$89 for a Rigol DS1054Z??? must be a scam?

[solEEnoid]

I was considering getting a scope, potentially the Rigol DS1054Z, and so I was looking at it through Rigol Canada and amazon.ca a few times. Today I looked it up on amazon and found a seller listing it NEW for $89 + $52 shipping. So $141 CAD total. Which seems suspiciously low for a scope that is usually around $450. If you look at the seller profile ("DC Trade") it has thousands and thousands of positive reviews, so it seems legit on the surface.

I have bought a few things from random chinese sellers and even one US seller where the packages never arrived, but amazon just reimbursed me. So I decided to buy it and if it is a scam (no show, defective, or counterfeit) I'll just return it or file a claim with amazon.

What do you guys think? For sure a scam? Are there many counterfeits out there and are they easy to spot? Is it worth the risk?

Thanks 

[solEEnoid]

Update:
About 2 hours after my purchase I checked and realized that the seller removed their offering of that product. My order still went through though.


I'm wondering if someone working at the seller typed in the wrong price or something? Or perhaps they only had a couple to sell and wanted to get rid of quickly.. 

I'm still very skeptical, but if I really did luck out on a genuine, working Rigol DS1054Z for $141 this will be amazing.

Does anyone have tips for checking the authenticity of the scope? (assuming they send me one) I'm planning to just open it up and compare it to stills from the EEV teardown (or good pictures I can find).

[amyk]

I'm pretty sure fake scopes don't exist, because either the differences would be too obvious or the real ones are already at such cost that to make a clone would cost nearly the same as the original.

[Brumby]

It's possible that someone typed the price in wrong - and if they are a big enough seller, they might just honour the sale.  If that's the case, you just scored yourself a bargain because of someone else's goof ... and they were honest enough to take responsibility for it.

However, I would still be cautious - as you are - and check on the time frames of your payment method for lodging a dispute/chargeback.  Don't let anything the seller says put you off starting that process before the time limits expire, if you have cause to.  Unscrupulous sellers will try to dangle hopeful buyers until those dates have passed - and then drop them like a stone.

[timothyaag]

The question here is is the shipping refundable should you want to return it? A listing with low product price and high shipping is suspect to me because they can refund the product price to settle a return but say shipping is a sunk cost and you're out a lot of money.

[BillB]

I've also noticed some sort of automated price matching that occasionally goes awry on Amazon.  Not to the extent of the "discount" you saw, but I've seen some wild price swings on items when a marketplace seller might list an item for sale with a low price, then Amazon's price drops, then the seller's price drops, etc.  It usually corrects itself in a short amount of time.

[TomS_]

How did this end up working out? Genuine scope? 3 blown channels? Got your money back?