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

#161

Post by iamdave » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 9:34 PM UTC

incongruity wrote: post #152

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…

This is an opportunity for Amazon, IMHO. This sort of thing is what insurance is for - it's all about risk pooling so you can survive the big loss even if you're a small-scale seller. Amazon could easily add an insurance policy option for sellers with a few minimal requirements for documenting the sale/shipping - Amazon collects a small fee, encourages better habits among small sellers and it all works.

I've never sold on Amazon, so pardon the ignorance: does Amazon have some sort of 'escrow' service to hedge this risk for parties making transactions?

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

#162

Post by incongruity » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 9:35 PM UTC

username3 wrote: post #108

Trusted buyers. Amazon can have options for sellers to only sell to buyers that have bought from Amazon X amount of times or X years.

Or maybe - Prime members?

It's less likely a scammer will pay for prime - it certainly reduces the profit margins for them.

IMHO Amazon could use this to their advantage - reduce fraud risk for sellers when selling to Prime members and encourage a 2% discount for them or something similar...

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

#163

Post by cloudsloth » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 9:39 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #147

This doesn't make much sense: why would supposedly fraudulent buyers bother with leaving a (public) review with photos of the clay?? This is not only a waste of time and energy but could potentially be harmful to them since it's usually possible to extract clues from a photograph. Isn't it possible that the story is rather this: - bad buyer 1 buys a phone, takes the phone out of the case, replaces it with clay, re-se…

Edit: sorry for re-stating some of your points. I'm sort of delirious with a head cold right now.

What's pretty interesting is that it could be both.

Sellers get's a return. Upon receiving returned item they check that packaging is still sealed and when it is, they send it back to amazon's fulfillment center to be sold again.

Amazon receives the item. Amazon's system (obviously) doesn't open boxes. They at the very most check the barcode, visually inspect for sealed box, and check weight.

Now the items are co-mingled with other new items

Now a buyer can receive a box of clay when they buy from an entirely different seller.

Co-mingled items allow for a ton of fraud. They also save Amazon a lot of money on logistics. They make prime shipping possible. For Amazon, the acceptable rate of fraud is very high because everyone wants to be on their marketplace (huge sales volume) and the system they use allows them to offer such value at such a low cost.

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

#164

Post by mason240 » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 9:44 PM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #130

wvenable wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What's interesting is that it is the opposite for buyers. So much easier to buy of CL than eBay.

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

#165

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 9:49 PM UTC

You'd think with all the datamining Amazon does, this would be a worthwhile problem to solve with it. After all, it is good for Amazon if people can trust their transactions there.

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

#166

Post by Angostura » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 9:50 PM UTC

striking wrote: post #75

anon1234321 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

> Why are songs on the radio played for free?

Because conventional radio airplay acted as advertising. Wanted to listen to the song when you wanted to? You had two choices - sit by the radio with a cassette recorder, fingers posed over play and record, or buy the record.

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

#167

Post by Angostura » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 9:51 PM UTC

effingwewt wrote: post #133

anon1234321 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 copyri…

It's incredibly obvious you have a dog in this fight and are incredibly biased. It's well known almost every recording artist gets screwed, and that it's easier to fight fans than their bosses. Take what you've written about startup youtube, and applied it to TODAY'S youtube, but flipped it to be 100000% anti-consumer, you'd be on the right track. Thanks to your record companies, I can no longer broadcast my gameplay…

> It's incredibly obvious you have a dog in this fight and are incredibly biased.

Because you disagree with him, apparently.

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

#168

Post by anon1234321 » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 9:51 PM UTC

effingwewt wrote: post #138

anon1234321 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol what? Did you not read the next paragraph of my comment?

To be fair, based on the first paragraph you wrote, especially from a just-made throwaway, it's probably kind of hard to choke down just to get to the next par. I wrote a reply, most won't bother as it's another beaten horse.

Yes, anything that challenges Google's "Don't Be Evil" propaganda is hard for some to swallow. Thankfully, at least some of us don't fall for that kind of bullshit.

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

#169

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 9:55 PM UTC

anon1234321 wrote: post #101

pyre wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 copyri…

> What you think of the terms between artists and labels is not really relevant to the matter at hand.

The grandparent wasn't opinion, it was correction of an inaccurate statement of fact in the great-grandparent, to wit, the false claim that record companies pay artists salaries, such that you could "steal from record companies" by piracy and hurt their income (and jeopardize the artists "employment" and "salary") separately from directly hurting artists income. Artists aren't salaried employees, they are contractors who receive sales royalties from record companies. Therefore, the scenario presented in the great grandparent is contrary to fact.

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

#170

Post by joemi » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 10:29 PM UTC

coryfklein wrote: post #30

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…

> 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 upstream is actually shipping them clay or similar and plans to disappear when discovered. I hadn't considered this possibility, but it is definitely possible as well. I see it as less likely, because the Amazon Seller that is the responsible p…

How exactly are the profiles of the buyers posting the reviews raising suspicions?

You realize that the "buyer profiles" you're mentioning are actually "reviewer profiles" that only list what other reviews that buyer has posted. It does not tell you a buyer's history (unless they post a review for an item), nor does it tell you when they signed up. It's not uncommon for people who have been using Amazon for years to never post any reviews, at least not until they're disappointed by their purchase.

And I'm not so sure that pointing to a review they posted strengthens an A-z Claim, at all. If images played a role, they'd let buyers upload an image when filing a claim, but they don't let that happen. They just let you fill in info about the shipment and then give you 2000 characters to explain the claim.

That said, Amazon definitely sides with the buyer most of the time. Filing a claim makes it so that the seller is automatically guilty unless they can prove otherwise. Auxiliary proof of wrong-doing is not necessary at all, especially since, as you mentioned, most sellers do not have proof that they _didn't_ ship the clay.