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

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

petapixel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 447 posts

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

#151

Post by mark-r »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #90
vgprice wrote: post #36

I don't even buy anything that is not sold via Prime. I assume anything non-prime is of the lowest possible quality or a scam. For some reason I feel comfortable with prime thinking that the items have had some sort of quality approval. (at least getting my item as described and expected.)

I've had pretty good results buying inexpensive old CD releases from non-prime third party sellers on Amazon. No scams (so far - knock on wood), items were as described.

The key word here is "inexpensive". You're not going to get cheated for a few bucks, the risk/profit ratio just isn't worth it.

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

#152

Post by ransom1538 »

Why do people do mail fraud?

While mail fraud crimes often involve the use of the United States Postal Service, or USPS, you can also commit the crime when you use any interstate carrier, such as FedEx, UPS, or other delivery services. Mail fraud is super easy to prove [prints on box, cameras at fedex offices, credit cards used for materials, amazon accounts, logged ips, bank accounts involved, federal authority] and carries ridiculous sentencing: 20 years. THIS is a bad plan for $1500. Most likely this person DID THIS MORE THAN ONCE so they could face like 10 counts - it is 20 years per count. Not to mention people doing the investigation are federal officers - they are on point. With 2nd murder you at least get parole and probably wont do 20 years or charged with multiple counts. mail fraud = bad times.

http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/crime-penalties/federal...

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

#153

Post by giarc »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #134
lazyant wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how many items he had to sell before "The seller had one good review but didn’t appear to be selling anything else." so it looks like maybe just one item

Probably has many alts.

You would need a credit card for each. Maybe they purchased fraudulent cards or this is the first of many scams on that account.

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

#154

Post by mikeash »

julienb_sea wrote: post #130
mikeash wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that "Amazon has EVERYTHING" only works if you can actually count on the purchase to work. Once it becomes apparent that third-party sellers are crap and those items don't count, you're back to "Amazon has certain things." And I'm not merely careful to filter stuff. Amazon is no longer my go-to in general. I do buy stuff from them sometimes, but they're not the first place I check for most things. A less s…

I just don't see how Amazon isn't the go to. Anything handled directly by Amazon generally has the most competitive pricing, near guarantee of two day delivery or faster, and far larger selection than any other individual store. I cannot think of any general purpose store off the top of my head I would prioritize over Amazon. To be clear, there are some specific purchases I would not make over Amazon. Amazon's clothi…

Amazon frequently has prices much higher than other places. It depends on the product, of course, but it's definitely not a situation where I can just buy from Amazon and be confident I got a good deal.

There isn't any general-purpose store I prioritize over Amazon, but usually I know which stores sell the things I want. For example, Home Depot often has better deals with less search hassle than Amazon for hardware stuff.

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

#155

Post by loeg »

julienb_sea wrote: post #130
mikeash wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that "Amazon has EVERYTHING" only works if you can actually count on the purchase to work. Once it becomes apparent that third-party sellers are crap and those items don't count, you're back to "Amazon has certain things." And I'm not merely careful to filter stuff. Amazon is no longer my go-to in general. I do buy stuff from them sometimes, but they're not the first place I check for most things. A less s…

I just don't see how Amazon isn't the go to. Anything handled directly by Amazon generally has the most competitive pricing, near guarantee of two day delivery or faster, and far larger selection than any other individual store. I cannot think of any general purpose store off the top of my head I would prioritize over Amazon. To be clear, there are some specific purchases I would not make over Amazon. Amazon's clothi…

Amazon doesn't have close to competitive pricing, even before you factor in cost of Prime and/or slow shipping times from random 3rd party vendors and/or free shipping minimums.

My go-to is now froogle.com (Google's product advert index). It used to be Amazon, but they have way too many issues now.

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

#156

Post by kylehotchkiss »

qq66 wrote: post #116
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…

It's much worse for me now that I have a kid. I of course categorically refuse to buy any kids products from third-party sellers on Amazon, and Amazon provides no good way of filtering them out, so I have started to drive to Target much more often. The secondary benefit is that Target has much better prices than Amazon.

I'm sure they optimized for this but going to Target is sort of fun too.

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

#157

Post by mark-r »

djrogers wrote: post #123
Stratoscope wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prime doesn't mean it's sold by Amazon. It can be a third party seller using Fulled by Amazon services. And in that case, the item may not even come from the specific seller you're buying from, because of inventory commingling - they put all of the sellers' inventories into one big bin and send you any of them. What you may be looking for is "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com". But there have been reports that even t…

> the item may not even come from the specific seller you're buying from, because of inventory commingling - they put all of the sellers' inventories into one big bin and send you any of them. Yeah, but in that case you're at least very likely to be getting the item you ordered. I've got the same policy for ordering stuff from Amazon - if it's prime and does from their warehouse I'll trust it. Haven't been burned yet…

The biggest issue in that case is fake merchandise. Fakes can get shipped from the warehouse just as easily as the real thing.

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

#158

Post by LoSboccacc »

giarc wrote: post #153
LoSboccacc wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably has many alts.

You would need a credit card for each. Maybe they purchased fraudulent cards or this is the first of many scams on that account.

There are virtual credit card services around, don't think amazon managed to ban them all

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

#159

Post by kuschku »

ceejayoz wrote: post #25
deft wrote: post #5

These amazon emails literally look like automatic mails with a small custom message on top. He stated multiple times that what they said was WRONG yet no one bothered to listen to that part. If I was the author or if this ever happens to me, I'll go directly to disputing the charge.

As the "owner" of thousands of dollars worth of Kindle books, I'm terrified of disputing an Amazon charge.

If you are in the EU, you don't have to worry - you are the owner. If Amazon bans you from accessing your Kindle books, they're committing a crime.

In a recent court case https://openjur.de/u/879923.html this exact topic was discussed in the EU. If your account gets banned, you might want to take a lawyer and cite this case - OLG Köln Az 6 U 90/15.

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

#160

Post by giarc »

ransom1538 wrote: post #152

Why do people do mail fraud? While mail fraud crimes often involve the use of the United States Postal Service, or USPS, you can also commit the crime when you use any interstate carrier, such as FedEx, UPS, or other delivery services. Mail fraud is super easy to prove [prints on box, cameras at fedex offices, credit cards used for materials, amazon accounts, logged ips, bank accounts involved, federal authority] and…

It's probably hard to track the seller. They can use a fake email, illegally obtained credit card to sign up, PO box or just some random address, drop off packages to FedEx drop boxes or just drop ship an item. They may never even touch the packages.
Post reply on HN