my local wal-marts.
All they ever do is check the serial number, and even if i tell them it's defective, i've still had times that they tried to sell me returned drive(seals weren't intact).
got so bad, i started marking the box with a green precision sharpie.
I've found my returns on the shelf 3 times since then.
Funniest is when they put them in the 'security box' to try to prevent theft.
Absolute worst one was when i opened the box, and it had superglue around the edges where the clips that hold it together are.
Pretty damn obvious they'd tampered with it, but the retail folks at walmart(and probably amazon) have no clue what to look for.
Probably the funniest one was getting an ssd, that i thought was bit heavy, and turned out that they'd swapped the ssd for HDD and just put the label on from the ssd on the HDD.
There's just too many level of stupid in retail these days.
edit:Crap, i remembered you talking about your mom doing this with other products and her 'life time warranty' right after i got done writing this.
Had to bring that up.
Yep, especially considering it's from "Amazon warehouse" 4:00 that is not normal brand new stock but returned products, with damaged packaging or something else off from normal brand new stock.
I remember a pretty wide-spread fraud a few years ago (something like Ryzen 1000 or 2000 era) where people were buying CPUs, replacing the one in the box with an old one with replaced lid (so that it looks right on first glance) and then carefully re-sealing the box so that the guys at the store take it as a return of an unopened product without questions.
Maybe this is a return of that? Though this one seems a lot less elaborate.
@@Tomas9970_1 It was intel's that got the most notoriety, but both started having this issue as soon as they stopped soldering the lids on.
It got worse once companies started making delidding tools and youtube videos about that came out.
Really though, this is just something that hits the news cycle periodically.
It's far more widespread than most people are aware of.
You're both much more forgiving and much harsher to your employees than I could ever be. Holy Moses, if Chris survives this, in 20 years when he's running his own shop, he's going to tell his employees about the worst fuckup of his life.
Mistakes are costly - thanks capitalism!
I bought a Lenovo laptop for my kids as a Christmas gift, planning to upgrade it before wrapping it. To my shock, the laptop felt cheap and off. When I opened it to add more RAM, I discovered it was completely different from the original specs listed on the Lenovo website. Everything inside was cheap, fake, and non-upgradable. Fortunately, I was still within the return window and got a refund. I'll never again purchase something important on Amazon.
I own multiple original Thinkpad so I knew it was fake almost instantly
Yea Lenovo sells Chomebooks labeled as Thinkpads, that's probably what it originally actually was
When you return it Amazon can flag it as "not the product" they sent you, and then refuse to refund you after three months.
The newest T14 laptops are indeed cheap anyway. Buying in bulk directly from Lenovo, you cannot upgrade the RAM anymore, it's all soldered to the mainboard.
I never buy anything from Amazon. I always buy from local retailers in my country.
@@KegRaider I guess Lenovo didn't learn the first time, sad
they have been doing this for years, if the hard drive isnt dead when its sent, the way its packaged and handled will ensure it reaches you dead.
LOL I just said the same thing. I have known for at least 15 years that you must not under any circumstances order hdds on Amazon.
and usually with piss splatter from the Amazon Driver's piss bottles leaked on them, too...
So thankful for seeing your video today. I had been thinking about buying an external hard drive. One of the places I had been looking on was Amazon. Due to this video definitely won't be buying from Amazon. I would rather pay a bit extra and avoid a scam like that.
With your analogy of being in control or not, I believe it's a bit of both just like with real traffic. We are in the driver's seat, but sometimes things happen outside of the car that force us in a direction we don't want and there's nothing we can do about it. Roadblocks, accidents, bridges collapsing, all things we cannot control or fix that cause us to have to steer a different direction and sometimes block us entirely from where we want to go. The issue is the 2nd type of people who think they are not in control think that EVERY obstacle is a fallen bridge that completely separates them from their desired destination.
Ending convenient, in-person retail and replacing it with inconvenient, slow, online-only, scamming retail is one of the worst things that has happened to today's economy. I hate ordering crap online.
Nothing inconvenient about ordering online and getting your product delivered to your door.
Shill detected. @@craneology
@@craneology Maybe because westerner onlinestore is a sh1th0le
I might live in third world country, but online store here are very stringent about application requirement, requiring both verified address and citizen ID to make. You can fake address but you can't fake ID, because ours are centralized. Trying scam like this is fast tracked ticket to the caged hotel.
