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Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

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Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#21

Post by zaroth »

Operyl wrote: post #19
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8

This is so bizarrely stupid, but it does lead to some questions: 1. What did this man think was going to happen? That Amazon would never open the boxes he returned? Certainly after 370k worth I'm surprised he didn't get flagged much earlier. 2. What normally happens to Amazon returns? The article makes it sound like they are rarely opened. That seems bizarre to me. I would have thought they'd have a system for proces…

2. Amazon kind of sorts them onto pallets that they eventually auction off, blindly. A lot of sellers buy these, like prepackaged storage lockers. They then sort through the junk, see what they can make a buck on, and resell on eBay or elsewhere.

Wow. That is... almost incomprehensible, how bad reverse logistics are that it’s not even worth opening the packages.

But then, where do the Amazon Warehouse deals come from?

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#22

Post by OldHand2018 »

dawnerd wrote: post #10
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8

This is so bizarrely stupid, but it does lead to some questions: 1. What did this man think was going to happen? That Amazon would never open the boxes he returned? Certainly after 370k worth I'm surprised he didn't get flagged much earlier. 2. What normally happens to Amazon returns? The article makes it sound like they are rarely opened. That seems bizarre to me. I would have thought they'd have a system for proces…

Re amazon returns: either sent back to the third party seller or tossed into return pallets. If you watch some videos of them it becomes pretty clear amazon doesn’t check. A lot of electronics swapped out.

I've had multiple Amazon returns in which I dropped off the packages at a physical Amazon location, had them scanned, and received a paper receipt with the confirmation number. A few days later, look on your account and there has been no return. Try to look it up using the confirmation number and it doesn't exist. Open a customer support ticket, go back and forth a dozen times before they understand what you are trying to tell them, and all of the sudden the item is returned and you get your credit.

I think Amazon has a data loss problem in their returns processing, and this guy accidentally stumbled upon a way to trigger it repeatedly. And he only got caught when someone opened a box, got mad, and went out of their way to track down who mailed it to them.

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#23

Post by hoskdoug »

anoncow wrote: post #18
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #13

Things must have changed lately. I returned a set of DVDs and forgot to include the cover and got dinged for over half the cost of the item almost as soon as it was received by the warehouse. I guess I got lucky since they could have charged me for the whole price. But now a guy is sending dirt and he gets full credit. Wow!

Amazon, I believe, checks for the weight of the package to ascertain if the contents are what they were supposed to be.

Source

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#24

Post by zaroth »

anoncow wrote: post #18
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #13

Things must have changed lately. I returned a set of DVDs and forgot to include the cover and got dinged for over half the cost of the item almost as soon as it was received by the warehouse. I guess I got lucky since they could have charged me for the whole price. But now a guy is sending dirt and he gets full credit. Wow!

Amazon, I believe, checks for the weight of the package to ascertain if the contents are what they were supposed to be.

A missing DVD cover discovered by a weight discrepancy?

Who’s to say it was returned in the original envelope?

Perhaps more likely the extremely light items weight is hidden in the variance of the return packaging weight and so those packages have to be opened?

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#25

Post by Alex3917 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8

This is so bizarrely stupid, but it does lead to some questions: 1. What did this man think was going to happen? That Amazon would never open the boxes he returned? Certainly after 370k worth I'm surprised he didn't get flagged much earlier. 2. What normally happens to Amazon returns? The article makes it sound like they are rarely opened. That seems bizarre to me. I would have thought they'd have a system for proces…

> What did this man think was going to happen? That Amazon would never open the boxes he returned?

To be fair Amazon actually sells bags of dirt, so if there is just a bar code and a bag of dirt then the person opening the box might not think anything of it.

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#27

Post by reallydude »

algaeontoast wrote: post #2

Wow, this is brilliant.

Leveraging Amazon's disinterest in its own processes, to the MAXIMUM effect, surely is brilliant social engineering. It required knowing how return products are handled and treated, which is basically "they are weighed and forgotten in a lottery/auction". The exploitation of existing policies and practices was foiled by greed. Not enough to order products to keep, he had to try to make a business of it.

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#29

Post by wpietri »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8

This is so bizarrely stupid, but it does lead to some questions: 1. What did this man think was going to happen? That Amazon would never open the boxes he returned? Certainly after 370k worth I'm surprised he didn't get flagged much earlier. 2. What normally happens to Amazon returns? The article makes it sound like they are rarely opened. That seems bizarre to me. I would have thought they'd have a system for proces…

> What did this man think was going to happen?

I think you're giving him too much credit. People try things. They repeat the things that work. Most thinking happens when the behavior stops working.

That's why long/broken feedback loops in systems are so dangerous. E.g., a big reason the Challenger disaster happened is NASA ignoring warning signs because they had gotten away with it before. If a zillion NASA engineers didn't really think it through when lives were on the line, it's no surprise some 22-year-old rando just kept doing the thing that worked.

Another good point for comparison is Theranos. How many people with advanced degrees worked there without ever catching on to how screwed they were? Without ever really verifying that it was a successful business that actually produced value for its customers? And that's just the obvious fraud. I've seen many insider stories here about startups that were only slightly less dubious.

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#30

Post by Operyl »

zaroth wrote: post #21
Operyl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. Amazon kind of sorts them onto pallets that they eventually auction off, blindly. A lot of sellers buy these, like prepackaged storage lockers. They then sort through the junk, see what they can make a buck on, and resell on eBay or elsewhere.

Wow. That is... almost incomprehensible, how bad reverse logistics are that it’s not even worth opening the packages. But then, where do the Amazon Warehouse deals come from?

I imagine depending on the country, and the price of the items, they probably open a selection of these packages to check to see it they can sell open package. But with the volume they’re pushing, its really hard to check every tiny thing.
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