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

#191

Post by kalleboo » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 1:07 AM UTC

coredog64 wrote: post #134

AJ007 wrote: post #27

Interesting conclusion to the article. I stopped buying Apple items off Amazon a really long time ago because they let counterfeit chargers list as real Apple products and did jack shit about it. To some extent this has begun flowing in to other product categories for me as well. "Meanwhile, the product page is flooded with fraudelent (sp) reviews, poisoning the well and moving future customers away from Amazon and t…

Why not pick an item that is both sold and fulfilled by Amazon?

Everything that's fulfilled by Amazon gets mixed in the same warehouse. So if a third party seller that uses Amazon fulfilment sends them counterfeit goods, people buying "sold by Amazon" might get them. http://www.wsj.com/articles/on-amazon-pooled-merchandise-ope...

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

#192

Post by morganvachon » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 1:15 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #90

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.

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…

Selling on eBay only makes sense in bulk, with hundreds or thousands of SKUs. I gave up selling in low volume there long ago; nowadays for phones, tablets, and watches I use Swappa, and for anything else it's Craigslist or local "online garage sale" groups on social media.

The company I left last year sells the bulk of their products on Amazon, and maybe 1/4th of their inventory (same type of products) is listed on eBay. Amazon sales are relatively smooth with much less friction per sale than eBay. It's gotten better since they went with a sales aggregator service, but they still barely break even on eBay as opposed to Amazon and physical storefront sales, when they figure in labor and time costs. When I worked there the sales personnel were able to list five or six items on Amazon in the time it took to list one item on eBay.

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

#193

Post by jfoster » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 1:18 AM UTC

mason240 wrote: post #164

dionidium wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you do if you discover something wrong with the item post-transaction?

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

#194

Post by kalleboo » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 1:20 AM UTC

rietta wrote: post #122

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.

After getting tired of dealing with rude hagglers on the local Craigslist-a-like, I just end up giving away used stuff now. Either hand-me-downs to family and friends or to goodwill.

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

#195

Post by morganvachon » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 1:27 AM UTC

linker3000 wrote: post #142

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.

I once sold some parts on eBay from a washing machine I broke up, including the busted motor controller board - this particular model of board was not very sophisticated, but it was difficult to source and very expensive, so I sold it 'for spares or repair', stating that the main triac had blown and taken a track with it, so the board would either need some competent rework, or be stripped for what was still working.…

> I sold it 'for spares or repair'...complained that I had sold a faulty part..and ebay agreed so I had to refund him

Unfortunately even though eBay violated their own written policy by siding with him, this is SOP for them. They have a decades-long unwritten policy of shitting all over their sellers. This became apparent when they removed sellers' ability to leave negative or neutral feedback for buyers, which led to a huge influx of scammy buyers. eBay didn't care because more buyers means more revenue, and the sellers who had built their entire business on eBay had little choice but to stick around for the shafting.

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

#196

Post by tempestn » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 1:36 AM UTC

I doubt it would ever work in practice, but in theory this kind of thing could be solved by having both parties deposit an additional say 20% of purchase price to an escrow account. So buyer deposits 120% and seller deposits 20%. Once buyer confirms receipt, 120% is sent to seller and 20% back to buyer.

If there is a problem, buyer can send the item back to the seller, and once seller confirms (re-)receipt, they each get back their original contributions. However, if buyer claims the item wasn't received and seller claims to have sent it, the money remains in escrow. So the side that's lying doesn't benefit. They actually lose 20%. And therefore there's no rational reason to attempt this scam.

However, in the real world there are several problems. The person being "scammed" would be out 120% of the value (whether they're the buyer or the seller), which wouldn't fly with most people, even if the scam is theoretically unlikely. It would also require significantly greater trust of Amazon. Something like this might work with hyper-rational actors using something like a bitcoin multi-sig address, but not for Amazon.

Which means I'm back to not seeing any perfect solution to this kind of problem.

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

#197

Post by cglace » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 1:36 AM 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…

> 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?

I was moving and had to sell a lot of stuff fast. I scheduled around 6 people to come look at a futon. 0 showed. Even after I offered to give it away for free. Huge waste of time.

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

#198

Post by massysett » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 1:37 AM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #181

jliptzin wrote: post #127

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 at…

It happens as a buyer, I buy expensive antique glass and have more than once had to fight with ebay to have the purchase refunded because it was not as advertised, or worse having a seller ship a piece that was previously broken and then turn around and try to claim it was the post office and defraud them. so I understand paypal's and ebay's stance 1. They are up against CC companies who will side with their customer…

Which is exactly why I don't sell on ebay. Scammers and non-paying bidders, and ebay does nothing about it.

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

#199

Post by aaron695 » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 1:46 AM UTC

kingnothing wrote: post #155

jliptzin wrote: post #127

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 at…

When World of Warcraft was released, I had the same thing happen to me. It was a hot item and my local retailer happened to have it on the shelves, so I bought 10 extra copies and sold the CD keys on ebay for about 3x retail pricing. Almost half of the keys I sold were allegedly bought from Paypal customers who "had their accounts hacked", so ebay withdrew the money from my account and refunded it to the buyers leavi…

This is very common for digital items.

Because you need no postal address.

It's a easy way to turn stolen credit cards to money (or stolen Paypal accounts)

Someone tried the same arbitraging bitcoins on ebay and got burned.

Not totally sure this is eBays fault. I'd guess the actually were bought with stolen assets.

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

#200

Post by ghaff » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 1:48 AM UTC

xanderstrike wrote: post #186

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…

I've found ebay is a great place to sell smaller, cheaper things that I probably couldn't find a buyer for on craigslist. Stuff of lower value ( As things get more expensive on eBay, you become a bigger target for scammers and stand to lose much more, so it becomes a terrible option both because of how many scammers there are and their policy of screwing over sellers. Also the more expensive it is the more likely I'l…

On the other hand for the odd item at less than $50 or so, I can't be bothered spending the time and effort to list on eBay. I'll just take it down to Goodwill or whatever. Not worth my time.