Online Retailer Fraud?

Capt Gerkin asks: "While debugging a hardware problem on my system, I had the opportunity to take a good long look at my RAM chips. The DDR memory, that I purchased online two months ago, had some interesting product codes, and the descriptions didn't match with anything at Micron's website. Although I understand they may not publish all memory on their site, it brought up an interesting question for online retail. With the hard return procedures, no name companies and faceless dealers, how often is the product we think we are purchasing really a fake? It would be interesting to find out how many times others have placed orders for something online, only to get something entirely different, instead."

Let me count the rip offs

[Christopher Bibbs]

Ok, there was the hard drive that wasn't right. Got that from a fly by night that has long since vanished. The no name memory that wasn't even close to spec and made my machine flakey as all hell. That really sucked. Ooh, crapy modems that couldn't get half of the advertised baud rate seem standard from cheap shops. The list goes on, but I'd guess I've been screwed a half dozen times pretty bad.

On the positive side, several purchases from Insight [insight.com] were perfect with good support when a video card fried itself. TC Computers [tccomputers.com] was always good for motherboards and what not (and now owned by Insight). Buy.com and Amazon have also been good to me. So on and so on for about two dozen purchases.

I think the summary here is bad experiences with big (and expensive) on line retailers, less than 10%. Bad experiences with small, fly-by-night retailers, more than 70%. Gee, you really do get what you pay for.

Never a problem.

[Rolan]

I just built my brand new computer entirely from stores listed on pricewatch, with exception of my monitor. The trick is to actually know what your buying and not just buy RAM in the size you want. i.e. I didn't go to pricewatch and search for 512 MB Ram. I did my research on RAM manufacturers and decided on a couple that had good reviews. Then I went and searched for those specific ones and made the comparisons on prices between those. I also look for things like the CAS rating on the RAM, if it's not listed I move on.

Anyway, the trick is to know exactly what you are buying. Sure, I could have gotten that 512MB DIMM for $40 less than I paid, but that was a 3 CAS No name brand. You get what you pay for, don't go for the cheapest, go for the deal!

BTW, the only reason that I didn't buy the monitor through price watch is that the prices can't be competitive. Monitors are so big/heavy that shipping is very expensive, so I bought it locally.