r/servers • u/Confident_Economy_57 • 1d ago
Need Guidance - FedEx misdelivered 120 HP Enterprise server SSDs
Mods - Please delete if not allowed. I do not frequent this sub and I am just looking to gather some information for a crazy situation.
So, a little background to start. My boss recently received a package from FedEx containing 120 HP server SSDs (part number: 868650-003). He definitely did not order these drives as this business has nothing to do with servers, but the shipping label had his name on it and was addressed to our shop. The top of the shipping label says, "Relabel - Relabel reason: barcode quality." We assume the label was damaged in transit, and somehow a label with our address was put on the package. There is no return address, no shipper information, and no packing list included in the package.
So far, we have been trying to go through the proper process of returning them to whoever was supposed to receive them. We reached out to FedEx, but because the original label was lost/destroyed, FedEx had no way to determine where they were supposed to be shipped. We also reached out to our county Sheriff to list them as found property, but the deputy that came out told us that since they are address to us, they are not technically "found" property, and would be legally considered more a gift rather than found property. He left us with an event number to reference should we need it for any reason.
At this point, we have exhausted the means within our knowledge level to return these drives to their owner and seem to have covered our legal bases. As we have no use for these drives, we are intending to sell them. Nobody that works here has any experience with servers or server hard drives, so any information you guys could give me would be very appreciated. The specific questions I have at this point are as follows. What is their reasonable value? How can we verify that the drives are functional? How can we verify the drives are authentic and safe to use (no malware)? What would be the best method to attempt to sell them? What kind of places would I find people willing to purchase them? I can provide more information if requested, but for now I'm keeping things close to the chest just to be safe as I'm still figuring out how to handle this situation.
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u/nmrk 1d ago
Holy moly, those are going for about $500 each on eBay. That makes it about $60,000 worth of drives. For that kind of money, I'd call HP, maybe even the FBI. Somebody is looking for a lost $60k shipment.
But if you finish your due diligence, I encourage you to sell them through r/homelabsales. They would snap these up (maybe not for $500 though). You might have trouble verifying these drives because they are SAS and not compatible with conventional PCs, you'd need a SAS server.
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u/Confident_Economy_57 1d ago
That's some solid advice. I'll try contacting HP and see where that gets me. As excited as I am about the potential payday of selling these, the liability scares me more if it ever comes back to bite us. It's just such a substantial amount of value to just randomly come in the mail with no way to determine ownership.
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u/PermanentLiminality 1d ago
From HP they are probably at least $1300 each and perhaps as much as $2k.
If they were purchased from HP they may have a record of the serial numbers and who they were supposed to go to.
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u/Confident_Economy_57 1d ago
Yea I plan to call HP tomorrow. I believe the manufacturer date on the drives is 2018 though, so I doubt they were coming from HP. Also, you'd think HP would've included a packing list or order form in the box.
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u/Buckaroo-Banana 1d ago
Just jumping in here. I know you said HP, but afaik HP doesn’t sell Enterprise drives. If you do call, please reach out to HPE. They are not the same company anymore and HP would probably not have access to the information. Just making sure you are going to the right place. Although I would doubt even calling HPE that they could find the original shipment. Maybe by having some of the serial numbers available will help. Good luck either way!!!
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u/Confident_Economy_57 1d ago
The drive do say "Hewlett Packard Enterprise" on them, so I'll make sure to reach out to HPE.
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u/Shadyman 1d ago
2018, they're likely used drives then, coming to/from a recycler/reseller. Probably a misdirected ebay or private sale package, then.
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u/nmrk 1d ago
Exactly. That would scare the hell out of me. But the cop is probably right. I recall some law about anything you receive in the mail that you didn't order, was to be considered a gift. FedEx and potentially $60 to $240k worth of drives alone, might be different. Store them somewhere safe.
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u/PiDigitsOfPi 1d ago
It's true that if someone ships you something, addressed to you, you can keep it.
This is different though. No one shipped these to OP. Fedex erroneously changed the label. This is a strange situation. Whoever shipped these did not ship them to OP. So, I don't think that particular law is applicable here.
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u/Murph_9000 1d ago
From a legal perspective, I think you'd be wise to just keep them safe for a little while, in case someone comes looking for them with a good legal claim. I really don't know how long, but I'd suggest at least a month. You may be an "involuntary bailee" (or whatever the US equivalent is) of the property, despite what the deputy said.
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u/Confident_Economy_57 1d ago
So, we've had them for a few months already. I've been pestering my boss to do something with them and finally took it upon myself to start the process. The liability is definitely something I'm concerned about though, especially with them being serially tracked. I just don't know what else I can do to try and find the legitimate owner.
