I have bought lots of things over the internet over the last decade, and 99% of the transactions go quite well. This includes purchases from large and small vendors even lots of transactions over ebay. Everything was pretty close to what was described.


In the last 2 months I have had a couple transactions that were quite surprising the way they turned out. The first was from a major online vendor, I purchased a hardware item for $12 plus shipping, what got shipped was a software package new in the box that retails for $250 don't ask me why or how anyone would make that kind of mistake. But okay i thought it was just a fluke. Accepted the software package as mine, they shipped it. To be honest the $12 hardware device was an impulse buy because it was a good deal, and not worth fighting over, so I just called it even, I was on the winning side of the deal.


Now this week I ordered Cisco Switch for $50 yes it was an old 10/100 managed switch. And some how they sent me a pci-e 8x sas/sata controller card which according to google is valued at least $250 new. I wasn't in the market for a sas/sata controller but hey I'm sure this card will work great in a ESX box i have been thinking about building so I'm not going to complain about this transaction either.

I just can't understand what happened, how can anyone confuse a 19" rack mount cicso switch for a pci-e controller, and how in the heck can I have this kind of thing happen to me twice in 2 months from 2 different sources? Is it just me or has inventory and quality control gone totally out the window? Am I the only person that this has happened to lately?