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Amazon let a fraudster keep my Sony A74 IV and refunded him

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Re: Amazon let a fraudster keep my Sony A74 IV and refunded him

#91

Post by tus88 »

briandear wrote: post #72
tus88 wrote: post #35

There is no perfect system that protects buyers and sellers. Change the rules and buyers will be complaining. The reason it is skewed towards buyers is: 1) who in there right mind would buy something online where there is no protection (sellers aren't the same as they have to sell somewhere to make a living). 2) most buyers are honest who just want their item. Profiting from fraud as a buyer is a lot more work as the…

> The general view is sellers need to take fraud into their overall operating expense budget, just like department stored do with shoplifting. How’s that work when selling a single item?

Well it becomes very difficult. Allowing sellers to cancel purchases from buyers without a strong and long history of positive feedback is a start - I believe eBay technically allows this.

But naturally sellers are then cutting down their potential buyer pool - it's a dilemma they need to deal with.

Of course one easy way to do this is cut out the entire online buyer pool altogether and sell your camera at a pawn shop - near-zero chance of fraud there.

Why don't sellers just do this? Because they want more money than the pawn shop is willing to offer, so they take the risk of selling online.

It's always important to remember what we are actually buying and selling a lot of the time is risk - the value of the item is often just a fraction of the overall purchase amount.

Re: Amazon let a fraudster keep my Sony A74 IV and refunded him

#92

Post by bcrosby95 »

abbot2 wrote: post #17

I totally get the frustration and such, and not trying to protect Amazon, but: author's web site intercepting browser history to trigger "checkout this content before you leave" when back navigation is clicked is outright evil. Just don't do that, be kind to visitors. Edit: 1. Dictionary: evil, adj.: morally bad, cruel, or very unpleasant 2. To get the prompt you need to stay around on the page for a while, scroll ar…

I think your use of evil is about as evil as the pattern. Overblown rhetoric harms discourse.

Re: Amazon let a fraudster keep my Sony A74 IV and refunded him

#93

Post by zxcmx »

freepor wrote: post #46

Ultimately when you mail something there is no way to prove what you mailed. You can mail a brick and say it was a camera or you can mail a camera and the buyer can say it was a brick. There’s an opportunity here for companies with big real estate footprints like UPS store or Office Depot to offer verified shipping and/or receiving, where you hand them the items and they pack them up and ship them with a certificatio…

That would be great and raise the bar, but the same dispute issues would exist, just with authenticity of goods.

Scammy buyer would purchase say, 32GB sticks of RAM and ship back 1GB sticks with the stickers swapped.

Re: Amazon let a fraudster keep my Sony A74 IV and refunded him

#94

Post by kirykl »

briandear wrote: post #75
bagacrap wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... you're going to travel to another state for this purpose?

You would need to file in Federal court.

Claim must be over $75k for federal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_claims_court#United_Stat...

Re: Amazon let a fraudster keep my Sony A74 IV and refunded him

#95

Post by S_A_P »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #74
canada_dry wrote: post #56

This is such a basic issue that I don't understand why USPS or some other shipper w/ bricks-n-mortar haven't stepped up to offer some sort of package shipping certification. If I was the seller it could work as simply as me bringing the item to a shipper who would take their own photos and weigh the items being packaged up as well as some check that the item is as being described to the recipient. In turn the shipper…

You know, I'm surprised that those mailbox stores don't offer exactly this sort of service. Buyer and seller give a deposit to a postal store, the seller mails product to the store, the buyer inspects the product at the store and decides whether to keep it, and, if so, pays the balance to the store and walks out with the product, and presumably there could be a process for undoing it by returning the product to that…

Ive just started putting a mental business plan together on this. A few obstacles I see:

1) in the high end, is a UPS store or equivalent going to have a staff member on hand with enough expertise to vouch for a product? 2) condition is sometimes a bit subjective. One persons "Mint" is another persons "Very Good". When you have quality disputes, what are going to do? cancel the transaction? that is an expensive and painful process for all involved.