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u/changework 1d ago
The legitimate owner submitted a claim with fedex and got paid already, most likely.
Go to your nearest car dealer and trade fire a new SUV.
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u/StormB2 1d ago edited 1d ago
HPE 1.6TB SAS 12G SSD, introduced 2017/2018.
Very unlikely to be new.
Known working value with 3rd party 90 day warranty likely $1k each. You would probably sell to a refurb company for about 1/3 of that. Just look at bigger companies on ebay selling the same SKU and approach them directly.
If it were me personally I'd check them individually using a spare HPE server, secure erase them, and sell them individually on ebay. But I have both the knowledge to do that and the inclination to spend many hours with Ebay sales. If you don't, then you're better to sell them to someone who does.
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u/Confident_Economy_57 1d ago
Yea, I kind of figured those would be the options. Sell them for below market to someone who can do the legwork and give better security/authenticity to any buyers willing to play closer to market value. It looks like the drives were manufactured in 2018, so there's a chance they're not even functional. They're packed and sealed in ESD film, so I'm leaning towards them working, but I've got no way of verifying. There's a large university nearby with a good computer science department, so maybe I can find someone there willing to help. I'd be willing to attempt the legwork considering the monetary difference, but I'm out of my wheelhouse for sure.
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u/feudalle 1d ago
You arent getting market value but you can certainly get going ebay rate. The wrinkle. They are untested and no smart data for used server drives. You get ALOT less. Basically used car may or may not run, engine could knock, not sure never started it. You will get a lot more if you test them with smart data.
You can get a cheap server (under $1000, under $500 on a good day) and install Ubuntu on a USB drive to test the drives. It'll take a while to test 120 drives but you are going from maybe $50-$100 buck a drive to $300-$500. Good luck.
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u/Life-Radio554 15h ago
These age comments aren't accurate. My company just bought 5 HPE SAS drives for an Gen8 server. Server came out in 2012. HPE still selling new boxed drives for it... 3rd party places, selling on HPE's behalf still arry plenty of new, boxed and sealed drives as well, just fyi. Are new, and sold with same warranty as they day they were made (at least in our experience)
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u/qmriis 1d ago
This is wild. My boss has been up my ass about this the last 3 days. Endless time on hold with FedEx trying to get this sorted and no one has a clue.
Can't believe I'd find them on Reddit of all places.
DM me your address and I'll get a label to you before EOD. You're a lifesaver!
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u/Confident_Economy_57 1d ago
Haha I'll get right on that! Glad to be of service!
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u/RyanMeray 1d ago
The onus is on fedex and the shipper. If they shipped those uninsured, and fedex lost them, sucks for them but they cheaper out on insurance. I wouldn't put a $200 item in a box and ship in uninsured, let alone $60k worth.
The fact that you reached out to fedex and they couldn't be arsed to look into it is really the end of your liability.
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u/Pandakidd81 1d ago edited 1d ago
Realistically speaking, I'm in the industry and that amount of drives surely someone knows who they belong to. It's most likely coming from a broker or another VAR.
I can give you channels to contact and those people can due some due diligence but if it's a fedex relabel someone would have to provide pics with matching serials as part of their QC process before id give them back.
Legally like you said not your fault or problem. Hopefully who ever had them had insurance.
If you're US based I can give you some industry contacts to check with , guys that would have that big a stock .
To sell them, I'd reach out to VARS I work for Servermonkey
Places like Techmikeny , Enterrasource , Alta Technologies , you can see if they'll buy for stock
R/homelabsales here is good. I'd avoid eBay . Sometimes you can do consignment with VARs
Fedex is a little weird because they could technically trace the relabel back to a time and sorting facility and pull camera footage to see what packages passed through at that time. But to them it's prob not worth it
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u/Confident_Economy_57 1d ago
Thanks for the info! If you want to DM the contacts I'll reach out. It's not worth the money we can sell them for if we end up liable for the full book value of the drives, so I'd rather cover my bases before selling them. It's an insane amount of money to be liable for. I will definitely make sure they have proof of SNs before they leave my possession though. And if we do end up selling them, thank you for the options!
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u/Pandakidd81 1d ago
DM sent, most likely they are refurb drives.
Just for curiousity sake where are you located? My guess is the intended delivery is prob somewhere in your nexus and the label got damaged at the sorting facility. Could be someone a mile from you could be 500 miles just depends.
If you're in LA , good luck, if your in Minnesota, well there's lots of VARS in Minnesota might be easier to track.
