Lovely. Time for a refund.

I've never, ever had a heatpipe cooler get destroyed ion shipping because the seller didn't know how to package stuff... Nope, never.

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-21, 01:26:

I bought a "New" Noctua cooler which came beat up, damaged, and missing accessories such as mounting brackets, fasteners, and ba […]
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I bought a "New" Noctua cooler which came beat up, damaged, and missing accessories such as mounting brackets, fasteners, and backplates. The previous owner didn't even bother cleaning off the thermal paste.

The heatsink was "floating" in the packaging as there was some missing cardboard material causing the heatsink itself to bash around the insides.

I don't think the seller and I share the same definition of "New".

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I'm not defending the seller here, but my guess is that he or she might not have known anything about the items he was selling in this case and simply assumed that "in a box"="new" (a dumb assumption, even for a computer hardware neophyte, IMHO). This is one of the reasons that I'm weary of buying computer parts from somebody who mainly sells other types of items as the chances of dealing with someone clueless are significantly higher, IMHO .

There's a lot of amateurs buying up skids of Amazon returns and flipping them these days.

edit: My worst one, some years ago, was a "Pulled from working system, like new" Tualatin Celeron... pic was a nice looking one, I won it on a $7 bid, but then discovered seller had $20 handling and packing on top of shipping. Ugh, pay it anyway, still not a terrible price back then, CPU arrives, protected with cardboard, bubblewrap and in one of those CPU plastic packs, all of that totally crisp and undamaged, but the CPU... every. single. pin. mashed completely flat, two actually missing, looked like someone had dropped it on the floor and ground their heel on the poor thing. Like a dumbass, I go through the return procedure, pay to ship it back, another $15, then freaking realise that all eBay is gonna make them do is refund the listing price, aaaargh. So I'm out $50-ish with a return of $7... Glad the policies are different now, and hope sellers like that are getting shafted with a large spiky object these days.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-12-21, 04:16:

There's a lot of amateurs buying up skids of Amazon returns and flipping them these days.

edit: My worst one, some years ago, was a "Pulled from working system, like new" Tualatin Celeron... pic was a nice looking one, I won it on a $7 bid, but then discovered seller had $20 handling and packing on top of shipping. Ugh, pay it anyway, still not a terrible price back then, CPU arrives, protected with cardboard, bubblewrap and in one of those CPU plastic packs, all of that totally crisp and undamaged, but the CPU... every. single. pin. mashed completely flat, two actually missing, looked like someone had dropped it on the floor and ground their heel on the poor thing. Like a dumbass, I go through the return procedure, pay to ship it back, another $15, then freaking realise that all eBay is gonna make them do is refund the listing price, aaaargh. So I'm out $50-ish with a return of $7... Glad the policies are different now, and hope sellers like that are getting shafted with a large spiky object these days.

That doesn't sound like an amateur, that sounds like an experienced, professional eBay fraudster.

Yes, they were two separate observations there, could have made that more clear.

When I was the title I thought yeh new can mean a number of things like
New old stock isn't new at all, really its old unused stock.
My "new" car is actually over 10 years old, but I call it my new car as it's new to me.

But a cooler that's obviously been used? I'm struggling to think of the sellers definition, Newly removed from PC?

I've experienced this issue a couple times (I prefer to buy NOS). I've even been shafted by a large (if I remember correctly a Polish) ebay seller of hard drives, with 100% positive feedback. When I confronted that seller with that he packed used hard drives (with dust at the bottom from use and paint wear from installation and removal) in a new packaging to make them look new and gave him negative feedback, he became a really nasty person and managed to get the feedback removed by ebay, even though I proved my case with photos. Sometimes you're just out of luck.

Yah, it's still like that... How to get your longtime in good standing eBay account messed up i) Have an actual valid claim against a seller and pursue it.

I bought a photographic lens on ebay last year that was "new" and "never used with the receipt" which when it arrived was clearly dirty and missing one cap. Seller was aggressive and in denial. I requested a return through ebay and provided photos... after getting a return label through ebay the seller then complained I had sent an expensive item untracked/uninsured... That was my first ebay return in over 20 years.

Another word that doesn't mean anything any more is "mint". I now take it to mean "I would like far more money than this item is worth in this condition"

I've challenged sellers on descriptions that seem totally opposite to what the photos show and get responses like "Chill bro, it's just the kind of things you're meant to say, they're only words."