C’t: cheap GTX 1060 GPUs on eBay are often fake and difficult to return

Cheap GTX 1060 cards that are offered on eBay by mostly Chinese traders are in many cases fake, claims the German C’t based on its own research. It also proves difficult to subsequently return the copies or get a refund.

C’t refers to a ‘large-scale test purchase campaign’, which the magazine itself carried out. It turns out that eight GTX 1060 cards were purchased on eBay. It was about cheap copies of between 50 and 80 euros, while the new price of such a gpu soon comes in the neighborhood of 200 euros or more. C’t said it bought the copies from eight different, exclusively Chinese dealers. PayPal guest payments that don’t require an account were used, according to C’t, to qualify for eBay’s purchase protection.

Then, after the orders arrived, it turned out that they were not actual GTX 1060 models. For example, the cards had connections for vga and sli, the GTX 1060 drivers did not work and the architecture was incorrect. C’t writes that an effort was made to grind away the indication on the chip itself, but forgot to remove the production date as well. Based on various characteristics, it would later turn out that these were GTS 450 cards, which logically achieved much lower benchmark scores than a GTX 1060.

Original (left) and fake copy

The magazine then tried to get the money paid for the cards back by stating that they were fake copies. The reaction of the dealers was generally that they were genuine GTX 1060 models, some of them also asked for proof in the form of photos and other documents. Other merchants again stated that the cards were not suitable for use with Windows 10, even though this was stated on the packaging. In most cases, the merchants eventually accepted the refund request, but the money did not reach the various buyers.

At the end of the ride, more than a month after receipt, seven of the eight cards had still not been refunded, despite the purchase protection. Then C’t decided to reveal his identity and ask both eBay and PayPal for his position. EBay would not have wanted to comment substantively, with C’t noting that in five of the eight cases, the company did not believe that there was a situation where purchase protection applied. In one case, PayPal paid out part of the purchase amount, but referred to an unspecified technical problem for the rest, according to C’t.

The dealers of the sold cards are said to still be active on eBay, to which the magazine concludes that no sanctions have been imposed.

Packaging and fake GPUs, images from C’t