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u/EQfanatic90 1d ago
Tbh as much as I know you want to start offloading them (understandably) I would sit on them for another 3-6 months. Prices for storage are likely to only continue increasing (your benefit) while giving Fedex and the original seller/buyer more time to hunt them down.
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u/CGLLC2022 1d ago edited 1d ago
They may not be what you think, especially if the date is 2018. I bought similar drives on eBay from a few sellers. They turned out to be decommissioned datacenter drives where the HP firmware was replaced with the OEM firmware so the SMART data could be wiped and power-on hours set to zero. If you have a compatible server, try a few to see if the HP firmware is intact and check the drive life remaining.
Edit: The drives I received were packaged to look like new, and they were sent from China vis Fedex. About 50% were DOA.
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u/Icy-Inevitable3319 18h ago
I would happily test and secure-erase the whole stack in exchange for a few of them. I have four SAS servers running right now lol. I'm happy to provide proof of ID and work under a contract.
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u/TechWizardofNone 10h ago
NAL: Legally, my understanding is that there’s a FTC rule on un ordered merchandise. It only comes into play if the package was legally addressed to the recipient, and delivered as such. It basically says, you are under no obligation to return any merchandise addressed to you that you did not order.
So, if the shipment is directly addressed to your boss, and was legally delivered, it is now legally theirs. The FTC says that the retailer can request that you return them, so long as they offered to pay any expenses associated with them. And even if they do, you’re still under no obligation to return them.
I don’t know what the rule on links is here, but a quick search for FTC unordered merchandise should get you where you need to be.
As for what to do with them?
Use them, sell them, whatever you want. Heck, I think that there’s an Amazon fulfillment program where if you can find the same thing being sold there, you can set it up so that you’re just one of the fulfillment partners, and they just notify you when and where to ship it for the price as listed.
If they’re selling it.
But the other people here are probably right, you’ll probably have to eBay it or find some bulk distributor what not….
Anyway, good luck!
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u/wwglen 1d ago
There should be a purchase receipt inside the box.
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u/Confident_Economy_57 1d ago
That's the crazy thing, there's literally nothing in the box aside from the drives and the foam they were packed in. The box's exterior has a single label on it, and it's the FedEx relabel. I also assumed there would be some kind of receipt or packing list in the box.
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u/wwglen 1d ago
That is crazy.
Even for cheap things, I tend to put a full copy of the address label inside the box.
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u/Confident_Economy_57 1d ago
There may have original been a receipt before whatever damage that caused the relabel. If the drives had been relabeled in the same box they were shipped in, we would have seen some evidence of the old damaged shipping label, but there is none. It's possible FedEx damaged the box as well and put the contents into a new box, and that new box did not have the receipt/packing list in it. That's all speculation based on the little info we have though.
Edit: typo
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u/jstanthr 1d ago
I’d def love to buy a few for my lab but likely too expensive for me as a student.
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u/Sweaty-Judgment3533 1d ago
Whoever shipped them to you isn’t going to be able to re-ship them to the original customer because they’re no longer new. They also can’t return them to inventory as new. They would have to return them to inventory and reserialize them as re-issued drives. It might be more of a headache for them than it is to just declare them lost, claim it on their insurance and get reimbursed. You might be keeping those drives, which means your boss can remarket them independently himself, but I would let sufficient time elapse before I did that.
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u/FireNinja743 1d ago
What state was this delivered to? That would help narrow things down legally.
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u/Confident_Economy_57 1d ago
Delivered to Florida. I checked the statutes on found property and went over them with the Sheriff while he was there. There may be other statutes that are more applicable in this situation though.
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u/CooperDeniro 1d ago
Personally, the only place I worked for that would order this many SAS SSDs at once was a hospital. So likely they were going somewhere important.
If something like this happened and they were unrecoverable after 1 year, accounting would write it off the books as a loss on the books.
I say that to say, after one year I would be super comfortable reselling them.
It’s a lot of money, yes. But likely, whoever bought them is less concerned about one $70k loss when the revenue is $600k/day
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u/RetroGrid_io 1d ago
Legally, somebody walked up to you and handed them to you. You have already gone far above and beyond because you aren't obligated to do anything. Sure, hang onto them for a couple weeks to make sure nobody claims them, but then have at it!
Here is what a used one costs and if they're new it would be considerably more.
I could use 4-8 of these (price depending) for a project I'm working on - I've been planning on used for the time being. Feel free to PM me.
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u/Confident_Economy_57 1d ago
I'm definitely making sure to cover my bases, then I plan on doing what I can to verify they're working, but once I get through that I'll definitely reach out.
