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

311–320 of 447 posts

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

#311

Post by inopinatus »

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.

Since we're picking all the nits and talking about definitions like the natural numbers rather than common parlance, then may I observe that sequential lists are using ordinal numbers, and the set of ordinals derived from natural numbers definitely does start with zero, in this case it being the minimum element of the ordinals of non-zero cardinality.

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

#312

Post by leesalminen »

njharman wrote: post #289
curun1r wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wish we could all schedule things on UTC time. I've been part of 10 person meetings across 4 time zones and scheduling sucks. Inevitably someone assumes a meeting is scheduled in their local time.

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

#313

Post by leesalminen »

ghostly_s wrote: post #245
georgemcbay wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. I once had a new MacBook Pro delivered by OnTrac. That was not pleasant.

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

#314

Post by JonDav »

rgbrenner wrote: post #7

filing the chargeback is a good idea... but also, the sender made a critical mistake sending it usps.. that makes it mail fraud. Talk to the US Postal Inspection Service, it's a branch of law enforcement, and I'm sure they would be very interested with all of the evidence youve collected. They can cross state lines and arrest the sender. https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/

This link is exactly what I was going to post after reading the story. The USPS is surprisingly good at dealing with mail fraud. Currently it looks like Amazon was complicit in a mail fraud case. It would be in USPS's best interest to investigate Amazons' operations in this regard.

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

#315

Post by JonDav »

inetknght wrote: post #190
ransom1538 wrote: post #175

Earlier 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.

Put your money where your mouth is. Go provide your legal services to article's author. I expect to see an article on Monday, from you, which bemoans exactly how easy it is to track thieves like this. Show us the face of the accused, too.

Are you a state bar? how can he practice being a lawyer and provide legal services. I expect to see an article on Monday, from you, which explains how you are able to confer the ability to individuals to act as a legal agent.

See how much that sounds like I am an asshole? Maybe read your comments out loud before posting.

Maybe he was commenting on the idea posted elsewhere in this conversation about getting USPS to investigate and explaining how one agent could do so. But your "understanding" may be the correct one.

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

#316

Post by in_cahoots »

kristianc wrote: post #223
emodendroket wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't I read that Prime loses them money most of the time? I don't think the membership fee is a real replacement for regular revenue streams; it seems to me like the point is more to encourage people to "get their money's worth" by buying from Amazon more.

People do really get their money's worth from Prime: "40% of Amazon Prime members spend over $1,000 a year on Amazon, while only 8% of non-Prime shoppers do so." I'd be really interested to see what Amazon's numbers as a whole would look like if Prime didn't exist, clearly it is profitable enough for Amazon to be able to keep bundling "free" stuff into the package like video / music, file storage etc.

82% of households making more than $112,000 a year have a Prime account (https://www.thebillfold.com/2017/06/at-what-age-do-teens-get...). Once you take that into consideration your numbers aren't that surprising.

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

#317

Post by manyxcxi »

leesalminen wrote: post #312
njharman wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wish we could all schedule things on UTC time. I've been part of 10 person meetings across 4 time zones and scheduling sucks. Inevitably someone assumes a meeting is scheduled in their local time.

You don't have to be in UTC, but having your clock set to 24 hours still makes it a lot easier.

After a year of daily meetings with people on the east coast (of the US), London, Hamberg, and Brasilia from the west coast of the US I just moved to 24 hours and found it much easier to mentally calculate everyone's respective times- as long as I could keep the offsets squared away.

Screw daylight savings.

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

#318

Post by [deleted] »

bradleyjg wrote: post #299
rgbrenner wrote: post #7

filing the chargeback is a good idea... but also, the sender made a critical mistake sending it usps.. that makes it mail fraud. Talk to the US Postal Inspection Service, it's a branch of law enforcement, and I'm sure they would be very interested with all of the evidence youve collected. They can cross state lines and arrest the sender. https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/

I'm a little more skeptical of the claim that crossing the post office is a big mistake after nothing came of this case: http://www.postal-reporter.com/blog/usps-oig-investigating-a... The comment sections at the time were full of people talking about how it was a federal crime and the cops would be in deep trouble but the postal inspector seems to have been a paper tiger.

[deleted]

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

#319

Post by JonDav »

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.

If Amazon retaliates and was involved in a USPS fraud case. I would think the business owner would have a very good chance of a large settlement.....

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

#320

Post by mulmen »

syshum wrote: post #297
mulmen wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't take availability into account. Checking "Prime" includes only those listings that are prime . It does not remove non-prime listings .

If only listings that are prime are including then by definition non-prime listings are excluded.

No because products are sold by both Amazon and 3p sellers. If you filter prime you get things that have prime offers, not things that have only prime offers. It's possible you see something that is sold by Amazon and is prime but is out of stock and in stock for 3p fulfillment.
Post reply on HN