A lucky online shopper has taken to social media to boast how they received “a whole box of SSDs instead of one.” Redditor Ok-Middle-1360 bought one 2TB Samsung 990 EVO Plus NVMe M.2 SSD from Amazon, and was understandably surprised when a box of nine units arrived. Redditors were quick to congratulate/complain about the apparent Amazon packing error, and offer up theories as to how such obvious errors happen. It has even been suggested that Amazon randomly picks out buyers for such a ‘jackpot’ as a viral marketing ploy.
Ok-Middle-1360 says they paid CAD $200 (USD $146) at checkout, but are now blissfully cradling CAD $1,800 (USD $1,313) worth of fast premium storage. Nine extra M.2 SSDs aren’t going to find a home in a mainstream PC setup, though. Laptops usually top out at two M.2 storage connectors, and desktops with four or more are quite rare.
The Redditor could seek to sell-on spare drives, for a nice windfall, or perhaps buy a PCIe M.2 expansion card, or set up a NAS - if they have use for such quantities of storage/functionality. These Samsung 990 EVO Plus devices rival the best SSDs around. Perhaps wisely, though, they have decided to “ride it out” for a while, to see if Amazon reaches out regarding their obvious and expensive error.
Reddit theories – no one has mentioned aliens yet
It is interesting to pick through the comments on the Amazon jackpot being enjoyed by Ok-Middle-1360. Here you will find a range of well-reasoned theories, and others perhaps less so.
Some of the most credible explanations come from folks who seem to have background knowledge of the inner workings of Amazon’s warehouses. For example, someone who currently works at Amazon indicates that this seems to be a warehouse newbie who picked a ‘masterbox’ or ‘master pack’ from a pallet, rather than an individual product.
Apparently, barcodes can be shared between master packs and single units. However, there should be a few other checks done after picking before a parcel is thrown in the back of a truck. One such check, of weight, would not be far out of its expected range, where tiny PC components get packed in oversized boxes in single/multiple quantities.
Redditors also offer up the hypothesis that AI-powered robotic pickers are sometimes getting things wrong. That wouldn’t be such a big surprise, given the above pack nuances.
Plunging deeper into the conspiracy rabbit hole, there are several posts promoting the idea that stories like this NVMe SSD jackpot from Ok-Middle-1360 are just marketing stunts. They are “fake posts… advertisements… viral marketing,” according to some skeptics.
While the best SSD deal you can find right now would ned you an MSI 2TB SSD for 5 cents per gigabyte, this colossal Amazon gaff netted this lucky user 18TB for just $0.008/GB.
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