I purchased a Kindle 2 from a seller that had a lot of them for sell, listed as "BRAND NEW, SEALED - NOT REFURBISHED" among other things. The condition was "new" as well. It was $279.99 shipped, which was actually reasonable after the 20% Bing Cashback deal (-$56) and no WA sales tax (-$28). It felt legit since it was priced slightly above Amazon's MSRP as well, plus the seller had 1300 positive feedback with a 100% rating. It took 3 days to arrive via USPS and I received it today, I took it home and opened the box (it was sealed and I had to rip the cardboard tab to open one end. Inside, the Kindle was covered in the plastic protective sticker and everything looked pretty new. I started it up to link it to my parents' Amazon account (it was a XMAS present for them) and was shocked to see "shawna's kindle" and when I went to the settings it was registered to someone named Shawna Adams - WTF?!
I thought maybe Amazon just threw in random machine names (longshot, I know) so I tried to buy a book and it successfully charged her and downloaded it!!! The weird thing is that it says the Kindle 2 was registered TODAY - December 11th. How is it possible that someone else registered this Kindle today when it had been in my mailbox all day and was in transit the prior 3 days from CA? Has anyone encountered this? Amazon customer service was helpful but was stumped... Are there fake Kindles that share serial numbers with legit Kindles? I'm pissed...