Scammers Game Amazon A-Z Policy By Replacing iPhones With Clay • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by coderdude » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 7:53 PM UTC

waterphone wrote: post #92

coderdude wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So for those of us who simply don't meet their definition for an identifiable individual (e.g. someone who borrows money and allows their borrowing history to be monitored by commercial and government entities), what, we're just shit out of luck? Credit history being a requirement for identity verification is becoming more and more pervasive, and I am increasingly locked out of participating in both private and gover…

Yes, you're shit out of luck. You can post paragraphs onto the Internet until you're blue in the face but this is their reality, not mine.

Pro life tip: just get a credit card or two and nurture your credit score. Don't fuck over your utilities and make sure your payments are on time. Voila. You're a real boy. Not my rules or something I endorse but hey someone here had to say it.

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

#122

Post by rietta » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 7:57 PM UTC

Gosh. It's almost worth it to never resell anything. Just throw old electronics away even though that's bad for the environment and squanders value both for the owner of no longer needed gear and the potential new user of it. The world would be so much nicer if everyone were honest dealing.

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

#123

Post by zaphoyd » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 8:01 PM UTC

Pyxl101 wrote: post #102

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 peop…

At this point the biggest clue is that it is not sold by a well known Apple authorized reseller at the MSRP.

These counterfeit chargers look nearly identical to the originals, including all of Apple's branding. It is absolutely false advertising, infringement on Apple's trademarks, dangerous (these things cause fires), and a scam.

As much as I hate paying full price for these chargers, I would never buy one from anywhere other than an Apple store these days.

Edit: I really hope the MacBook going USB-C charging is a sign of a coming era of non-proprietary charging for Apple laptops. That said, there are obviously counterfeit issues with USB chargers as well, but there is at least more than one legitimate vendor to help with competition a bit.

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

#124

Post by nathangrant » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 8:04 PM UTC

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…

Selling on Amazon at a small scale has bitten me lately as well. I had the same video card returned by three different buyers for buyer-only reasons (Bought by Mistake, Found Better Price) and there is no recourse for me and I'm out the $20 shipping each time unless I want to jeopardize my seller account

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

#125

Post by tehrei » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 8:07 PM UTC

mrep wrote: post #118

ghaff wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my (fortunately limited) eBay selling experience, you also just have some very stupid people. I got into a hassle with selling a brand new digital camera to someone because they refused to understand (in barely coherent English) that the "digital zoom" in the specs cut & pasted from the manufacturer was not a "zoom on the outside" to use his terminology. I haven't sold on eBay for ages. There's very little I want…

Yep. When I sold my last Iphone, the guy said the wifi had connection issues (It was the version where your finger could reduce the signal). I told him that that was a known problem with the phone, but if he still had problems with it, he could take it to an apple store as the phone still had applecare+. He said the apple people are mean and he didn't trust them. He kept trying to get me to compensate him $50 for a r…

I guess e-bay and amazon are good in aggregate, i.e. there are only a few scammers, so if you sell thousands of units you don't really care, but the risk is just not worth it for the individual seller.

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

#126

Post by gregmac » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 8:07 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #120

When I worked at eBay, we constantly debated whether the policies should be pro seller or pro buyer. You can't be both in a two sided market. Throughout my time there, we switched back and forth, but ultimately decided happy sellers brought in more revenue that happy buyers (but maybe that changed again). Apparently Amazon has decided to be pro buyer right now, which fits with their general model of making happy cust…

Why isn't it based more on a trust system? Amazon records a ton of information about people..

Buyers with a history of claims should generally not be trusted when opening a new claim, and likewise, sellers with a history of claims should not be trusted.

New buyers and new sellers (no history) require some more scrutiny, but the default should probably be to be skeptical as well.

When new, how hard is it to link an IP address (or some other fingerprint) as likely to be from other accounts? Eg: new buyer/seller opens dispute, has no history, but IP is linked to a no-longer active account that has a trail of disputes... that's pretty fishy. I'd probably say that accounts from shared addresses (internet cafes, coffee shops, etc) are probably also treated a suspicious by default... an unfortunate side effect if nothing else.

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

#127

Post by jliptzin » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 8:17 PM UTC

This happened to me about 5 years ago on ebay when selling an iPhone. I was an eBay member since 1999, 100% positive feedback, occasional seller (about once a month). I sold a perfectly fine iPhone, buyer with no feedback history complains to eBay he never received the phone despite tracking showing it was delivered. He also leaves me negative feedback (in broken English). eBay sided with the buyer immediately and attempted to withdraw the money out of my paypal account which I'd fortunately already withdrawn. They demanded for over a year that I pay them the money they claim I owe them or they'd destroy my credit. Fuck eBay, fuck PayPal, terrible companies that should have gone out of business long ago.

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

#128

Post by tehrei » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 8:19 PM UTC

coderdude wrote: post #121

waterphone wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So for those of us who simply don't meet their definition for an identifiable individual (e.g. someone who borrows money and allows their borrowing history to be monitored by commercial and government entities), what, we're just shit out of luck? Credit history being a requirement for identity verification is becoming more and more pervasive, and I am increasingly locked out of participating in both private and gover…

Yes, you're shit out of luck. You can post paragraphs onto the Internet until you're blue in the face but this is their reality, not mine. Pro life tip: just get a credit card or two and nurture your credit score. Don't fuck over your utilities and make sure your payments are on time. Voila. You're a real boy. Not my rules or something I endorse but hey someone here had to say it.

And get fucked by credit card fees. AFAIK credit cards cost something like a few hundred dollars per year in just maintenance fees, so requiring one just to be a real person is a really shitty racket.

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

#129

Post by MawNicker » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 8:20 PM UTC

coderdude wrote: post #83

eric_h wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think I kind of get this. Sounds like Steam accounts. Cheaters galore with family accounts? Rust (game) nailed this by recently deciding to nuke the hen and its eggs.

How did they do that? Hopefully not something like Warden, Blizzard's cheat-detecting rootkit.

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

#130

Post by dionidium » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 8:20 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #63

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.

Craigslist

Yes, but Craigslist is a huge pain in the ass.

1. Craigslist is slow. On eBay, you're done in 7 days. It can be pretty hard to get full market value on Craigslist in anywhere near that amount of time, if at all, especially if you're in a smaller city.

2. People on Craigslist are flaky. I have no idea what compels someone to email a seller with interest, schedule a time to view an item, and then just not show up, but they do it all the time. Why even bother?

3. People on Craigslist are needy. On eBay, I list and then I sell. I am selling two items on Craigslist right now. You should see my phone's messaging app. It's full of the unknown numbers of un-serious buyers asking pointless questions they'll never follow up on.

4. People on Craigslist are, well, people. That means I have to meet them somewhere. Arranging that always ends up being more difficult than a trip to the post office.

I view the tradeoff like this:

eBay = simple, easy, fast, but with a nonzero likelihood of total loss

Craigslist = nearly guaranteed to be difficult, slow, and annoying, but with a very low chance of total loss

I don't think it's an easy decision. They are definitely not interchangeable.