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I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon

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Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon

#101

Post by niftich »

mikeash wrote: post #26

I'm wondering more and more why Amazon hosts third-party sellers at all. They dilute the Amazon brand to a tremendous degree. It used to be that buying from Amazon meant a certain level of quality and service. Now there are really two Amazons: the old one, and a new one that's basically a shitty version of eBay. I have to go out of my way to avoid these crappy third-party sellers when I'm searching for stuff on Amazo…

Newegg went through the same bifurcation when it introduced third-party sellers in 2010. It turned a largely hassle-free shopping experience into one where extra care had to be taken to filter out results that weren't sold by Newegg itself.

I'd argue that Newegg was more hurt by this than Amazon, because customers were trusting Newegg to deliver a consistent experience at the expense of fewer categories of inventory, while Amazon's offerings were already diluted by a smattering of tiered experiences and bundling with tangentially-related services, of which the Prime/not Prime distinction became increasingly more intrusive.

Though many people use Amazon to find quirky, oddball, one-off products, it does tend to work best when used as an online-only warehouse club -- for repurchasing the same mainstream product over and over; with the added benefit that then you largely avoid having to wade through the filters of 'Sold by Amazon' and 'Eligible for Amazon Prime'. And since they pushed Prime on so many people, they can branch out into eBay's territory with little worries about the health of their customer-facing bottom line.

Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon

#102

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

bitexploder wrote: post #73
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #6

The only way I've got problems solved with Amazon is going to the police and let them sort it out. Worked every time. Amazon was in now way responsive or helpful before I've got the police involved.

Or small claims court. That will get their attention quickly. This is the perfect place for that, though I guess, since this is USPS/Mail fraud that works. Small claims court has appeal because they absolutely can't ignore you, whereas even with a police report they can. (edit: perfect place for police involvement, since an actual mail fraud type crime was comitted, but also a great place for small claims court. I am…

As someone who recently went through small-claims as a plaintiff, it is time-consuming and the process takes months to complete[0] - don't forget to be prepared to lose a half-day (or longer) to attend your hearing in court too, and you can't add "equivalent wages for time spent in court for this hearing" to your damages claim) - so for many people a claim valued under a $1000 or so simply isn't worth pursuing.

If I could reform small-claims actions, I'd make it permissible to submit evidence online/electronically with a deposition and let the judges/mediators review it in their own time, have them call us up by phone or send emails if they have any questions and only call us into a physical court-hearing if absolutely necessary.

[0]: At the start of this year I was victim to a breach of contract causing me a 5-figure loss. I filed my claim paperwork in April and got a response in June with my court hearing in August - then another week for a judgement - now I've got to wait 30 days before I can begin to attempt to collect on that judgement, which can take 180 days or more depending on how the defendant appeals or chooses to delay things. That's a possible ~540 days after the violation before we reach settlement. In the OP's case, is that really worth $1500? (Most states allow you to collect a nominal interest on a judgement too, California is 10% APR, for example - better than a savings account, worse than the S&P 500).

Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon

#103

Post by derekp7 »

mikeash wrote: post #4
davidu wrote: post #2

It seems like the Amazon reps weren't paying attention to the detail, or the seller was also supplying fraudulent evidence of delivery. This blog post will likely get it resolved for the buyer, though it shouldn't have to be this way.

Wouldn't surprise me. Superficial reading is an ongoing danger of text-based support. The other day, my wife used Amazon's chat support to ask a question about what would happen if she canceled her free Prime trial. The rep said: give me two minutes to look into this. And then came back with: I've canceled your Prime as you requested, thanks, gtfo. She managed to unwind this after a great deal of effort, but man.

Reminds me of when I called my cell phone carrier, to have an unused line dropped from my account. Had to give them my phone number, and the number for the line to remove. "Ok, hold on one second..." [click]. Phone didn't work any more -- they removed the wrong line. Had to go to a land line, and hang on hold for 30 minutes to get someone to start restoring my account (and to make sure I didn't lose my grandfathered data plan).

Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon

#104

Post by [deleted] »

snarf21 wrote: post #56
mikeash wrote: post #26

I'm wondering more and more why Amazon hosts third-party sellers at all. They dilute the Amazon brand to a tremendous degree. It used to be that buying from Amazon meant a certain level of quality and service. Now there are really two Amazons: the old one, and a new one that's basically a shitty version of eBay. I have to go out of my way to avoid these crappy third-party sellers when I'm searching for stuff on Amazo…

I think it is mostly about maximizing scale (and lower costs) for the shipping and logistics business. It also used to be that buying from Amazon as the seller was safe but that has gone by the wayside as they decided it was worth the risk to not have to manage separately. I think they will soon have to roll that decision back. At least then their brand stays strong and the get economies of scale for logistics for th…

[deleted]

Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon

#105

Post by gehwartzen »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #42
eutropia wrote: post #13

Maybe this sort of fraud becomes impossible if we had cryptographic ledger based delivery confirmation systems (keyed to sender, recipient, delivery address). Edit: Because apparently technological solutions aren't to be discussed if they involve recent, trendy tech?

