I wanted to put a warning out there for others like myself planning to build a new PC. I started using pcpartpicker and after enough price comparisons, I ended up buying a CPU from Amazon. Keeping an eye on the tracking updates, I pulled it inside as soon as it arrived so it wouldn’t be stolen off my porch.
Something was off as soon as I opened the Amazon box. I’ve built PC’s before and this didn’t look like a CPU box from AMD. Being suspicious, I took photos of the entire process of opening it and found it was completely empty. This apparently happens a lot with certain sellers on Amazon, even if it is sold and shipped by Amazon. I found some posts from others that appear to have had the same problem, but with a different color plastic packaging.
As soon as I noticed, I opened a chat support case with Amazon explaining the situation. I told them I had photos of the unboxing and could provide them if need be. Maybe I got lucky, but after asking for a replacement, the chat agent immediately opened up a replacement without question.
You didn’t get lucky, Amazon will just replace or refund with basically no questions asked. As long as you don’t have a high refund ratio that is, then they will just delete your account. As sucky as they are for workers, it’s peace of mind to buy things like electronics from them.