Recently I bought a hard drive that was "shipped and sold by amazon" and it was not only completely DOA, but the serial number was fake. It did not verify using the manufacturer's lookup page. It had also arrived practically loose inside a way-too-large box with almost no padding inside.

I returned that and simultaneously ordered the exact same item again from the same page, still "shipped and sold by amazon", and this time the properly packaged product arrived, with a valid serial number, and it worked just fine.