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

petapixel.com

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

#231
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a lawyer, default judgment for sure, but no one is sending out bounty hunters for small claims court. In fact, the courts tend to not get involved at all. You, the plaintiff, would be given the means to prove the judgment has been entered, but then it's kind of up to you to have it enforced. Luckily, you can generally count on the assistance of a Sheriff's office, but often the approach is some sort of wage garnis…

Is $2900 even eligible for small claims? Seems like marginally yes, depending on the state. Looks like the photographer is based out of CA and their limit is $7500. FL is $5000. WA is $10,000. Go figure. > Collecting on these sort of judgments can be difficult, time consuming, and frustrating. Definitely, and it's quite possible at the end of the day the fraudster doesn't have significant assets to recover. Still, mi…

Yeah, you can small claims any amount... but people usually won't file below cost of filing (around $80 in FL)

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

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story is a bit more complicated (but not by much), however, there is absolutely nothing I can do here. What am I gonna do, show up to some address in South Atlanta demanding whoever lives there to stop using my eBay account without authorization? And that's with the strong assumption that the person whose name and address was used is the same person who actually accessed my account (for all I know, the person liv…

Also as you alluded to, it doesn't sound like someone worth confronting at his house lol.

Friends don't let friends confront fraudsters with poor trigger discipline.

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

#234
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they have a "violate policy and eventually lose dispute" button then?

Frankly, because the team that sets policy is different from the team that makes the buttons. The policy has lots of exceptions - e.g. some categories can't be returned, like groceries. To disable that button, they'd have to check for all the exceptions and constantly update it whenever a policy changed. They did change to automatically approving returns a few years ago, but with an opt-out ability. My guess is eithe…

The teams need to collaborate more then. This still seems like a design failure

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

#235

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…

At least for camera equipment, this does exist. You can take your camera to B&H's used department, and they will buy it from you. You can also go to B&H's used department and buy a used camera from them. The advantage of this over Amazon is that as a seller, you know B&H isn't going to screw you over in any way, and if they do, you know where to serve your lawsuit. A trusted business with a physical location is the c…

> but never sold anything because the amount of money they offer wasn't worth it to me.

Ok, so this is a serious problem, wont you agree? But is it an unavoidable one? Would it be possible to get something in-between, where it's both a good deal and adds a lot of trust? I suspect the physical presence part is a big driver of cost. Both because of rent, but also wages. And because the camera is not displayed to the whole country, worse matching of buyer and seller.

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

#236

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…

At least for camera equipment, this does exist. You can take your camera to B&H's used department, and they will buy it from you. You can also go to B&H's used department and buy a used camera from them. The advantage of this over Amazon is that as a seller, you know B&H isn't going to screw you over in any way, and if they do, you know where to serve your lawsuit. A trusted business with a physical location is the c…

Sure, but B&H is probably going to take a good 30% premium in that transaction, if not more. Which is certainly better than losing a camera and getting 0% back...

Over 1000 transactions, you’d do better selling on Amazon. On one transaction, your statistical outcome is still the same, but you run the risk of hitting that one bad outcome.

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

#237

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…

Isn't this how mortgage escrow essentially works?

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

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds reasonable and it could be fairly automated too. You can already take amazon returns to UPS stores, Whole Foods or Kohls and they will box it for you. All they need is a camera system to video the boxing and then associate the shipping label/tracking number with that video. The boxing video could be made available on the courier's site for any interested party to see (when enabled by the shipper). Sure, it may…

Now employees of these stores have to consent to being recorded on video and their videos shared with strangers?

I had envisioned a close up overhead rig where it would mostly be their forearms/hands that are recorded as the primary subject of the recording would be the box.

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

#240
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a lawyer, default judgment for sure, but no one is sending out bounty hunters for small claims court. In fact, the courts tend to not get involved at all. You, the plaintiff, would be given the means to prove the judgment has been entered, but then it's kind of up to you to have it enforced. Luckily, you can generally count on the assistance of a Sheriff's office, but often the approach is some sort of wage garnis…

Is $2900 even eligible for small claims? Seems like marginally yes, depending on the state. Looks like the photographer is based out of CA and their limit is $7500. FL is $5000. WA is $10,000. Go figure. > Collecting on these sort of judgments can be difficult, time consuming, and frustrating. Definitely, and it's quite possible at the end of the day the fraudster doesn't have significant assets to recover. Still, mi…

> it's quite possible at the end of the day the fraudster doesn't have significant assets to recover.

It's possible they still have the camera, if they weren't just scoring goods for resale.

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