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Scammers Game Amazon A-Z Policy By Replacing iPhones With Clay

coryklein.com

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Re: Scammers Game Amazon A-Z Policy By Replacing iPhones With Clay

#71

Post by alagappanr »

bdrool wrote: post #48

Amazon is complete crap these days. It's becoming more and more difficult to figure out who you are buying from, and as a result there are outright scams sitting on Amazon's store at this moment that they continue to do nothing about: https://www.amazon.ca/ORIGINAL-MACBOOK-Magsafe-ADAPTER-CHARG... See that? That's the infamous "dangerous" counterfeit Apple Macbook charger that made the rounds[1][2] a while back. Noti…

If you look at the Q&A, there's a question about whether the product is original Apple or not. And there are 5 answers to the question all on the same day saying the same thing. These must be fake accounts posting fake answers for such products.

Re: Scammers Game Amazon A-Z Policy By Replacing iPhones With Clay

#72

Post by Alupis »

laksjd wrote: post #4

I'm going to guess this only works with sellers that aren't fulfilled by Amazon? It's an annoyingly effective scam: How can sellers protect themselves?

Fulfilled By Amazon would provide no protection here.

When you send a replenishment shipment to Amazon for a FBA item, they don't open and verify you sent the correct product. You only find out about mistakes after the items have been sold.

For some common FBA items (presumably like an iPhone), you can co-mingle your inventory. This means you send in an identical item (with UPC, etc), and your inventory can be used to fulfill another seller's order (if that warehouse happens to be closer to the customer). They do the same for you.

This means buyers get their order faster, but it also means the item going out the door may not have been yours (opening the door for this clay scam to spread to impact many many sellers).

Re: Scammers Game Amazon A-Z Policy By Replacing iPhones With Clay

#73

Post by bdrool »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #61
bdrool wrote: post #48

Amazon is complete crap these days. It's becoming more and more difficult to figure out who you are buying from, and as a result there are outright scams sitting on Amazon's store at this moment that they continue to do nothing about: https://www.amazon.ca/ORIGINAL-MACBOOK-Magsafe-ADAPTER-CHARG... See that? That's the infamous "dangerous" counterfeit Apple Macbook charger that made the rounds[1][2] a while back. Noti…

If you read the article, it's actually Amazon and sellers who's being scammed by the buyers, who are purchasing iPhones, replacing them with blocks of clay, and claiming the refund for "fraud".

Yes, I realize that. I was not saying this is the exact same thing that is being discussed in the article.

However, it is similar in that Amazon should be exercising more control over their inventory and logistics, not to mention the case I am talking about is arguably much more egregious and much more within Amazon's control to fix. I think that makes it highly relevant as a comment to this story.

Re: Scammers Game Amazon A-Z Policy By Replacing iPhones With Clay

#74

Post by Pyxl101 »

thenomad wrote: post #59
ndesaulniers wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same could be said for eBay. Buyer of my MBP opened a claim against me cause I didn't include the OS install disks (which Apple stopped shipping years earlier). Had to bend over backwards to prevent this con artist from keeping the laptop and money. Now I don't sell shit on eBay.

I recently decided not to sell several expensive bits of electronics on eBay because multiple people warned me about this sort of fraud. Real pity because it's hard to know where to sell that sort of thing these days.

What if there was an EBay like action site where you couldn't just sign up, and rather someone had to "vouch" for you? When fraud starts happening, you can see who vouched them in and shut down the network. If people start selling vouches online, then you suspend both them and the person who had the bad judgment to vouch them in originally. (maybe they can keep using the site, but not vouch, etc.)

The site would also collect identifying information about everyone who transacts while using it. Maybe phone number, or driver license photo. You are not allowed to have more than one account, although you can have multiple "personas" if you wish, each with their own ratings. (but creating multiple personas cannot fool site anti-abuse staff, who can all obviously see the same account behind it) Creating an account is hard. The site would employ advanced protections against account takeover.

Whenever you buy and sell from someone, perhaps you can see the "7 degrees of Kevin Bacon" style interpersonal connections that link you to them via vouches. If fraud happens, it makes all of your connections look bad, and there would be an incentive for them to shun you, if they care about retaining their access to the site. When fraudsters get onto the platform, you can always trace their vouches back to the "bad apple" who showed poor judgment and began inviting the wrong certain people. Indeed, perhaps in order to retain access to the platform overtime, you have to keep getting vouches every once in a while.

Big sites would not use these policies since they would invoice friction on purchases in result in lower conversion. But perhaps there is a niche somewhere for a highly trusted online auction house.

