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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

#241

Post by tehwebguy »

derekp7 wrote: post #103
mikeash wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Exact same thing happened to me. They couldn't fix it until Monday though (it was Friday and was porting a number).

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

#242

Post by KGIII »

dingaling wrote: post #3

Recap as I understand it, since the blog post isn't 0. Buyer purchased item from third-party seller on Amazon 1. Seller picked a name and address in buyer's town, from an obituary, and sent parcel containing two baking mats thereto ( instead of camera lens ) 2. Occupant of that address signed for it believing it to be for the deceased relative 3. USPS updated status to 'delivered' with signature and address recorded…

Lana is usually a female name, isn't it? Not that it much matters, they still appear to be jerks.

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

#243

Post by thezach »

If you are the person this happened to file a complaint with the United States Postal Service office of the Inspector General. As they used USPS this would actually be mail fraud something the law enforcement arm of the postal service has jurisdiction over.

You can file a complaint at https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/contactUs/filecomplaint.a... or by calling 1-800-ASK-USPS

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

#244

Post by ztjio »

KGIII wrote: post #242
dingaling wrote: post #3

Recap as I understand it, since the blog post isn't 0. Buyer purchased item from third-party seller on Amazon 1. Seller picked a name and address in buyer's town, from an obituary, and sent parcel containing two baking mats thereto ( instead of camera lens ) 2. Occupant of that address signed for it believing it to be for the deceased relative 3. USPS updated status to 'delivered' with signature and address recorded…

Lana is usually a female name, isn't it? Not that it much matters, they still appear to be jerks.

It's common in white collar crime/social engineering schemes to use female names regardless of the criminal's gender as socially people are less suspicious of women, for whatever reason.

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

#245

Post by ghostly_s »

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 (…

Personally, I would never buy anything on Amazon with a price tag more than a couple hundred dollars. They can't even confirm what carrier they will ship through; I'm not about to trust them for high-value items.

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

#246

Post by christoph »

noncoml wrote: post #212
SXX wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never buy from third-party sellers in Amazon Does it actually make any sense now? Wasn't it confirmed many times that Amazon just ship it to you from closest warehouse even if it's item by 3rd party seller?

AFAIK there are three kind of items: 1. Sold and shipped by Amazon 2. Sold by third-party, fulfilled by Amazon 3. Sold and shipped by third-party I never buy (3) and generally avoid (2) when there is a possibility of counterfeit, but otherwise I agree with you (2) is fine.

I think there's a kind of 1.5 as well - Sold by Amazon, supplied by god knows who (co-mingled stock of varying authenticity - could by Amazon, could be Chinese knock off), fulfilled by Amazon.

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

#247

Post by jjoonathan »

dingaling wrote: post #3

Recap as I understand it, since the blog post isn't 0. Buyer purchased item from third-party seller on Amazon 1. Seller picked a name and address in buyer's town, from an obituary, and sent parcel containing two baking mats thereto ( instead of camera lens ) 2. Occupant of that address signed for it believing it to be for the deceased relative 3. USPS updated status to 'delivered' with signature and address recorded…

I got hit with the same-zip-code scam for a $6000 VNA on eaby and the response was completely different. Customer service immediately shuffled me off to a special claims department that investigated and got my money back within about a week.

At no point did I encounter anything resembling the Kafkaesque web of strategic incompetence that I half expected. They followed up every step of the way with courtesy and professionalism even though the seller had woven a substantially more convincing lie than in OP's case -- they had a many year history of selling equipment and radio astronomy books along with two previous successful VNA sales. Evidently it was an account hijack. In this price bracket, even a solid account history isn't a guarantee.

I no longer resent the 10% cut eBay takes. They saved my bacon on this one. It sounds like Amazon's team could learn a thing or two from eBay.

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

#248

Post by femto113 »

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.

Ever been in an elevator in Europe?

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

#249

Post by Simon_says »

thedufer wrote: post #236
inetknght wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe I'm Pollyannaish, but I'd hope Amazon would not give bank details to a federal office and instead hold out for a subpoena or search warrant or court order.

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

#250

Post by sharjeel »

Wow. Close call. I was about to get the same lens from the same seller about a month ago but at the very last moment I thought I can wait for a few weeks to see some more reviews of the seller come in.

I was thinking about getting defective product shipped etc but never thought I could have faced such a sophisticated scam.

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