i wanted to thank you all for this thread, which of course i found only after having had the same thing from the same seller happen to me. which was pretty upsetting.
live and learn, from now on i will do a search on all eBay sellers before i a make any major purchases.
for anyone having the same experience as me, i put in for a return and simply stated with evidence that they sent me the wrong model of card.
" Your return was completed and you have been refunded " so at least there is that good news for me. I am now wondering if this seller would have this thread on their radar? should i be posting this? if the consensus is that this will cause more harm than help, i would be happy to modify or remove anything. i just though this might help someone else get a refund and not get ripped off. course its possible that the seller will refuse and you will need to take it to eBay arbitration. everything else i got from that seller was of good quality and legit.
Giving this seller a great deal of "benefit of the doubt", it is possible they got ripped off and were originally unknowingly selling bad cards? Of course even if that was true in the past, they of course are well aware now....but why not create a second account so as not taint their primary one? I don't understand. It must have been a lot more profitable (larger price difference between X-3 and X-3Pro) way back when. because as far as fakes go if you released these when their firmware was already the newest, I probably would have missed it, they are pretty impressive in that regard. Well only if i hadn't also bought two MCX314A-BCCT as well; which took the updated firmware no problem, so unless it's a super fake, its real.
I did a quick search and the 2.40.7000 came out in approximately Nov 2017, and i suppose the price difference would have been ~several hundred dollars or more USD between the pro and non-pro.
so beyond wanting to help others and apparently blab on for a bit, i have a possibly very stupid question.
It is an open question for everyone. Does anyone think there is any possible harm or danger in using these cards? Maybe it's crazy or stupid but what if any, is the likelihood of a backdoor or anything malicious beyond changing the descriptors in the firmware? like uefi/efi bios' can have?
There isn't enough space to flash something like that in a network cards firmware, right?
I'm embarrassed for even asking but i figured better safe than sorry. Now that they are free, ill probably use them anyway, at least for now.