@@craneology except when it doesn't get delivered, or when it does, you open the box and it's broken, or it dies within the warranty period and you want to return it, or when it's not the thing that you thought it was because the pics or description were misleading or not detailed enough so you thought you were buying something different than what they sold
@@craneologyThere is obviously convenience to it, but there is some inconvenience too. Having to wait multiple days and being unable to pick it up yourself if you want/need it fast. Also, being unable to view the item in person before buying. It's not all positives.
Thank you for shopping at Amazon Crime.
Im seriously considering cancelling my Amazon Prime. More and more I find myself driving to the store for random things like cables because I'm worried the Amazon one is gonna be crap.
do it
if you really need something from there then just wait the normal time but screw them
I buy Amazon returns including lots of FBA cables Amazon didn't sell for whatever reason and the seller didn't want to pay to recover. Why? Because nearly all of it is junk. It may have a very fancy package and look legit. My favorite are HDMI cables that come in a shiny vacuum-sealed package. Looks amazing sitting there. Wow they went to effort to protect this cable like it was food. It must be great! No. It is vacuum-packed because the metal is very cheap and oxidizes in days. The plastics can't handle oxygen and crumble while smelling bad. I paid a dollar for it but I feel for people who spent real money on the same thing.
Then I get to the store only to realize it's the same Chinese garbage as Amazon but at a higher price
@@My_Old_YT_AccountGo to a decent store then. If you’re in the US, go to Microcenter if you can. They are pretty good.
But you won't do it, or if you do, you'll go back. Because you're an addict.
Louis, please do not ever change people like you make the world a better place.
Does forcing an employee to work off of an old used Toshiba spinning rust drive count as Cruel and Unusual Punishment?
Did Louis just break the eighth amendment?
It certainly will backfire on productivity
@@Clickworker101 honestly... realistically it probably won't matter. Spinning rust will probably only effect his desktop experience since (presumably) it's his boot drive, I have even gamed off of a 7200rpm Seagate drive somewhat recently and the performance difference wasn't very noticable when compared to games off of my SSD. But then again I don't know his daily schedule/responsibilities so it depends.
Like I feel like it will mostly effect time to launch applications, web browsing, and download/upload speed.
Launching apps is slightly annoying but a few extra seconds probably isn't gonna kill you, Web browsing? Practically every child in the 1st world has a device capable of a decent web browsing in their pocket. The Data transfer is probably the only one that might be an issue depending on what his tasks are, but honestly if he's doing data recovery or something (keep in mind I am not super familiar with what this job *actually* entails) wasn't the spinning rust they are dumping the data onto already significantly slowing down the process compared to it's theoretical most time efficient method?
I'd hate it personally but honestly as long as that thing is 7200rpm I would consider myself lucky. If it's slower tho... yeah maybe I would be hurting.
So I work for a third party company that works on the sanitation of a Amazon warehouse, I fired some people 6, one of them did a de@th threat towards me. Now Amazon is asking for me to be fired, asking my company to fire me, and Alas I got fired, so yes fck amazon.. hope this comment isn't deleted
We'll be lucky if the video itself isn't taken down
So you got the same treatment you gave others, what's your problem? You don't mind firing others but when others fire you, all of a sudden you're disgusted?
You're sick.
did you actually have a reason to fire 6 people in a short amount of time?
@@elisee9935yes, they were 🏀 American.
At least you don’t have to work for Amazon anymore (directly or indirectly)
I was sold a micro SD card that wasn’t good. Many bad clusters in one month use several gigs of the card was no longer useable. I tried to get a refund and they said no. Giving me some excuses.
Several months passed I’m at 50% of the card unusable.
I cancelled my prime too. I’m done with Amazon. I will purposely dish out more money to get it elsewhere they pay less and get crap from Amazon.
I don’t care about them anymore. And I’m done fighting them myself.
I have a binder of BBB complaints and consumer protection complaints. I did everything short of a law suit. And they have shown me the middle finger and how they will not listen and even less care.
They’re too rich for their own good. So they can afford to screw everyone else over and get away with it. Gotta love the power of money.
That's why you need to buy items using a good credit card that offers consumer protections.
