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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

#231

Post by kuschku »

maaaats wrote: post #181
kuschku wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Amazon refuses to tell you, you can make a request under EU law that they have to honor. For example, in Germany this is implemented in Bundesdatenschutzgesetz §34: You have, once every 12 months, the right to demand (and receive, for free) from any entity that stores any data about you, all data that they have stored about you, and all probabilistic models derived from it. So, you'd make a request under BDSG §34,…

I did this to my cell provider a few years ago. As a protest around some privacy law. Holy crap they got a lot of data.

I'm atm planning to do the same with every provider or company that has any data about me, including Google.

This is going to get interesting. (Especially as "probabilistic models" includes likely also all neural networks trained on your data that are used to rate your behaviour. That'd be a wealth of data if one could enforce that.)

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

#232

Post by cr0sh »

Havoc wrote: post #31

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

The only correct way would have been for the buyer to suggest using escrow to the seller. Since it was a scam, the seller would have backed out quickly. For $1500, it's going to be via escrow.com with a credit card. It's the only sane way, even if it is completely legit. Protects the seller, too (because such scams can happen in the other direction as well).

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

#233

Post by macd »

Spooky23 wrote: post #222
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

eBay fraudsters mastered this. They would buy and sell bullshit items like old postcards that would be shippable via first class mail, then wait a few months for the auction listings to expire, than sell a fake laptop or camera. I was almost defrauded like this but refused the shipment and was able to claw the money back via chargeback at the cost of my PayPal account. With about 15 minutes of searching I was able to…

I remember there was an issue where you couldn't easily see a seller's recently sold items, only currently listed and items with feedback already received. So you couldn't see that this well-reviewed person selling an Xbox for a suspiciously low price just sold 30 other Xboxes in the past 48 hours.

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

#234

Post by johngarrison »

georgemcbay wrote: post #147
GVIrish wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of possibilities: *The customer service reps have to answer a huge volume of cases and they really don't take time to read the email *It's ingrained into the customer service reps to follow policy to a T. So if it was signed for, deny. *They're using some sort of automated system that shows whether something was signed for. If 'yes', deny.

I still use Amazon because of the convenience and because the vast majority of the time I never have to deal with their customer service, but in the rare instances I do I've noticed that over the past few years Amazon has become very Google-like in terms of putting everything behind systems that are either automated or may as well be (strict script-following offshore customer service). There used to be useful links (…

I've been decrying Amazon's usability for years. Such an unintutive mess of menus and sub-systems. Such a poor customer experience for anything other than simple "click and buy" usage.

I blame their extreme position ahead of other emarketers. They have very little reason to be nice and helpful. People will throw money at them regardless.

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

#235

Post by compuguy »

simcop2387 wrote: post #40
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why he wouldn't get a credit-card chargeback authorized - he has clear evidence of fraud on the party of the seller, and evidence of the middle-man's (Amazon's) unwillingness to investigate further. As Amazon is accepting the credit-card payment they will eat the chargeback - if they do ever dispute this then elevate it to a small-claims court case and the judge will easily side with the customer.

One potential problem with that is that Amazon can retaliate by closing the users's account if they didn't agree with the charge-back even if they're unsuccessful at fighting it. That can be really difficult to deal with if you're also using AWS for hosting or other things.

Has that happened to people in the past? I do have an AWS account attached to my prime account (a dumb choice from years ago). The stuff on it isn't critical or anything, though.

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

#236

Post by thedufer »

inetknght wrote: post #226
ransom1538 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So become a federal officer by monday? I need an extension.

It sounded to me like you already had all of this figured out. Why do you suddenly need to be a federal officer?

> I would just contact amazon and find out where the money went

I like to think that Amazon won't give its users bank details to random people. A federal officer could force them give it up.

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

#237

Post by jacquesm »

dbcurtis wrote: post #97
mikeash wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. Filtering for Prime or Free Shipping by Amazon helps a lot though. You still get third-party sellers, but they're at least fulfilled by Amazon so the chances of trouble are quite a bit lower.

Except for comingling of SKUs. If a supplier ships knock-off producrs to a particular product code it all gets mixed in the warehouse and you get product roulette.

They don't prefix with the vendor? So they mix the stock of all their suppliers? That's pretty unbelievably sloppy, is there some public proof of this?

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

#239

Post by thezach »

I would open a case with the USPS Inspector General https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/contactUs/filecomplaint.a...

This seems like it would be considered mail fraud, and as UPSP was used they have jurisdiction to investigate it. I'm not sure how serious they will take the case however.

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