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

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

#101

Post by anon1234321 »

pyre wrote: post #93
anon1234321 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about hurting the record companies, who front most of the capital for artists, pay them salaries, etc.

> pay them salaries You must not know much about how the recording industry works. The record companies "pay" artists by giving them lending them money, the payments for which are deducted from their royalty percentage (e.g. the record company take 90% of the cost of the CD, and the artist gets 10%, then the "loan payment" comes out of the artist's 10% royalty).

What you think of the terms between artists and labels is not really relevant to the matter at hand. No one is forced to sign with a big label. If you want someone's money, then you have to be willing to play by their rules. If the contract terms are too one-sided, then other labels would undercut the competition by offering better terms. This is what happens.

But again, totally irrelevant to YouTube's massive copyright heist. There's no justification for basing your business model on copyright infringement. No justification for having an asinine takedown system that doesn't change the fact that the top result will be yet another illegal copy of the video you just spent forever trying to get taken down.

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

#102

Post by Pyxl101 »

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…

How can you tell for sure that it's counterfeit? Just to be clear: I'm with you; this looks sketchy. I'm just wondering what particular signals you've picked up on.

I thought that when third parties sell on Amazon, they specify the catalog information that shows up there, such as "Apple Computers". Multiple different sellers can then list the same product for sale if they have it. Could there be a few legitimate people actually selling this along with some scammers, or is it entirely scammers?

Things I'm confused about: the product title seems to be misleading. I see "MagSafe" in there, but also "original Oem Apple MacBook Pro" (in caps). The product photo has an Apple logo on it, which is presumably trademarked. So if they sent me a generic adapter that wasn't Apple brand, then that would be false advertising. If they sent a device that wasn't really Apple, it would be counterfeiting.

What will you get when you buy it? I am tempted to buy one and see what happens.

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

#103

Post by ericabiz »

I wrote about this back in 2013 (and made it to the front page of HN): "Scammed By Amazon’s 'A-to-Z Guarantee'"

https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/scammed-by-amazons-a-...

tl;dr I sold my old cell phone on Amazon and the buyer claimed it was stolen. Amazon refunded him in full and took the money out of my bank account.

I also sold a computer on Amazon around the same time and the buyer tried to do the same thing. That one I caught and argued successfully for, but it was still a pain to go back and forth.

I had another laptop I wanted to sell online, but because of these two experiences I was really gun-shy. I ended up stuffing it in a cabinet for over a year and eventually sold it to a friend for significantly less than I would have sold it for online--but at least I knew I wouldn't get scammed.

I've had better luck with the Amazon trade-in program, especially since they sometimes do incentives. I've traded in two Kindles and ended up getting a new Paperwhite for only about $40-50 after all the incentives from both old Kindles were in my account.

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

#104

Post by ianferrel »

Alupis wrote: post #72
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 t…

I would be very surprised if Amazon actually mixed up merchandise from several sellers to the point that they don't know where the items originated.

It's one thing to ship from the closest warehouse and credit the sale to whichever seller offered the price chosen by the customer. It's a totally different thing to not know where the item came from at all.

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

#105

Post by jpindar »

derekp7 wrote: post #77
Pyxl101 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or nextdoor. Which reminds me, I want to get more of my neighbors to join that.

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

#106

Post by Maarten88 »

nkozyra wrote: post #25
codecamper wrote: post #22

Amazon could set up some honey pots.. whereby they themselves send out the product. They know its good. If a customer tries to scam that one... then Amazon has found their scammer. Also... I'm surprised that Amazon just hands out these sorts of refunds on big ticket items. If I were them I'd require some sort of biometric data for the refund.

But as the story relates, these people tend to set up new accounts each time. There's little risk here involved for the scammer.

Can't they blacklist shipping addresses and/or credit cards? These people open new accounts for a reason; I'd think Amazon could connect and analyze data to discover and mark/blacklist scammers.

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

#107

Post by ikeboy »

ensignavenger wrote: post #99
makomk wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would allow sellers to carry out selective scamming: send buyers with longstanding accounts genuine iPhones, send new buyers boxes with clay and pocket the cash. Not so common on mainstream sites because it's hard to get away with currently, but apparently used to be rife on darknet marketplaces.

Do sellers know the buyers history with Amazon?

No. If you have a database of old buyers you can see who's bought from you in the past, but otherwise you only have a name and address.

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

#109

Post by ikeboy »

sharms wrote: post #9

This isn't an Amazon only problem, same with Ebay etc. I would love to hear how people can sell items online safely (for the time being I only use Craigslist for this exact reason)

You're never going to get a 100% guarantee. You can take steps to help, though. If it's above a couple hundred dollars then require a signature, which gets rid of most issues. If you have a history of selling, and have a signature, there's a chance they'll side with you.

eBay is slightly better for one-off sales: you can refuse returns (if specified in the listing), and cancel sales by buyers without verified paypal accounts or no feedback. Plus they have a sellers guarantee, although I don't know how often they'll actually stick up for the seller.

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

#110

Post by changdizzle »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #45
soyiuz wrote: post #17

I've had a similar thing happened to me a few years back when I sold a no longer needed but still unopened Windows Vista DVD that I purchased directly from MS Store (on Microsoft campus). The buyer returned the package, but the returned merchandize was clearly counterfeit. The box was of a light material, missing holograms, faded colors etc. The buyer's history was full of similar purchases. I've been careful about d…

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.

Whenever I sell any of my electronics now, I do it via Craigslist or specialty forums - Hardforum and Anandtech have pretty large For Sale/Trade communities and they all use Heatware for feedback.
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