BBB is just a private company. Why bother. The only thing a BBB complaint does is maybe change the company’s rating on BBB. These ratings mean nothing whatsoever to like 99.99% of people.
BBB complaints are a waste of time. It's a scam that most big companies don't fall for.
@@NuchiAsaki scam? I've used it with many companies in the past and in my experience it's worked for me.
For example version. I had their fiber service then had an issue where they charged me for equipment I had returned and also refused to prorate me for the month I wasn't using. Built a BBB compliant sent it 2 days later received a reply saying that equipment charge was reversed and refunded and that month I was not using was prorated and refunded. Problem completely resolved.
Had an issue with hyundai motors and same thing sent a BBB compliant and got issue resolved.
So i can't really agree with the scam statement as some do take it seriously and resolve complaints.
I think that the issue why some companies don't care is because they know the BBB isn't a federal branch and can't twist their arms to get this resolved. So they just don't care.
At least in my experience based on the success I've had myself in the past.
It should be noted Toshiba does lend their name out. Bought a Toshiba AC and it looked very suspiciously like the Midea AC that was already in the house and it was. Even the apps where interchangeable and used the same account.
Yes but the other problem here is reselling used hard drives and/or lying about its memory size
They dont.
In case of AC, toshiba put their compressor(in best case) inside OEM AC and sell it outside japan to keep brand influence for cheap.
Made in Japan AC cost atleast 3 times more then chinese one(outside japan ofc), so they cant compete, but who would not choose toshiba over midea for little more price, despite being identical inside.
For HHD, i dont think japanese HDD makers produce it outside japan in first place(hikvision rebrand WD/Seagate HDD for example for their sales).
Sneaky chinese who produce HDD on videos, have molds(or some small, like 5000-10000 pcs stock of cases) for toshiba hdds and put inside what ever working they have, usualy they dont even bother to make new sticker(usually they bother in order to scam importer "partner")
@@aiTheVultureI have an external Toshiba HDD, sticker says it’s made in the Philippines
@@GRORGvideot yeah they opened factory in 2018, didn't know that.
Thank you for doing such a great service to the community.
Commenting to boost the algorithm. Haven't bought a product off Amazon in years and I will continue not to. Thanks for the great videos as always, Louis.
Amazon also sells Berberine Supplements that have no Berberine in them.
What brands ? I buy it for my grandma and I swear one batch was fake.
Hey mate, how did you find out? I use berberine myself. Thank you
Point that one out. I use Berberine.
I'm sorry what? How is that not illegal?
@@Floofie_boiit's not explicitly ilegal because the FDA does not regulate supplements. Although I'd guess it probably falls under fraud but then you have to do the litigation yourself to get them to stop.
The enshitification at Amazon caused them to refund a 50 dollar item that I never started a return for.
Wish they would refund the 1500 their contract drivers stole from me.
@@yerbudspud Wait, what?
@@yerbudspud What happened? Did a guy hit your mailbox or something?
They allow vendors to do it all the time. I bought a PC speaker system listed as new, but when it arrived it was obviously refurbished with dents and dings AND it didnt work.
This is a pretty classic chinese scam. The more extreme versions of these are a literal USB flashdrive hotglued inside an external hard drive case with faked capacity. You think you get a 1TB drive but in reality it is just an 8GB flashdrive. Guess the only difference between Amazon and Aliexpress these days is the fact that Amazon is not called Aliexpress.
George
Alizon…?
I bet the federal trade commission wont do a thing
They should sue amazon as it will hurt Toshiba's brand.
They sold me a reolink camera as new, but it straight up had the thank you for buying and give this device a new life sticker on it
I am so glad I live within an hour of microcenter.
sure... until they inadvertently put a fake product on their shelves... Don't think it won't happen at some point.
STILL no Micro Center presence on the west coast (except the one store in so cal). I still make it a point to pilgrimage there whenever it's time for a new build.
@@snojetsst9420 Unlike Amazon, a brick and mortar shop would get sued into oblivion if they filled their shelves with products obtained from unauthorized dealers.
Love the cheeky making fun of Chris for having the audacity to buy _any_ electronics from Amazon lmao.
Love Chris' content btw
"Your membership expires on Aug/27"
FU Amazon. I'm out.
