The sheer amount of times that people have received everything but the high-end GPU they ordered is frankly too absurd to count at this point. We've already seen metal blocks being delivered instead of a graphics card, pasta and rice packaged inside a 5090 box, and a 5070 Ti that was actually just a bag of salt. In comparison to that, receiving just a bland ol' brick instead of an RTX 5080 seems almost uninspired, but that's exactly what happened to u/GlassHistorical5303.
Our victim (who we'll call Glass for ease) ordered a PNY GeForce RTX 5080 from the firm's official store on Amazon. Unfortunately, what they got was a brick wrapped up in the same anti-static bag that the actual GPU usually comes in. Apart from the obvious implication that someone at the factory might've swapped the card, this actually suggests that a reverse-scam was in effect here. Someone may have gotten the real 5080 they wanted, took it out of the box, replaced it with a brick, and returned it to Amazon who didn't bother to properly check the contents.
Amazon sent me a brick instead of a 5080 from r/pcmasterrace
You might be wondering how a returned package could be thrown in with the new stuff that's supposed to come from PNY’s official store — this is where the issue of "commingling" comes in. That term refers to merging items from different sellers and channels into a single, unified inventory that makes the job super easy for logistics but remains effectively untracked. All the scammer needs to do is match the box’s weight, replacing the 5080 with an identically heavy brick, and the scales tip in their favor (no pun intended).
In this case, though, perhaps the bricked 5080 box was actually sent ahead by mistake when it should've been caught at the warehouse. Either that or, of course, an Amazon worker genuinely saw the opportunity and took the GPU for themselves. Whatever the case may be, Glass has already filed for a refund, and we hope they get it as soon as possible. While we often find the fiasco entertaining — top comment called this GPU-brick the "Foundation Edition" — it's anything but that for the end user who is now just a sitting duck to the whims of customer service.
Surprisingly, this isn't even the first time someone has received a brick instead of their GPU as this exact dilemma befell another customer a year ago, when purchasing from Newegg. It's because of growing scams like these that we advise people to stay vigilant, no matter where you're buying from. Especially if you're shopping used, you may not get something strange in the box, but instead a GPU that literally has no core inside it.
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