I think if you shoot for the least common denominator and can do the following there is some value to be added: a) is it not a brick (unless he is selling an actual brick :) ) b) is it the brand and model that the listing advertises c) if it is easy to do can you verify it is in working order when the item is packed and sent away.

I still see some wiggle room for problems, but I do think that being able to prove you shipped the item is important. Furthermore, if the seller sold an expensive item, didnt he insure it? If the item "didnt arrive" then we have a different problem. The seller keeps his money, and the buyer works with the insurer(who has a vested interest in not paying so will likely investigate a bit) to get made whole again.

Re: Amazon let a fraudster keep my Sony A74 IV and refunded him

#96

Post by akurilin »

Startup idea: create a high quality camera gear buying and selling experience for the web, with many protections and conveniences built in. Selling your gear on Craigslist and meeting with random strangers at McDonald's and Starbucks is pretty much the only real alternative right now and gets old pretty fast.

This was an issue for music gear too, but somehow reverb.com managed to address it and make it a pretty painless experience. Their customer service is excellent, and if one of the two parties are unsatisfied, they'll intervene and try to find a compromise. They send you boxes to ship your gear in, they set up shipping for you, they automatically track the shipment as it gets picked up etc. I've been hoping to find something similar for camera gear, but have had no luck so far.

The only downside is that the prosumer camera equipment world seems to be rapidly shrinking, so it might be not a great idea to step into this space right now. Whereas there doesn't seem to be a dearth of people buying guitars, drum kit pieces and effects pedals.

Re: Amazon let a fraudster keep my Sony A74 IV and refunded him

#97

Post by hrdwdmrbl »

Amazon is awful for sellers. Buyers can return items used, including underwear and single-use items as well. There are no question asked. A person could live their life buying toilet paper from Amazon, using it, and then literally returning it and Amazon would never stop this behavior. The same goes with clothing or anything else you can use within the return window provided by Amazon.

Re: Amazon let a fraudster keep my Sony A74 IV and refunded him

#98

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

freepor wrote: post #53
lucasmullens wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does emailing the CEO really work? If I contact regular Amazon support, I end up talking to a bot presumably since their employee time is so valuable. But I can just hit up Jeff like it's no big deal? Honestly asking, there might be some special team to go through the jeff@amazon.com emails.

There’s an entire team at Amazon to deal with jeff@amazon mails. It’s not emailing the CEO, it’s another customer support channel that may or may not solve your problem.

It's too bad ... I remember setting that email account up for him (he was uid = 3), and for a long time, it really did actually remain as his own personal email.

Re: Amazon let a fraudster keep my Sony A74 IV and refunded him

#99

Post by monomad1 »

node1 wrote: post #37

I have heard many stories online where customers bought new graphic cards/cpus/camera gear from 'Sold by Amazon.com' but instead receive used ones. Or receive different cheaper (older generation) products. It does not seem to be a good place to buy or sell expensive items.

I bought a lamp for a rear projection tv a couple years ago. It burned out after a month. Amazon let me return it, but charged a restocking fee. That would've been fine, but I haven't been able to review the product for over a year now.

Fuck amazon - newegg is cheaper anyway.

Re: Amazon let a fraudster keep my Sony A74 IV and refunded him

#100

Post by Paul-ish »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #74
canada_dry wrote: post #56

This is such a basic issue that I don't understand why USPS or some other shipper w/ bricks-n-mortar haven't stepped up to offer some sort of package shipping certification. If I was the seller it could work as simply as me bringing the item to a shipper who would take their own photos and weigh the items being packaged up as well as some check that the item is as being described to the recipient. In turn the shipper…

You know, I'm surprised that those mailbox stores don't offer exactly this sort of service. Buyer and seller give a deposit to a postal store, the seller mails product to the store, the buyer inspects the product at the store and decides whether to keep it, and, if so, pays the balance to the store and walks out with the product, and presumably there could be a process for undoing it by returning the product to that…

I would guess that in 99.9% of purchases even over $500, both sides of the transaction are happy. Requiring the buyer to go to the store adds a significant transaction cost to the buyer, and is likely unnecessary.
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