I would love to see Toshiba sue Amazon. I’ve bought their products, great. They shouldn’t have their reputation trashed by this scam.
Thank you, Louis and Chris!
Toshiba has been selling Canvio drives with Hitachi relabeled drives in them for almost a decade. Source: I've sold plenty, and can find info online about people wanting data recovery on these drives. Smaller capacity drives may have Hitachi drives inside. Where they source them now, I don't know, since WD discontinued Hitachi's 2.5" class drives. Maybe they sold the tech to Toshiba (I can't find anything saying they did) or maybe it is some Chinese conspiracy, who knows. But this likely isn't some Amazon scam.
@@truectl Single head, single platter, 1TB. Sounds legit to me! NOT!
can confirm. a few weeks ago, i ordered a new replacement toshiba 2.5" hdd for a ps4 since it was the same specs as the original. went to install it & the PS4 OS wouldn't even install. sent it back & used a solid state drive instead.
Could it have needed some sort of preparation before installation?
@@davidwolff4696 no, the PS4 formats the drive itself during install
Take Amazon to court. For selling broken old butt crusty items as new !.
Amazon also sells broken and pre-owned ASROCK B550 ITX motherboards as new.
Ask me how I know
Can you use this video as reinforcement if they denied you replacement for your motherboard? "It's not like this DOESN'T happen on Amazon or something!"
I will never buy computer parts at Amazon for the same reason I won't go to the butcher's for a prostate exam.
I feel like I'm the only one who really stopped using Amazon so many years ago when they became majorly a marketplace rather than a seller.
Nah, I did too. I get how you feel though. It’s just Chinese crap
I stopped about 3 years ago. Noticed it was taking money out of my city. That means eventual death of the city.
I stopped buying from Amazon since 2018...
Thanks for showing your fish tank. My 1 year old daughter is very entertained and keeps saying "fish" while making swimming motions. 10/10 for both our entertainment
Unlike the scam air conditioner with the impossible BTU rating, Louis Rossmann never fails to deliver.
One time I bought a WD SSD from Walmart and I found an old IDE drive in the package. Luckily I had opened the package before I even left the parking lot. I don't know why I checked it, but I'm glad I did, because when I went back in the store the employee was already giving me a hard time about replacing it for me.
Hey Louis Rossmann I wanted to let you know, as someone who sees a lot of these scam drives, you should be able to get them working normally most times but you have to format them usimg DiskPart, they will not format via this PC or Disk Manager through usual methods. You have to first "clean" the drive then recreate the partition.
Literarly what i was thinking. Idk why he edit it in victoria when he can just clean all formating in diskpart
@@Boz1211111 Maybe doesn't want to do commandline?
Also, direct connect via SATA should help. USB controller and drivers can act up in windows. So, the diskpart and sata connection should resolve the issue.
This is why when I buy a new drive like this, I always format it and then fill it up with data and check that it works.
The PIP koi add a lot to this video, unironically. It’s like a blue background for the nerves 😂
The manufacture date on the first drive taken apart was June of 2018!
I dont get it, he says used drive but doesnt check at least smart data to see uptime
@@Boz1211111 Some scammers have the OEM factory utility that can clear the SMART data. It happened to me with a bunch of 2TB drives. I got burned.
Amazon sold me (2) counterfeit Sandisk 128gb from the literal Sandisk store. (No platic seal, slightly different font, different cardboard) A non experienced person probably wouldn’t have noticed.
If this is the worst mistake Chris ever makes, you've got a great employee.
Lawsuits ? Where are the hungry lawyers ready to fight Amazon?
They were bought up by Amazon.
Go ask a lawyer to take on Amazon and see what they say. Most are scared of Amazon.
*On $1000/month retainers from Amazon?*
all these "BIG" companies are government, all the lawyers are part of the same system, its why they wont do anything
They sure do. Bought one that burnt out 2 months after installing windows. I give up on buying electronics off Amazon.
Meanwhile, bezos is flying to space with the proceeds
Don't make me defend Bezos. Andy Jassy has been the CEO for several years.
Let's hope the rocket has Amazon levels of quality control 🤔😁😁
@@timmholl9238 Don't make me defend puzzle games where people struggle to put two things together and think CEO is the actual boss and not the real boss hidden far away in a private plane, on a yacht, in a mansion gleefully giggling at people who think CEOs are the final boss in a corporation.