It doesn't need that at all - just upgrade the USPS (and UPS and FedEx) "signed for" systems to also include a photograph of the recipient for high-value items, and the lat/long coordinates of the hand-off - that would immediately show when items were mis-delivered and as a bonus, get a photo for possible police investigations. Or better yet: make it possible for those "shipping status" pages to show the full recipie…

Sometimes if I get a high value package from an unverified source I ask for signature confirmation, wait for the first attempted delivery and pick it up at the PO. I then record myself asking for the package and opening it in front of the postal official.

It's a pain and takes a bit longer but should something happen at least there is a bit of additional evidence.

But it's really just a crude workaround for an inherently trust based system. All that is ever tracked is the package which either the sender or receiver can easily manipulate.

Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon

#106

Post by eutropia »

liveoneggs wrote: post #60
eutropia wrote: post #13

Maybe this sort of fraud becomes impossible if we had cryptographic ledger based delivery confirmation systems (keyed to sender, recipient, delivery address). Edit: Because apparently technological solutions aren't to be discussed if they involve recent, trendy tech?

How does the payment type change anything?

What? Who said anything about buying with bitcoins? I mean recording the package tracking event history in a public ledger with the relevant actors signing events using their keys and hashes of 'trusted' info, and comparing that info with the info on the seller's account and buyer's account. Pay with PayPal like a normal person, just make the tracking events hold the shipper, buyer, seller, etc accountable to the information they provided.

Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon

#107

Post by dawnerd »

ajross wrote: post #9
davidu wrote: post #2

It seems like the Amazon reps weren't paying attention to the detail, or the seller was also supplying fraudulent evidence of delivery. This blog post will likely get it resolved for the buyer, though it shouldn't have to be this way.

I'm more sympathetic to Amazon here than most. Scams are hard to detect. They set up a shipping confirmation process that's worked fine for them for almost two decades now. It has a hole (it only checks the town and has no closed loop to verify that the shipper shipped to the right address in that town), but none of the existing employees actually know that it has a hole. They get a report about a missing shipment, c…

Wonder if they could prevent this by requiring third party sellers to print amazon shipping labels. That should give amazon the correcting tracking information and ups/usps/fedex/whoever would have the accurate address.

Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon

#108

Post by grasshopperpurp »

ajross wrote: post #44
mikeash wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author appealed, stating that the delivery address was incorrect. Amazon's rejected the appeal on the basis that the tracking information "shows that someone at your address signed for the package." That's not a mysterious hole that low-level employees are unaware of, that's just inattention on the part of whoever was handling the appeal.

The point was more that "mysterious hole" and "innatention" are mostly the same thing. My words were "scams are hard to detect" and I stand by them. The people you want to be more attentive make hourly wages and probably see thousands of these appeals every week, statistically none of which are creative scams worthy of arguing about on HN. You're asking too much. Those employees don't exist. You have to get over thei…

It's not the customer's fault that Amazon pays its employees poor wages and asks too much of them. It's Amazon's job to put its employees in positions to do their jobs well.

Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon

#109

Post by koala_man »

mikeash wrote: post #51
falcolas wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm wondering more and more why Amazon hosts third-party sellers at all. It's pretty much pure profit from Amazon's point of view. They got their cut of that $1500, and no matter how much furor comes out of this (and similar) articles, Amazon's overall brand won't be adversely affected. After all, look at the comments here. Everyone is primarily blaming the seller, not Amazon. Amazon comes across as a secondary par…

Amazon is getting hit with a chargeback on this one, and I see a lot of comments critical of Amazon on here. And this is a tech-savvy crowd. Most Amazon customers probably don't pay enough attention to Amazon to understand the difference between "Sold by Amazon" and "Fulfilled by Amazon" and straight third-party sellers. When it goes wrong, people will blame the one entity they actually interacted with: Amazon.

I order from Amazon exactly because I don't have to deal with this bullshit.

If I was willing to carefully scrutinize sellers, comb through intentionally misleading ads, build a working knowledge of common scams, and keep all records for the occasional resolution process, I would use eBay or Craigslist.

I would much rather switch to ordering from Best Buy and Target than adapt to this kind of adversarial buyer beware model.

Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon

#110

Post by eutropia »

Blackthorn wrote: post #57
eutropia wrote: post #13

Maybe this sort of fraud becomes impossible if we had cryptographic ledger based delivery confirmation systems (keyed to sender, recipient, delivery address). Edit: Because apparently technological solutions aren't to be discussed if they involve recent, trendy tech?

This whole blog post is about wanting someone to take notice and step aside from an automated process that had failed, and you are suggesting replacing it with an even further immutable automated process?

A fair point, I prefer well trained humans to inaccessible algorithms, but in this case the idea is that the automation includes certain guarantees of data accuracy.

Besides it looks like there were some humans here behaving like automatons anyways, and poorly.

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