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Amazon orders subject to replacement fraud (still)

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Re: Amazon orders subject to replacement fraud (still)

#31

Post by georgemcbay »

jamespo wrote: post #15
sdrinf wrote: post #14

Here's a working hypothesis: | Why is Amazon's security for replacement orders so lax? Amazon values customer satisfiction above their fraud write-off. | Why would they send a replacement to an address that has never been associated with me, and is in a wholly different state than the one the original item was sent to? Because the time between ordering an item, and defect can be sufficiently large to cover moves: peo…

Certainly a confirmation email should be sent when the address is new

Yeah this is what kills me; if I send something legitimately to an address it hasn't seen for me before it requires me to re-enter my full credit card number and other information to prove I am me; I don't understand why they don't do the same for replacement orders. It doesn't seem like that hard of a problem to solve when not solving it means they are out $1000 worth of product from my account alone times however many people this has happened to.

Re: Amazon orders subject to replacement fraud (still)

#32

Post by georgemcbay »

disillusioned wrote: post #11

George, do you have any domains with your whois/registrar information matching your Amazon account information? I guessed that was the vector they used to attack me. I had several domains with my home address as my address, along with my email and name. Voila. The entire triangle of data the CSRs need. I was able to get a CSR to show me some of the logs of the chats with the scammer, which was particularly enlighteni…

I do, yes. The domain this linked post is on is registered to my current mailing address which is the same as the one I have on my Amazon file as my shipping and my billing address.

I've changed my Amazon email address as you suggested in your helpful email and hopefully that will be enough since I don't think it would be practical to try to put my mailing address back in the bottle at this point.

Re: Amazon orders subject to replacement fraud (still)

#33

Post by georgemcbay »

brador wrote: post #13

Just a note that Amazon have been known to ban accounts if you action too many returns. The bans are very rare, but they are for life and across all Amazon properties. Hit up Google for more.

This is my primary lingering worry about the whole situation, that it may impact my ability to get replacement items sent out if I actually need them in the future.

Hopefully they take your Amazon history into account when figuring this sort of thing out because I've been a customer for a very long time and have spent an amount of money that would likely seem obscene (if I totalled it up) over the years.

Re: Amazon orders subject to replacement fraud (still)

#34

Post by georgemcbay »

ars wrote: post #4

If you happen to notice this before the item is delivered you can call UPS and have the package returned to sender. If you really want you can have someone stake out the home and see who comes, but that's really something for Amazon + the Police to do.

Yeah, I read about that on Chris' blog (the one linked in my post here). Unfortunately I didn't notice until both items were delivered (at least to the the Portland, Oregon destination) so there was no chance for me to undo the damage.

I'm not really interested in staking out the address these items to sent to, as mentioned I think it is just some sort of remailer service anyway so it wouldn't be useful unless the police could get a warrant to figure out where the redirected packages went to. I don't really care that much because Amazon is the one who lost out here financially, not me; but I still do feel a tiny bit violated that my account was used for this.

Re: Amazon orders subject to replacement fraud (still)

#35

Post by georgemcbay »

jrockway wrote: post #12

Could this just be a database querying problem, and maybe no items were actually shipped as a result?

Nope, that's what I thought it might be at first (though I think that would freak me out even more) but based on everything I heard from the Amazon CSRs this was someone replacing an item I had legitimately ordered (and received just fine more than a month ago), but social engineering the CSRs to send the replacement item to some random other address.

Re: Amazon orders subject to replacement fraud (still)

#36

Post by georgemcbay »

sdrinf wrote: post #14

Here's a working hypothesis: | Why is Amazon's security for replacement orders so lax? Amazon values customer satisfiction above their fraud write-off. | Why would they send a replacement to an address that has never been associated with me, and is in a wholly different state than the one the original item was sent to? Because the time between ordering an item, and defect can be sufficiently large to cover moves: peo…

> Amazon values customer satisfiction above their fraud write-off

I do get this, and as an Amazon customer, I'm glad this is their stance overall, but on the other hand it seems like they could handle this situation more securely than they do. It seems to me that you could have some sane middle ground where you do no-questions asked replacements, but with some caveats like no ability to change the address the item is being sent to from the original order unless the person you are communicating with can prove they are the account owner.

Maybe have a sort of two-factor system where the CSR can mark the order as "replacement approved" but you have to login to your Amazon account and take some action (just click a confirm button or whatever) to actually send the order out. At least in that case you wouldn't get cases like mine where someone managed to pull a replacement order without (seemingly) ever having actually had access to my Amazon account.

Re: Amazon orders subject to replacement fraud (still)

#37

Post by darrenmc »

enscr wrote: post #17

> Amazon is out quite a bit of product and a lot of trust from me. The product is still a drop in the bucket for Amazon. Hopefully some of you actions will trigger their fraud protection dept. to blacklist the address or maybe they think it's not worthwhile blacklisting a whole address with multiple suites for a tiny amount. Anyway, I don't think it's reason enough to lose trust in Amazon. As long as they got the hon…

Amazon might not even loose money from this at all. It is common for retailers to charge these costs back to the supplier.

Re: Amazon orders subject to replacement fraud (still)

#38

Post by bkeroack »

georgemcbay wrote: post #32
disillusioned wrote: post #11

George, do you have any domains with your whois/registrar information matching your Amazon account information? I guessed that was the vector they used to attack me. I had several domains with my home address as my address, along with my email and name. Voila. The entire triangle of data the CSRs need. I was able to get a CSR to show me some of the logs of the chats with the scammer, which was particularly enlighteni…

I do, yes. The domain this linked post is on is registered to my current mailing address which is the same as the one I have on my Amazon file as my shipping and my billing address. I've changed my Amazon email address as you suggested in your helpful email and hopefully that will be enough since I don't think it would be practical to try to put my mailing address back in the bottle at this point.

Change your registered domain address! There's basically no upside to having your "real" address listed.

Re: Amazon orders subject to replacement fraud (still)

#40

Post by jrochkind1 »

rtpg wrote: post #23

The way this is played up makes it sound like a security issue, but it's a social issue above all else. A story I've been meaning to write for a while, but aligns well with this: I bought a kindle a while back, with the (kinda expensive) case because I knew I would break the screen if I didn't. I broke the screen anyways (some badly aligned books in my bag I think). I sent a kinda annoyed email at amazon about how th…

Oddly, someone else in this comments section mentions an, according to them well-known, issue with this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7882436
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