Following a gloomy bunch of GPU shipping stories on Reddit, we return with an extraordinarily positive tale that highlights the same system that often fails customers. One lucky customer bought an Asus ROG Astral RTX 5080 White OC on Amazon and received the GPU despite cancelling their order. Amazon then told them to keep the card and the refunded money, netting the user a free GPU worth $1,850.
Free 5080 Astral in White?! from r/ASUSROG
The Redditor, u/spaceman293, posted in the r/ASUSROG subreddit, mentioning how they'd cancelled the Amazon order because Micro Center had the same GPU in stock. However, a few days later the RTX 5080 ended up showing up on their doorstep anyways. Once our diligent citizen informed Amazon of their mishap, the multi-trillion-dollar corporation generously told u/spaceman293 to just keep it.
This win serves a stark contrast to the usual accounts we see on Reddit — most recently, someone who ordered an RTX 5080 received a relabeled RTX 5060 Ti instead. Funny enough, that case and this one are both results of the same system. Amazon is a big company with operations so sprawling that it's often not worth it for the retailer to go after smaller incidents — and sometimes, those end up favoring the customer.
Delays in shipping go hand-in-hand with major vendors, so it's not strange to see a cancelled order still get delivered. By the time u/spaceman293 pulled out, there's a chance that the unit was already in the pipeline, ready to travel to its now forfeit destination. In these trying times, small victories like these are just as important to highlight as the upsetting ones.
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