Redditor ordered an RTX 5080 from Amazon Prime and claims a near-identical RTX 5060 Ti with the stickers swapped was sent out
Relatively low-end GPUs with outsized coolers have always been a bit silly. But now it seems they're making it easier to scam gamers. A Redditor claims to have bought an Asus RTX 5080 from an Amazon Prime listing, only to find an Asus RTX 5060 Ti in the box. Yuck.
Part of the problem, very likely, is that the Asus RTX 5080 Prime in question has a very, very similar 2.5-slot, triple-fan design as the equivalent RTX 5060 Ti Prime model. So, at a glance, they look essentially the same—heck, this Asus AMD Radeon 9070 XT Prime looks very similar, too. Hold that thought, we'll come back to it.
Below a post titled, "Did I get scammed?," Reddit user Familiar_Boat_2104 says, "I recently purchased an ASUS The SFF-Ready Prime GeForce RTX™ 5080 OC Edition 16GB GDDR7 Graphics Card from Amazon," from this Amazon Prime listing.
"When I took the GPU out of the box, I saw there was only a single 8-pin PCIE power slot on the side," Familiar_Boat_2104 goes on. It's at this point that it became clear something was wrong.
So, what exactly is going on here? One plausible scenario is the old switcheroo. Somebody in possession of an Asus RTX 5060 Prime may have ordered the RTX 5080 from the link above, intentionally swapped out the 5080 for the 5060 Ti, requested a return and refund and then shipped the 5060 Ti back to Amazon.
Indeed, the images provided by Familiar_Boat_2104 seem to indicate that product stickers may also have been transferred in the process. Upon arriving back with Amazon, the 5060 Ti may well have passed a quick visual check by an inexpert Amazon warehouse operative. After all, it looks just like the product on the box or on Asus's website and it would be all too easy for someone not to spot the 8-pin as opposed to correct 12-pin power connector, along with other details.
Of course, the catch here is that Amazon very much should not be selling returns as new product. So, if there has been a switcheroo by another customer, the fact that the listing is for a new graphics card rather than a return or refurb means that this debacle would absolutely be on Amazon.
We seen evidence of this kind of thing happening before, of course, including this apparent AMD CPU switcheroo, again from Amazon. So, really all we can conclude is that you need to be very careful when receiving high-value produce from Amazon.
The best advice is probably to set up your phone to record as you remove the product from its shipping container and, in turn, packaging, to give you the best chance of proving that you were sent the wrong product. After all, what's to stop someone from claiming they've been sent the wrong card as a scam in itself?
It's all a bit of a mess and it really shouldn't have to be necessary to record your Amazon purchase unboxing to mitigate scams. But, sadly, it seems like it would be prudent.