I wonder how far a system like this could go in stamping out fraud online. It seems like the problem with fraudsters is that they can always keep coming back with new accounts that everyone is forced to treat with the certain default degree of trust, and then the fraudsters exploit that. If you made it difficult for each person in the world to have more than one account on the service, then anyone engaging in repeat fraud would very quickly stand out as such. (As many personas as you want, but only one account)

Re: Scammers Game Amazon A-Z Policy By Replacing iPhones With Clay

#75

Post by striking »

anon1234321 wrote: post #64
bdrool wrote: post #48

Amazon is complete crap these days. It's becoming more and more difficult to figure out who you are buying from, and as a result there are outright scams sitting on Amazon's store at this moment that they continue to do nothing about: https://www.amazon.ca/ORIGINAL-MACBOOK-Magsafe-ADAPTER-CHARG... See that? That's the infamous "dangerous" counterfeit Apple Macbook charger that made the rounds[1][2] a while back. Noti…

It's the same deplorable ethics that Youtube used to rise to where they are today. It was probably the biggest copyright heist in history. Almost all of their traffic was to illegally uploaded music videos and they knew it. They put up so many procedural barriers to effective takedown that content owners gave up and accepted YouTube's licensing terms, because you'd rather make something than nothing. (Of course, now…

Artists have historically made little money on the music itself, turning instead to franchising and concert tickets to really bring in the big bucks.

This isn't the best article for explaining it, but it's better than nothing. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/9-ways-musicians-act...

Why are songs on the radio played for free? Because copyright in music actually hardly matters. "Real fans" end up buying piles of merchandise or going to concerts anyway.

(Disclosure: I pay for Google Music. I don't pirate music, and don't advocate it. But it can hardly be construed as "hurting artists.")

Re: Scammers Game Amazon A-Z Policy By Replacing iPhones With Clay

#77

Post by derekp7 »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #74
thenomad wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently decided not to sell several expensive bits of electronics on eBay because multiple people warned me about this sort of fraud. Real pity because it's hard to know where to sell that sort of thing these days.

What if there was an EBay like action site where you couldn't just sign up, and rather someone had to "vouch" for you? When fraud starts happening, you can see who vouched them in and shut down the network. If people start selling vouches online, then you suspend both them and the person who had the bad judgment to vouch them in originally. (maybe they can keep using the site, but not vouch, etc.) The site would also…

This sounds like something that social network sites such as FB could get into.

Re: Scammers Game Amazon A-Z Policy By Replacing iPhones With Clay

#78

Post by lsaferite »

lfowles wrote: post #70
wvenable wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craigslist

Even worse, "Man sued for $30K over $40 printer he sold on Craigslist" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11847858

In person, cash transaction, crowded place? Pfft, then you get arrested because the cops think you're selling stolen goods.

Re: Scammers Game Amazon A-Z Policy By Replacing iPhones With Clay

#79

Post by eric_h »

coderdude wrote: post #55
waterphone wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're draconian in some other areas, too, which affect regular customers. I was blacklisted from Amazon Payments, which I've only ever used to fund a few Kickstarter Projects. They will not tell me why, will not consider an appeal, and will not respond to further inquiries anymore. From reading online, this is due to their use of Experian for identity verification. But if you don't have any credit history, as I do…

I hate to say this but you basically have to trust these types of authorities when it comes to this type of "trust." You wouldn't believe how many people are out to scam. It's endemic in anything that involves money. I'd say "few bad eggs" but it's mostly shit eggs amongst a few good eggs.

I think it's really more that the bad "hens" lay many bad eggs, and the good ones only lay one good egg at a time.

Re: Scammers Game Amazon A-Z Policy By Replacing iPhones With Clay

#80

Post by Bartweiss »

Someone1234 wrote: post #10

These might be buyer scammers, or sellers themselves have been scammed upstream. This article is right you'd have to be bonkers to try and pull this on Amazon as a seller. But he's assuming the seller knows there is no iPhone in the sealed box. Perhaps Amazon Sellers are attempting to buy iPhones on the grey market at a discount, in order to resell them on Amazon at a profit. However the person they're dealing with u…

It does seem like upstream scamming would be a huge risk for anyone engaging in drop-shipping or multi-sourced buying. There are a lot of places (e.g. Craigslist) where selling clay iPhones could be pretty safe and lucrative, at which point some of the fake phones will hit secondary markets like Amazon where the middle man gets stuck with the costs.
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