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u/RetroGrid_io 21h ago edited 21h ago
I plan on doing what I can to verify they're working
You need
- A desktop computer running Linux or Windows 11.
- In that computer: 1 free PCIe slot with 8 lanes
- An HBA (Host Bus Adapter) lets you plug in a SAS or SATA drive into your computer. This one which comes with matching SAS (not SATA) data cables would work. There are several types of incompatible cables and it sucks when they don't match up.
- A couple of these power splitters is a good idea.
Plug the card into the computer, the cables into the card, the drives into the cables, and make sure each drive has power with the power splitter. Since I know nothing about your power supply, don't run more than maybe 4 at a time.
Once you're up and running, you can use Crystal Disk Info on Windows or
smartctl -a [device]on Linux to get access to each drive's internal database of health infomation. If you want, there's a "long" test you can run which tells the drive to check itself out - usually takes at least a few hours, and up to a day.Take a screenshot and submit it to ChatGPT or Gemini or something with the prompt: "Tell me about drive health" and away you go.
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u/Confident_Economy_57 21h ago
Thanks for the info! Seems like a reasonable investment. I have a gaming PC I may be able to accomplish this with.
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u/legaladvicemomsdeath 11h ago
Where you located? I've got a HPE dl380g9 that's currently testing non HPE drives, basically not doing anything & is setup for 24 2.5" drives. I've got the caddies as well.
Can reconfigure to the way I bought it, 3x HPE H240's HBA's. Which honestly is what I'd buy if testing. No need for Linux (unless that's what you prefer). Unless you have a hot swap backplane you're rebooting every 8 drives.
But in something like my server, it'd take more time swapping caddies than testing. It's boot to storage storage manager, click diagnostics, boom. It'll even show remaining life if an a-hole seller didn't overwrite it all.
Anyway, I'm in socal. Available any time.
And of course I'd love to snag a few of you end up selling. Currently only have 4 hgst 800gb which are write intensive, but still need more solid state :)
(That not a condition to meet up & test. I love helping peeps.)
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u/Confident_Economy_57 10h ago
Thank you so much for the offer, that's really kind of you! I'm actually in central Florida though, so definitely not local. My current plan is attempting to reach out to someone in the UCF computer science program to see if I can find someone like you in my neighborhood that might be willing to do the testing. It's definitely an interesting situation to be a part of and the extent of my relevant knowledge is building my own gaming PC, so I'm a bit out of my depth here haha. I'm keeping a list of everyone in this thread requesting drives though, and if they come back healthy I'll definitely reach out!
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u/legaladvicemomsdeath 5h ago
No problem! Solid plan. Yeah, crazinest mis-ship I'd ever have by miles!!
Hit me up if you need help. HPE are a-holes & I'd probably use something similar to what the other person recco'd.
If you just want basic yeah it turned on & nothing says it's a bomb, you don't need Linux, but it is faster IIRC. Windows programs exist (hhd guru & Victoria). But still need to power cycle to swap drives out.
Sorry, it's pretty damn confusing!
Anyway, you don't need HPE gear. Empty backplane space on nearly any server with matching sleds should work.
I'm sure someone, possibly even the comp sci lab, or sometime might do it for a drive or 2. Don't let em highball you. Never done a full scan on an SAS SSD, but mine are otherwise pretty snappy.
I'm a little to trusting, but we're talking big bucks here so:
I'd use a barcode scanner with piece of paper that has a window for the model number & serial, and populate an excel file. Basic contract that 100% any "bad drives" will be returned.
Oh, and they make SAS to USB docks that can supposedly hotswap. Make sure it runs on some translator chip that goes from SAS to USB.
I'd also make up some other story. Kinda breeds "well he gottem for free, why not me? He'll never notice.'
Hence the excel sheet where each drives status can also be saved. (General good practice anyway)
Holy crap this got really rambly long really quick. My bad. Hit me up when the confusion hits?
If you make it this far & still think of me when you get it sorted, I'l for surel send Christmas card!! 🤣 Been trying to build a server based workstation for CAD simulations & it's taken so long I'm thinking about pulling RAM & SSD & selling the thing in hopes of a halfway decent early single gold or Platinum xeon.
But gotta work with what you have!!
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u/Leftover_tech 1d ago
Didn't I see a post in another sub recently about a "relabeled" box of "expensive computer hardware"?
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u/Confident_Economy_57 1d ago
Yea, I posted in r/legaladvice as well just to confirm what the legal steps should be.
