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

petapixel.com

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

#191

Post by Havoc »

giarc wrote: post #166
Havoc wrote: post #31

1500 bucks purchase 2nd hand from a seller with 1 review? 10/10 bravery

I would say the description makes it appear to be an actual photographer, although that's very easily duplicated from somewhere else. Also, Amazon is usually very good about protecting buyers from scams.

>Also, Amazon is usually very good about protecting buyers from scams.

Retrospectively...sometimes.

Don't get me wrong I like them (average like a package every 48 hrs) but I have fairly limited confidence in their ability to protect people. Especially with the inventory co-mingling fiasco.

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

#192

Post by haburka »

softwarefounder wrote: post #12

I like how this list is zero-indexed.

Liking zero indexed lists is such a dumb programmer meme. Lists are for humans to read and therefore should use the natural numbers, which start at one. Arrays are zero indexed because the first item of the array starts with zero offset.

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

#193

Post by awinder »

I feel like either amazon, or the market, is missing an opportunity when I read stuff like this. Amazon could be:

1. Gathering intelligence about the person making the claim from public sources (twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, etc.) 2. Mashing that against past purchase history (inside amazon or through browser fingerprinting across a wider pool, though they are amazon and should be pretty wide on their own) 3. Ferreting out when high-trust customers are making claims against more shaky merchants

Claims like this should be the backbone of a fraud management platform. They can take high-quality customers getting screwed over and not only rectify the problem but also spare their other buyers from the embarrassment & fraud

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

#194

Post by amorphid »

Amazon seriously pisses me off these days.

Here's an example:

- search Amazon.com for "1 tb usb flash drive"

- the first hit (for me) is a fraudulent drive for $26.99 USD [1]

- there's no mechanism that I can find to report the drive as fraudulent, suspicious, or spam

As far as I'm concerned, Amazon is the new Best Buy. I go there to find something I want, and then buy it somewhere else (NewEgg!)

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Drive-Memory-Stick-Storage/dp/B...

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

#195

Post by eric_h »

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…

Personally I've been using Walmart for consumables (paper products, cat food & litter). Still use amazon for books (the dead tree variety) and the occasional electronic item. Delivery time is comparable, and the free shipping threshold is $50 IIRC, regardless of what you're shipping (e.g. 100lbs of cat litter).

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

#196

Post by surement »

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'm wondering more and more why Amazon hosts third-party sellers at all.

To offer better selection. I dislike dealing with third party sellers as well but for certain rare items (say, used vinyl) it's the only way, and it's better than nothing.

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

#197

Post by dylan-m »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #148
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…

The real damage to Amazon from this behavior is that it's no longer reflexive to buy things on Amazon. The problems with fraudsters makes it enough of a cognitive burden to buy small items at a reasonable price -- which often are cheap knockoffs requiring careful vetting or overpriced resellers -- that I routinely find myself thinking "Eh, maybe I'll just stop by the store on my way home." It's not that I'll stop buy…

The cognitive burden part is a really important point. I used to like it a lot more, but recently I find shopping on Amazon.ca exhausting. Even for a cheap little $4 whatsit, I routinely find myself paging through multiple options, all with terribly inconsistent descriptions, in search of one that looks the least like a scam. Only to find that the one size sold by Amazon[1] is sold out and everything else is sold by random bozos and shipped by turtle at six times the price, and probably not even the same product anyway. If I decide to buy it somewhere else, I am then followed by that gizmo everywhere on the internet.

Meanwhile, as Amazon has descended to the realm of YouTube comments[2], my local retailers have actually been getting pretty good at this whole online shopping thing. Which isn't terribly surprising, come to think of it. Even smaller department stores like London Drugs have been doing searchable inventories, order fulfilment, curation, and distribution for a hell of a lot longer than Amazon. All they needed was the technology and the incentive. I think it's a matter of time until people realize there are better options and just leave.

[1] The size sold by Amazon is of course measured in shekels, while the others are measured in furlongs and picoparsecs.

[2] I'm being rather unkind to YouTube comments.

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

#198

Post by emodendroket »

mbreese wrote: post #173
emodendroket wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many third-party sellers are included under Prime though.

But presumably Amazon wouldn't send an empty box to the wrong address through Prime. You still have to worry about commingling, but it is still much better than straight third-party sales.

Fair point.

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

#199

Post by zwerdlds »

haburka wrote: post #192
softwarefounder wrote: post #12

I like how this list is zero-indexed.

Liking zero indexed lists is such a dumb programmer meme. Lists are for humans to read and therefore should use the natural numbers, which start at one. Arrays are zero indexed because the first item of the array starts with zero offset.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storey#Numbering

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

#200

Post by lsaferite »

mark-r wrote: post #146
adekok wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My words were "scams are hard to detect" and I stand by them. I think it should be easy to detect that two addresses are not identical. Which should make this scam easy to detect. * shipped to different address * shipped to different name Even low-paid support people should be able to detect that. If they can't, then Amazon is hiring people who can't (or won't) read . i.e. if support people can't read, they shouldn…

Yes, it will be trivial to detect - once double-checking the address becomes part of the procedure for verifying package delivery. If checking the address isn't part of the procedure, then the procedure needs to be modified. Low-paid support people are expected to follow the procedure exactly, so that the company can obtain consistent results.

Unless there's something I'm unaware of, they have no way to check the actual shipping address based on the tracking number without direct cooperation from the shipper. The reason they use the shipping city is that most shippers provide that information about every tracking number. To get more information you have to be the one who shipped the package. In this case amazon was not the one who shipped the package. It was a 3rd party seller who shipped on their own.
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