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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

#201

Post by hbosch »

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…

I've always wondered: how much overhead is introduced by eBay proxying package deliveries? Or does there exist a "delivery escrow" type service that can be trusted and audited somehow? If not, does this type of service have value?

One interesting niche that eBay is considered both great and terrible for is watch buying. There are often descriptions that note "the watch in the picture is the watch you receive!" -- which is hilarious -- and "no buyers with less than n feedback" etc. It's considered a minefield for myriad reasons, and it's kind of a necessary evil if you want affordable vintage pieces or the increasingly rare "barn find" type of watch. But there is not an insurer or delivery proxy that I know of. On Craigslist, a lot of this is mitigated via the local nature of it, e.g. I will only buy your watch if you meet me at a Rolex dealer and get it authenticated on the spot before hand off.

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

#202

Post by jdietrich »

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…

Unlike eBay, Craigslist transactions carry a nonzero risk of you getting shot.

http://www.wmcactionnews5.com/story/31621453/2-people-shot-d... http://www.cbs46.com/story/26038628/two-people-injured-in-kc...

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

#203

Post by unabst »

corin_ wrote: post #172
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…

I have no love for eBay or Paypal, but what should they do in these sorts of situation? If buyer claims they send the product and seller claims they didn't, is there any good way of handling the dispute that doesn't have the potential for screwing over whichever party is innocent? Of course, they could have decided in your favour based on better feedback history, but that would have solved the problem for you, not al…

At the bare minimum, they should help. They don't. They can't because they don't have the capacity to, but that is no excuse to profit over a platform they themselves have built that is being openly utilized by criminals to scam people, of which they are completely aware, and only doing the bare minimum to continue to stay in business.

As for what could solve the actual problem, there is one solution that always works, and that is insurance. Based on the claims, including false claims (it doesn't really matter), a company can calculate the loss probability, and sell protection. It would be a form of seller protection insurance that would save you from various situations as long as you follow the guidelines.

Of course, mail swap fraud is incredibly stupid because the perp is accepting the package to do their deed, leaving a decent trail of evidence. Mail theft is also stupid because there are harsh laws in place that would make it so not worth it compared to other forms of theft. So both are fairly rare. But they do happen because there are no shortage of idiots.

Since filing a false police report is in itself a crime, the honest innocent victims should all be filing more police reports, and PayPal and eBay should act based on these. So if someone returned a brick, you could file a report, have PayPal confirm it, and get your money back. Everyone should help you along this process, and it should be made simple and fairly easy. They don't, and it isn't.

And if you're a victim of a false police report, then you should be compensated even more for your troubles. If we have red light cameras that automatically send us fines, there is no reason we couldn't build a system for transaction fraud that would automate much of the violations involved in commerce. The credit card chargeback system is an example of one such system which are all maintained by corporations for their users. I'd opt for a public one for the people.

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

#204

Post by unabst »

codingdave wrote: post #65
codecamper wrote: post #28

Another thing that could be done... is that shippers could help out. UPS, Fedex, USPS could all offer last step photo verification of packages, as a service. A few more dollars and you get a photo of what is inside and the handler packs the box up.

That opens up opportunities for package handlers to start stealing stuff. For the most part, employees of UPS, Fedex, etc are not allowed to open packages (with international shipments being the exception, when they check for customs compliance). Your suggestion would be a massive policy change, possibly regulatory changes, and would open up more holes in the system.

Indeed. Not to mention that content swapping fraud is also incredibly rare.

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

#205

Post by neolefty »

tempestn wrote: post #196

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…

How about X-raying expensive items before shipping?

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

#206

Post by DrScump »

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…

Paypal/eBay give zero seller protection to anything not shipped with Delivery Confirmation (plus signature if > $250).

(Even with confirmation, they will still try to rip you off if the buyer balks. But you have zero chance without Delivery Confirmation.)

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

#207

Post by superuser2 »

jfoster wrote: post #193
mason240 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Small claims court seems nicely suited.

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

#208

Post by DrScump »

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 buyer's history was full of similar purchases.
The fraud problems exploded after eBay made it impossible to leave anything but positive feedback for buyers. You can't even leave neutral feedback for a buyer.

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

#209

Post by DrScump »

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.

FB? You mean, the place that puts counterfeiters as both ads and "Suggested Posts" in my feed daily?

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

#210

Post by chronic80 »

DugFin wrote: post #174
jpindar wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

YMMV with Nextdoor . THe only thing I can vouch for about my neighbors on Nextdoor is that they're all batshit insane racists.

It is not illegal to be racist.
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