@@timmholl9238You think Bezos is going to let go of his company that he worked hard to create willy nilly like that? You’re naive if you think so.
@@timmholl9238 Found the shopping addict with bootlicker syndrome.
Louis, your public awareness videos on Amazon are taking traction with me - I already quit using Amazon as my go-to platform to order anything I need. I've started ordering any tech equipment directly from the manufacturer or an authorized dealer again. Also I discourage my wife from ordering high-end beauty products on Amazon because there are often issues with those as well.
About 3 of the items I purchased as "new" on prime day were clearly used and had to be returned. I bought a "new" toaster that came in an already open box with fingerprints and crumbs in it. Fortunately they honored my returns which is currently their only saving grace for me. Sadly, I'm almost certain that took that return and just relisted it again hoping the next customer will be too lazy to deal with the return process.
As long as they honor the returns they're still the cheapest way to get stuff shipped to my house. But they are increasingly unreliable and I hesitate to make any serious/important purchase from them.
They did the same with a Western Digital 5TB drive I bought. The original I had bought was 5400rpm then I bought another, same model, same SKU and all, and it came in as an unidentified drive and 4800rpm, I took the offer of a coupon for 10-15 bucks off my future purchase but this is certainly concerning.
I get when Rossmann says that he is fully responsible for his life, his business, and his videos. However, it is important to remember responsibility is a two-way street. Employers have the responsibility of operating their business and managing its success. Employees have the responsibility to do their best and take accountability for their learning and mistakes also. The accountability of Rossmann, along with the commitment and dedication of his employees, are what makes his company a success.
Nope, you're thinking about it wrong. They're not responsible for you just because you say so, or just because you pay them. They're responsible for them, you're responsible for you, and if they want to eat tonight, they'll be thinking about how to keep getting that paycheck. If they want your business to be successful, they'll be thinking about that too. You've granted them the responsibility, but it's up to you to convince them to take that responsibility seriously.
They should be sued for fraud
I would think filing a complaint with your particular state's Attorney General would be better. Enough complaints against them either the AG gets involved, or the AG gets to retire on some nice fat bribes from Amazon & others.
So look at it this way. A bad person purchased 10 Toshiba drives from Amazon, yes all new, perfect working order. He replaces the said drives with his fake 128Meg ones, and returns all as unwanted for a full refund (no questions asked!).
All 10, Amazon returns opens the package and see yep, brand new unopened so returns them back to stock.
Enter customer 2 purchases said drives and bingo we have a Rossmann Video!
Who would like to give the way in which we can stop this?
AFAIK Amazon do not track any serial numbers of these kinds of items, and scammer knows it, and wins everytime.
Michael
Returned stuff is sold under warehouse deals with discount, at least here in Europe.
Thanks for watching out for us Louis! W00t! 👍
I'm just surprised that all the companies went to s#*t around the same time, and the general population failed to notice.
All of those 220 CEOs who "retired" or stepped down in January 2020? Those people?
@@timmholl9238 Remember what happened when Gates left Microsoft 😒
Amazon don't even allow reviews that honest and retutn
Met my wife because of a Hitachi drive. It was the best day of my life!
So is she a Hitachi fan?
Must have been a Magic experience 😉
So, did you get perpendicular with her?
(a true Hitachi HDD fan will understand the reference)
Does that make her a legacy non-boot device?
Petition to exchange the size of both the videos. As much as I like listening to you, I love watching the Koi more :)
Just ordered an S20 off of Amazon that admittedly says it was refurbished but they ended up putting in like the worst quality screen missing half of the screws on the inside and almost none of the replacement parts were OEM. And icing on top is the seller had flashed the U model as U1 and was claiming it was the U1.
Screen doesn't even do 120 Hertz. They messed up one of the fundamental aspects of the phone and said yeah it's working fine.
10:22 The fraudsters do not appear to be able to spell "Compatibily" correctly. There are other inconsistencies in what is printed that I'll leave up to the viewer to discern.
These typos are a clear indication of some Chinese knock-off product. In no way this is a genuine Toshiba packaging. The typesetting is done by people who don’t speak nor understand english language.