Amazon sold item for other country to customer in the United States

Title: Purchased Samsung 2TB SSD from Amazon.com (shipped and sold by Amazon) in 2019, failing, tried to RMA and Samsung said this was meant for the Australian market and cannot accept RMA

Tl;DR-- Amazon shipped a grey-market product (SSD meant for Australia) to at least one person (myself) in the US. The SSD developed bad blocks as is within warranty but Samsung US refuses warranty because Amazon imported Australia stock into the United States and sold it here. Amazon refuses to help, Samsung US refuses to help. Samsung AU can help but shipping the SSD there and paying return shipping would exceed the cost of what 2TB SSDs now go for these days.

Item purchased in order #S464NB0M305348V on June 11, 2019:

Condition: New 1 of: Samsung SSD 970 EVO 2TB - NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD (MZ-V7E2T0BW) $499.01 Sold by: Amazon.com Services, Inc

From Samsung US:

Hello Customer,

From the provided serial number S464XXXXXXXXX we can see that this is an Australian unit. Samsung warranties are region specific and any service on the unit would need to be performed by Samsung of that region. The product that was sold to you by your retailer is a grey market product. This means the unit was imported into the USA; however, the unit was only meant to be sold within insert country.

If you wish to be refunded or have the unit exchanged, please contact your original place of purchase as the seller or point of purchase has the obligation and are responsible for providing their clients with products whose warranty is valid in the region in which they live.

Samsung Support

From Samsung AU:

However, we have option to try to send your SSD to someone here in Australia 1st prior to process the RMA.

For the shipping, Samsung covers it within Australia only, Justin.

The disconnect here is that, Amazon.com should be selling product from the same country only.

From Amazon:

I wish I could do for you . However, the return window has expired on July 12, 2019. So, I don't have any option to take any action this item. For you, I have check with the lead too. I have hope you understand my limitation.

Thank you for waiting. I have cross checked with the lead as well as with the team leader. Since, The item return window closed we don't get any option to take any action.

Proof of the actual issue with the NVME SSD below with a photo of the SSD and serial number:

C:\Windows\System32>smartctl -a /dev/sda

smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-w64-mingw32-w10-b22621] (sf-7.2-1)

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===

Model Number: Samsung SSD 970 EVO 2TB

Serial Number: S464NB0M305348V

Firmware Version: 2B2QEXE7

PCI Vendor/Subsystem ID: 0x144d

IEEE OUI Identifier: 0x002538

Total NVM Capacity: 2,000,398,934,016 [2.00 TB]

Unallocated NVM Capacity: 0

Controller ID: 4

NVMe Version: 1.3

Number of Namespaces: 1

Namespace 1 Size/Capacity: 2,000,398,934,016 [2.00 TB]

Namespace 1 Utilization: 377,152,376,832 [377 GB]

Namespace 1 Formatted LBA Size: 512

Namespace 1 IEEE EUI-64: 002538 5391b0add0

Local Time is: Thu Jun 22 17:20:38 2023 EDT

Firmware Updates (0x16): 3 Slots, no Reset required

Optional Admin Commands (0x0017): Security Format Frmw_DL Self_Test

Optional NVM Commands (0x005f): Comp Wr_Unc DS_Mngmt Wr_Zero Sav/Sel_Feat Timestmp

Log Page Attributes (0x03): S/H_per_NS Cmd_Eff_Lg

Maximum Data Transfer Size: 512 Pages

Warning Comp. Temp. Threshold: 82 Celsius

Critical Comp. Temp. Threshold: 82 Celsius

Supported Power States

St Op Max Active Idle RL RT WL WT Ent_Lat Ex_Lat

0 + 6.20W - - 0 0 0 0 0 0

1 + 4.30W - - 1 1 1 1 0 0

2 + 2.10W - - 2 2 2 2 0 0

3 - 0.0400W - - 3 3 3 3 210 1200

4 - 0.0050W - - 4 4 4 4 2000 8000

Supported LBA Sizes (NSID 0x1)

Id Fmt Data Metadt Rel_Perf

0 + 512 0 0

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===

SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)

Critical Warning: 0x00

Temperature: 44 Celsius

Available Spare: 100%

Available Spare Threshold: 10%

Percentage Used: 0%

Data Units Read: 182,372,267 [93.3 TB]

Data Units Written: 61,739,235 [31.6 TB]

Host Read Commands: 1,424,625,919

Host Write Commands: 963,412,253

Controller Busy Time: 3,586

Power Cycles: 1,932

Power On Hours: 9,712

Unsafe Shutdowns: 26

Media and Data Integrity Errors: 63

Error Information Log Entries: 4,217

Warning Comp. Temperature Time: 0

Critical Comp. Temperature Time: 0

Temperature Sensor 1: 44 Celsius

Temperature Sensor 2: 56 Celsius

Error Information (NVMe Log 0x01, 16 of 64 entries)

Num ErrCount SQId CmdId Status PELoc LBA NSID VS

0 4217 7 0x0143 0xc502 0x000 258952664 1 -

1 4216 0 0x0000 0x4004 - 0 1 -

2 4215 0 0x005f 0x4004 - 0 1 -

3 4214 0 0x005b 0x4212 0x028 0 0 -

4 4213 0 0x0020 0x4004 - 0 1 -

5 4212 0 0x0043 0x4004 - 0 1 -

Bad blocks per Windows (System) Logs which was causing system instability and hence the reason for the RMA, after replacing the SSD with a new NVME SSD I purchased, there have been no further stability issues or bad block errors.

Error 6/22/2023 5:16:26 PM disk 7 None The device, \Device\Harddisk0\DR0, has a bad block.

Error 6/22/2023 1:40:33 PM disk 7 None The device, \Device\Harddisk0\DR0, has a bad block.