From my extremely limited understanding of legal matters, I'd say this should be a criminal fraud case. Maybe the police can get through the "wall" at Amazon.
I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
351–360 of 447 posts
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#352What's Amazon's cut of a $1500 third party sale?
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I have shifted all my budget and used buying from Amazon Marketplace to eBay. At this point it seems like there are new stories about Amazon Marketplace scams almost daily. Does anyone think Marketplace is a priority for Amazon leadership these days? Does Bezos even know it is still operating? It's not getting the A team, obviously. Meanwhile connecting sellers and buyers is all eBay does. They don't make devices, pr…
If you're buying eBay is great. If you're the seller however, it's an entirely different story. eBay heavily, heavily, heavily favors the buyer in almost all disputes -- so much so that at times it seems as if it's automatic to the buyer's favor. I guess that's how they get people to spend money on the platform, and of course take their cut of the transaction.
There are tons and tons of seller horror stories, especially with buyers from Asian countries. They will buy an iPhone or something, pay for it, then request a return/refund from the seller but they send back a box of scrap. Even if you don't manually refund their money, they will dispute it, and eBay just sees the return tracking # as 'delivered' and gives them their money back. It really doesn't matter how much you protest, eBay pretty much always sides with the buyer.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
I received a counterfeit item after paying more for the item that was "Sold my Amazon", thinking that way, I would get the real product. What's more frustrating is that Amazon didn't really care or do anything about it. They offered a return or an exchange but couldn't guarantee that that the exchanged item wouldn't be fake. I no longer trust them with items that are easily faked.
> Amazon didn't really care or do anything about it. They offered a return or an exchange Sorry to sound like an Amazon fanboy, but what else could Amazon do for you? They offered a return without even questioning you. I don’t know a lot of companies that would do that.
They could stop selling fakes. Or at least stop co-mingling their own inventory with unverified inventory sent to them by 3rd parties, so that it's even logistically possible for them to know what they are selling.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That's actually not 1.5, that's 1 that you just described. There is no option 1 that isn't co-mingled with inventory of unknown authenticity that (unless it happens to be an item that's never had inventory sent in by a 3rd party, but you have no way of knowing that).
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#356I've had a similar thing likely happen from about $100 of things off aliexpress. Air china handed off to the USPS and it showed up as delivered without me ever having signed for it. I argued with aliexpress, and they just saw air china had it marked as delivered and just closed the claim against me. If they can do this locally, they likely can pull this off from outside the US as well.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#357I'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've gotten counterfeit body wash (Shiseido Super Mild) and counterfeit microSD cards off Amazon, and, ironically, the only things I buy off amazon.com now are books.
Everything else I'd rather buy from the manufacturer (and pay the full shipping cost and not Amazon Prime) or a reputable distributor (digi-key/mouser for electronics, CS Hyde for films/tapes, etc).
Counterfeit items -- and the co-mingling of items "fulfilled by Amazon" -- ruined the whole experience for me.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have shifted all my budget and used buying from Amazon Marketplace to eBay. At this point it seems like there are new stories about Amazon Marketplace scams almost daily. Does anyone think Marketplace is a priority for Amazon leadership these days? Does Bezos even know it is still operating? It's not getting the A team, obviously. Meanwhile connecting sellers and buyers is all eBay does. They don't make devices, pr…
If you're buying eBay is great. If you're the seller however, it's an entirely different story. eBay heavily, heavily, heavily favors the buyer in almost all disputes -- so much so that at times it seems as if it's automatic to the buyer's favor. I guess that's how they get people to spend money on the platform, and of course take their cut of the transaction. There are tons and tons of seller horror stories, especia…
But what's the solution here? Without an escrow service which verifies the contents both ways, the best they can do is arbitrarily choose the winner.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#359oh hey, I work on a team that should prevent this kind of thing. This should be fun to fix. [I'm not allowed to say more on the topic, nor do I speak for Amazon, as per the current Amazon guidelines on what we're allowed to talk about on social media. We're hiring though, and it's a fun adversarial engineering job]
I'd hesitate to blame you if you're on the engineering side. This doesn't sound like a technical problem, necessarily, but rather a policy-level problem. The whole sordid affair seems to have taken place because the reps either didn't comprehend the issue or weren't empowered to do anything about it.
At a minimum, Bezos needs to have a come-to-Jeff meeting with the people answering email in his name. It shouldn't be necessary for a customer to start a Twitter debacle or a social-media shitshow in order to receive good customer service.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a similar effect is at work with Costco memberships.
Nope, you must be thinking about hotdogs. Hotdogs are a loss leader for Costco. Memberships make them money. "The most important factor about membership fees is that they go straight to the company's bottom lines. Costco operates its warehouses on essentially a breakeven basis, making its profits on memberships instead of merchandise. " https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/08/18/what-do-membership...
I haven't done the math, but I don't know how accurate this is given that 2/3 of their sales are to members who receive 2% cash back ($110 executive members). The executive membership would need to average $5500 in purchases to wipe out any Costco profit on their memberships. $8250 average to wipe out ALL membership profit.
I'll have to come up with a formula based on the numbers in your article. It'll be interesting to see how accurate that "profit from memberships" statement really is.