Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hard disk fraud: long runtimes on new Seagate hard disks

heise.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 97 posts

Re: Hard disk fraud: long runtimes on new Seagate hard disks

#41

Post by gruez »

thayne wrote: post #27
cjbgkagh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This stuff is trivial to detect by the platform. At best the platform could say they don’t search for it, but the only reason not to would be because they don’t want to find it. In essence they’re knowingly outsourcing fraud to sellers.

All they would have to do to prevent it is make it so if you give a 1 star review, you can't change it to something else later.

What happens if a customer made a hasty negative review but the vendor reached out and genuinely resolved/fixed the issue?

Re: Hard disk fraud: long runtimes on new Seagate hard disks

#42

Post by gist »

curiousObject wrote: post #22

Frustratingly bad article about an interesting story. Has no one moved on the obvious step of checking the drives for deleted data to track down where they’ve come from?

Also what happens to a user whose hard drive is seized (and forensic tools are used) to find deleted files? Hard to believe (and why would they) take time to properly sanitize the drives.

Re: Hard disk fraud: long runtimes on new Seagate hard disks

#43

Post by gruez »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #14
daneel_w wrote: post #6

The same scheme is very common on the market for "new" laptop batteries sold by Chinese retailers on for example eBay. The batteries will come with a reprogrammed charge cycle count of 0, an unlikely serial number of all-zeroes/ones/nines or 123456789 etc., and with about 50% of its marketed capacity. As soon as you bring up a refund/warranty errand with the retailer they will offer a 50% discount for the battery in…

> As soon as you bring up a refund/warranty errand with the retailer they will offer a 50% discount for the battery in return for you not giving them a 1-star rating. So I take the 50% and give them a bad rating once the money is in my bank account, complete with the documentation of their bribe for a good review. What do they do, realistically? (Probably get the review taken down by the platform administrators, but…

It's unlikely, but theoretically such offers constitutes a non-disparagement/NDA contract, which means if you break the contract by leaving a 1 star review they can go after you in court and probably win.

Re: Hard disk fraud: long runtimes on new Seagate hard disks

#44

Post by daneel_w »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #14
daneel_w wrote: post #6

The same scheme is very common on the market for "new" laptop batteries sold by Chinese retailers on for example eBay. The batteries will come with a reprogrammed charge cycle count of 0, an unlikely serial number of all-zeroes/ones/nines or 123456789 etc., and with about 50% of its marketed capacity. As soon as you bring up a refund/warranty errand with the retailer they will offer a 50% discount for the battery in…

> As soon as you bring up a refund/warranty errand with the retailer they will offer a 50% discount for the battery in return for you not giving them a 1-star rating. So I take the 50% and give them a bad rating once the money is in my bank account, complete with the documentation of their bribe for a good review. What do they do, realistically? (Probably get the review taken down by the platform administrators, but…

Realistically they will do nothing, because only a fraction of the customers will put up a fight like this. The 99%, which make up the customers these organized fraudsters are banking on, won't bother because "it was still cheaper than buying it in the computer shop", and it's likely that most of them won't even notice in the first place.

Re: Hard disk fraud: long runtimes on new Seagate hard disks

#46

Post by daneel_w »

gruez wrote: post #43
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As soon as you bring up a refund/warranty errand with the retailer they will offer a 50% discount for the battery in return for you not giving them a 1-star rating. So I take the 50% and give them a bad rating once the money is in my bank account, complete with the documentation of their bribe for a good review. What do they do, realistically? (Probably get the review taken down by the platform administrators, but…

It's unlikely, but theoretically such offers constitutes a non-disparagement/NDA contract, which means if you break the contract by leaving a 1 star review they can go after you in court and probably win.

They are Chinese retailers, and these frauds are organized. They won't go after anyone in an overseas court - just as they don't worry one bit about an overseas court trying to reach them in China.

Re: Hard disk fraud: long runtimes on new Seagate hard disks

#47

Post by reaperducer »

rjmorris wrote: post #34
reaperducer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon and eBay are companies, which will do whatever is profitable and legal. The entity which should crack down on this is the government. Amazon and eBay should crack down on it so the government doesn't. History is full of examples of companies doing the right thing if only to prevent government regulation.

> History is full of examples of companies doing the right thing if only to prevent government regulation. Citing a couple would help your argument.

Citing a couple would help your argument.

I'm not making an argument. I'm stating a fact that is well-known if you follow business at all.

In the United States, it is common for:

   1. Politician to complain about situation.
   2. Congressional committee holds hearing about situation.
   3. Congressmen threaten to pass laws about situation.
   4. Industry involved in situation makes changes so that laws are unnecessary.
The airline industry is full of examples. This is basic knowledge. Google is your friend.

Re: Hard disk fraud: long runtimes on new Seagate hard disks

#48

Post by Spooky23 »

Ekaros wrote: post #35
teddyh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon and eBay should crack down on this crap. Amazon and eBay are companies, which will do whatever is profitable and legal. The entity which should crack down on this is the government.

Ebay to me is always bit of an uncontrolled market. But on other hand I fully expect Amazon and other such marketplaces to fully vet their suppliers. And if they are doing fulfilment take any legal hits from not doing reasonable due diligence with stolen or fraudulent merch.

I’d argue that it’s the opposite. eBay has a lot of individual grifts. They tend to be responsive to grifts that can be easily enforced and proven.

Amazon is next level — it has made a lot of money from being the world’s largest fence. Co-mingled inventory makes it trivial to launder stolen goods. They react to things very slowly, as they are at arms length and both make money having criminal FBA sellers operate and by weakening the competition. Walgreen’s pain is Amazon’s gain.

The brands slowed down for some things — you can’t sell Tide easily on Amazon now. But now Walmart is locking up men’s briefs because the gangs move to the next commodity.

Re: Hard disk fraud: long runtimes on new Seagate hard disks

#49

Post by waltercool »

teddyh wrote: post #16
bluedino wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon and eBay should crack down on this crap. I bought some tools on Amazon, sent them back because of quality issues, and left a 1 star review (they don't allow zero star reviews but that's another issue). Sure enough I get an email offering to send me a replacement, asking me to remove my review, I reported it and who knows what happens from there. Now, I have had very similar things happen on a website like Home…

> Amazon and eBay should crack down on this crap. Amazon and eBay are companies, which will do whatever is profitable and legal. The entity which should crack down on this is the government.

Nah, this is not government competence. They will make everything more expensive and we will pay those salaries.

Just put a bad score and ask for refund. Amazon does a good job here as you never interact with the seller

Re: Hard disk fraud: long runtimes on new Seagate hard disks

#50

Post by aaronax »

gruez wrote: post #41
thayne wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All they would have to do to prevent it is make it so if you give a 1 star review, you can't change it to something else later.

What happens if a customer made a hasty negative review but the vendor reached out and genuinely resolved/fixed the issue?

You know, 1 star reviews are ok. It's like people want to do anything to keep from a single undeserved 1 star review from happening. What if the same logic was applied to 5 star reviews?
Post reply on HN