It seems that the Chinese brand XFX has enough problems with the customs authorities of the Asian country, since according to an official notification of the service of customs From China, a huge consignment of thousands of graphics cards from this manufacturer (specifically 5,840 units) was seized no tagwhich appear to be products with false specifications and names.
These 5,840 graphics cards from the manufacturer XFX were seized, as usual in this area, at the customs post between China and Hong Kong. An initial inspection of a shipment from Shenzhen to Hong Kong found mislabelling, prompting customs officials to carry out further inspection and block the entire consignment.
XFX caught rigging your own GPUs?
As you can see in the image above, the graphics cards were practically “loose”, without even their original packaging: simply wrapped in bubble wrap, side by side and on top of each other. Preliminary inspection by customs officials revealed that each graphics card in this shipment had stickers covering the name of the original model, impersonating other models of lower value (with the obvious purpose of declaring a value lower in customs).
According to the source of this news, it seems that this mislabeling is done frequently and deliberately by some Asian manufacturers, with the aforementioned aim of declaring a lower value and thus making a higher profit. According to the Chinese customs department, the total declared value of this shipment was approximately 20 million yen, which is approximately 3 million dollars about. Many of these graphics cards were, by the way, XFX Speedster Quick 319 Radeon RX 6700 XTwhose current price in Europe is around 919 dollars.
An interesting fact in this regard is that, despite the fact that the Chinese customs authorities did not name XFX as the culprit of this crime (because it is a crime), the company’s official Chinese website went down broke down shortly after its creation. was made public, and curiously, the company’s presence in the Tmall online store (owned by Alibaba, just like Aliexpress) completely disappeared, as if it had never existed, facts that certainly give reasons to suspect the manufacturer himself.
Of course, the Chinese media source of the information assures that this is not the first time that XFX has been involved in a similar scandal, since in the past it has been accused of receiving AMD chips and selling them directly to mining farms.
What will happen to XFX cards seized at customs?
At this point (with a sizable shipment of graphics cards stuck in customs) two things can happen: the first (which would be normal) is for customs to notify XFX of this fact directly, requiring the correct payment of customs duties to the export (and surely an additional economic penalty) and, if the manufacturer pays it, the shipment will continue on its way to its destination as if nothing had happened.
In the event that XFX decides not to pay customs, that shipment will be held in border warehouses indefinitely. This fact will be reported to the builder, prompting him to pay the corresponding costs to unblock it, and granting him a deadline. If that deadline were to be exceeded, the shipment would become the property of the State, and again two things could happen: the first is that these 5,840 graphics cards are left there in oblivion, potentially destined for recycling , and the second is that they go out to a public auction, in which logically not graph by graph but the whole lot would be auctioned.
What seems quite complicated at this point is that these graphics cards unfortunately arrive in stores in the normal way.
