Amazon solves for these types of problems in other markets (India) through Cash on Delivery.
I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
281–290 of 447 posts
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#282Recap 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 profes…
ebay favors the buyer. I have over two hundred purchases on that site from simply every day stuff to antiques. I have had three bad purchases all of which were refunded, two were refunded by ebay the other by the seller.
In the case of the seller refund they state on their pages to please contact them first because honest sellers value their ratings.
now if you are a seller ebay can be trouble and you really need to filter out selling expensive items to low rated buyers and nothing expensive to new accounts.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. Amazon could also ban third-party for certain classes of items or make it harder to be a seller of those items. Camera equipment is notoriously fraud prone, and was before Amazon was even a thing. I only buy used camera equipment from B&H or Adorama, and even with new equipment I am very cautious on Amazon. I tried getting used lenses a few times on Amazon and every single time the first order was the wrong,…
Buy and Sell forums at FredMiranda.com are very very good as well.
So is keh.com.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#284I got burned in a different way. I have the mark 1 version of the Canon 400mm DO lens. The mark 2 came out, to rave reviews, I wanted one, got a little toasted one night and said "screw it, I'm gonna get one". It's $6700 lens.
I clicked around and found one cheaper, it was $6500 so I got that one.
Imagine my joy (jk) when I open it up and found that Amazon/Adorama thought it was OK to sell me the mark 1 version of lens for $200 less than the much better mark 2. That's nuts, the mark 1 lens was selling used for about $4000 before the mark 2 came out, when the mark 2 came out, the used value of the mark 1 dropped to about $2000.
So it's pretty lame of Amazon/Adorama to put the old lens up there for $200 less when it should have been $3000-$4000 less. And pretty stupid of me to not notice the version.
I had to threaten Adorama with a media campaign before they took the lens back. Left a sour taste in my mouth and I buy all my stuff from B&H now.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The point of this thread is that if you are ordered from Amazon, you actually might have to deal with this bullshit. Selecting a seller requires as much care as eBay at this point. It's not what it was.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uh. No. If I were a federal officer I would just contact amazon and find out where the money went. Paypal or Bank account - game over. Contact whatever bank he picks it up from get security camera details, address info, on and on. I would also grab all the ips, entered in info and the prints from the box. I bet he would be in my office by lunch. Plea dealed to 5 years by monday.
It's very trivial to signup for a online bank account with a stolen identity. FBI won't get involved in the case unless it's over 150k in losses and local police don't have skills or desire to do anything online. Source: work for an online bank
FBI doesn't have to get involved; the USPS has kick-ass federal special agents of their own.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That's probably true, though I'm not sure that's enough to assume the gender of the offending party. Tangentially related, and not white collar, I once had a car stolen by a female. No damage was done and, being a silly old man, I didn't press charges. I was kinda surprised that it was done by a female.
Sorry, I never meant to imply the offender was male or female. On the contrary, due to the value of using a female name, it should not be regarded as evidence of the offender's actual sex or gender at all.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
This 100 times. I never buy from third-party sellers in Amazon, but I am having such a hard time explaining to friends and family how to do the same. They keep buying from third-party sellers and keep wondering how it is not "Amazon". I wish there was an option to set it once and never see third-party seller items again.
sounds like a browser extension to me... hmm....
That's exactly what I was thinking!
Perhaps blocking all the 3rd party sellers and/or checking with fakespot.com then injecting some in the page displaying some sort of rating...
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
And it's because of dumb non-programmers that we have 12am immediately following 11pm. If we were to, instead, recognize the beginning/middle of the day as 0, the am/pm transitions would be sensible. Starting at 0 is almost always correct, teaching people to start counting at 1 isn't. Why do we continually come up with convoluted workarounds simply because we educate children incorrectly?
Wat? There are 24 hours in a day 1-24 or 0-23, pick your poison. But 100% Fuck halfday, 1-12 bullshit.
P.S. Also fuckoff non-UTC time.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#290It won't get your money back, but it is worthwhile to file a fraud complaint with the USPS as well. Mail fraud for $1500 is a big deal to sweep under the rug with a charge back.
Might not get the money back but might also get the sender 20 years prison and/or a fine: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1341
I would, irrationally, feel bad about sending someone to prison for 20y just because they stole some cash from me.