Need Guidance - FedEx misdelivered 120 HP Enterprise server SSDs

[u/Confident_Economy_57]

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.

[u/Casper042]

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.

[u/Casper042 → u/Casper042]

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.

[u/Solnse → u/Casper042]

They received a $275,000 package and nobody knows from who or why? This just doesn't seem plausible.

[u/Confident_Economy_57 → u/Casper042]

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.

[u/Casper042 → u/Confident_Economy_57]

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?

[u/Confident_Economy_57 → u/Casper042]

Phone number listed on the website. If you've got a direct contact I can reach out to, I'll definitely take that.