RTX video cards are extremely popular for the power they can give gaming PCs, but one gamer who paid a large sum for a Gigabyte RTX 5070 Ti got a lousy surprise instead of the card he ordered. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time that this has happened to a buyer of a graphics card, but on the plus side, this PC gamer was ready for the possibility.
GPUs have always been pretty costly, but in recent times, it’s only gotten worse. GPU prices continue to rise and supplies of some GPUs have been limited due to the demand created by AI datacenters all over the world. While getting a new graphics card is almost always an exciting moment, it turned out to be anything but that for this gamer.
Gamer Unwraps RTX 5070 Ti and Gets Terrible Surprise
A gamer in Russia purchased a Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5070 Ti video card, but got a water bottle instead. According to Dexerto, the man had purchased the card from the largest Russian online retailer, Wildberries. He reportedly spent about $1,100 USD on the video card, and excitedly went to pick it up from a pickup point, and decided to record the opening of the box. The video starts when the clerk behind the counter scans the sealed package, and then shows the buyer carefully opening it. Everything looks normal as he opens up the box, but he then turns the package to show that it contains a filled water bottle instead of the coveted graphics card he’d spent a small fortune on.
Fit the 9 games into the grid.
The water bottle was most likely put into the package by someone who had purchased the video card and then either returned it. Water bottles and other forms of weights have been used to give a sense that a package is legitimate in scams like these. To make matters worse, in cases where buyers haven’t recorded the entire sequence of opening a package, it becomes almost impossible to prove that the package wasn’t tampered with by the current buyer, so getting a refund when someone has taken a computer part out and replaced it can be incredibly difficult.
Unfortunately, graphic cards like this one have been subject to all kinds of theft and scams over the years. While scalping is generally frowned upon, at least those who buy scalped video cards typically get what they’re looking for. However, there have been instances of graphics cards being stolen straight from the factory they were built in, and in some cases, GPUs have been stolen right out of delivery trucks that were taking them to stores and distributors. Some of these heists have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and also serve to make the hardware crisis worse, as they never make it to store shelves.
Scams and thefts of GPUs have happened all over the world, with a few notable cases having emerged in Russia in the past. In an incident prior to this one, another Russian buyer who purchased an even more expensive video card from the same retailer, a RTX 5080, ended up opening the box to find it stuffed with grain instead of a GPU. In that case, the buyer had spent nearly $1,500, and didn’t have the foresight to record the entire transaction, like in this recent case. In another case, thieves were arrested in Russia after stealing around $38,000 USD worth of Nvidia video cards that they then attempted to resell. Buyers are encouraged to be cautious to avoid scenarios like these, even if purchasing video cards from reputable storefronts or sellers.