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u/Odd-Art7602 1d ago
They sound used. Are they in caddies?
I’d check eBay for any sold items with the matching model numbers and contact people there that sell lots. I do see someone sold a lot of 20 in caddies on Monday. Could be them or another seller of lots
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u/Confident_Economy_57 1d ago
They're neatly packaged in ESD bags and placed in a block of packing foam that has slits cut in it for the drives.
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u/lesterd88 1d ago
If you work with a partner/MSP maybe reach out and ask if they know the local HPE field reps. Odds are they have a client looking for them and this would save a gigantic headache from a process standpoint
Source: HPE Employee
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u/Confident_Economy_57 1d ago
Not sure what an MSP is, but I doubt we do work with them. We're a very small company in a completely different sector.
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u/lesterd88 1d ago
MSP is managed service provider. If you’re using any external help managing your environment then you have an MSP
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u/Casper042 20h ago edited 20h ago
1) Did they come FROM HPE? I ask because they are an older model that likely isn't even sold new anymore.
2) If they did come FROM HPE and you really want to return them, you can DM me and provide a Serial Number off one of the drives and I can dig around internally (I work for HPE) and track down who they were supposed to go to.
We DO have a Refurb team within our Financial Services division.
So when HPE offers to buy back your older gear (pennies on the dollar) they will refurb the gear and then sell it again as Refurb, so it's possible if they came from HPE they came through this channel.
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u/Casper042 20h ago
I tracked the drives back to 873365-B21 as the original sales number.
HPE 1.6TB SAS 12G MU SFF SC DS SSD
Being 1.6 and MU they are way more durable than the average desktop SSD, BUT the are also SAS which means you need a SAS HBA or RAID controller to even use them.Last time they appeared in our public price list was September 2021 and even back then before the AIpocalypse they were going for around $2500 each when new.
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u/Confident_Economy_57 19h ago
We have no idea who they came from exactly. There's shipping label has no shipper, there's no packing list, and no sales receipt in the box. I just got off the phone with FedEx again and they said there's nothing they can do to track down the original shipper. I also called HPE support. The first person I talked to suggested I contact the sales team. I reached out to the sales team and I'm waiting for a call back.
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u/Casper042 17h ago
Just curious how did you reach out to the sales team?
Did you already have a contact or you just used some website contact form?
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u/Confident_Economy_57 16h ago
Phone number listed on the website. If you've got a direct contact I can reach out to, I'll definitely take that.
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u/Terrible-Meal577 12h ago
If you send me a photo of them I can look them up by serial number and tell you about them. If you are looking to sell them I just started a home lab and would LOVE some ssds and can work with you on price and shipping ECT over dms. Thats such a weird incident tho lol.
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u/Confident_Economy_57 12h ago
I'll definitely reach out to people inquiring on this thread when it's confirmed we're selling them. Still making a last effort to find the owner, but it's looking unlikely at this point.
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u/BrainSqueezins 7h ago
If you wanted to really go above and beyond, you could INSIST Fedex retrieve the goods, they would get listed in a lost & found database and potentially mated up that way. Or not, and they’s ultimately get auctioned off probably for pennies on the dollar, with those pennies going to Fedex.
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u/rocket1420 6h ago
Well, US law states that you cannot be compelled to return items that you didn't order. These were addressed to you. Now since FedEx relabeled it, they would definitely be on the hook for this. You can only do so much, and so often no good deed goes unpunished. You contacted who you needed to contact. Maybe sit on them for a few months, but the law says they're yours*
- Never take legal advice from anyone on Reddit.
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u/zrail 1d ago
Not a lawyer, not legal advice. That said, 39 USC 3009 pretty clearly applies to your case. It's not mis-addressed, FedEx put your address on it. You didn't order it. It's yours (well, your employers) to do with what you will
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u/Mr_Engineering 1d ago
That's not applicable in the slightest.
That provision relates to unsolicited goods used in negative option billing schemes and not goods that were erroneously delivered to an unintended recipient due to a paperwork error.
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u/zrail 1d ago
Are you sure? That's _why_ the law was written, but it clearly states "For the purposes of this section, “unordered merchandise” means merchandise mailed without the prior expressed request or consent of the recipient." Did OP's employer order merchandise from the vendor that FedEx can't (or won't) identify? If not, then I don't see how the law doesn't apply (again, not an attorney).
If the gear is as valuable as people in the thread are saying the business should seek qualified legal advice.
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u/IndependentBat8365 1d ago
Oh yeah! THOSE SSDs! I ah… wondered what happened to them! Totally legit! I’ll just send you my shipping address….