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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

#361

Post by Retra »

Shivetya wrote: post #282
jjoonathan wrote: post #247

Earlier 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…

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…

Well, ebay screwed me over with their "no action after 30 days" policy when it took me longer than that to figure out the item was never shipped. Maybe they've gotten better over the last 8 years, but I'm not coming back regardless.

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

#362

Post by vertex-four »

julienb_sea wrote: post #130
mikeash wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that "Amazon has EVERYTHING" only works if you can actually count on the purchase to work. Once it becomes apparent that third-party sellers are crap and those items don't count, you're back to "Amazon has certain things." And I'm not merely careful to filter stuff. Amazon is no longer my go-to in general. I do buy stuff from them sometimes, but they're not the first place I check for most things. A less s…

I just don't see how Amazon isn't the go to. Anything handled directly by Amazon generally has the most competitive pricing, near guarantee of two day delivery or faster, and far larger selection than any other individual store. I cannot think of any general purpose store off the top of my head I would prioritize over Amazon. To be clear, there are some specific purchases I would not make over Amazon. Amazon's clothi…

Amazon's clothing section is generally reasonably priced (especially for delivery) once you've already found what you're looking for elsewhere.

The fact that Amazon's search is essentially unusable is a longstanding criticism.

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

#363

Post by ballenf »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #268
ballenf wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I've had Amazon instruct me to file a chargeback in one instance that they had already identified as fraud. It was a very different situation, however: someone had my CC info and loaded it onto a new account and made a large purchase. Oddly when I inquired Amazon said they had already flagged the fraud and I needed to send a chargeback. It appeared that they were not going to proactively let me (or my cc compan…

That's weird, as issuing a CC refund is cheaper for everyone than a chargeback.

I thought so too. I had identified the charges as fraudulent but was afraid of retribution from Amazon for the chargeback, so I called them first.

I'm kind of surprised I even caught the transactions given how many legit ones I have each month with them.

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

#364

Post by x0x0 »

noncoml wrote: post #346
exco wrote: post #325

Earlier 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 allow me to purchase only items sold by Amazon, not by third party sellers, with no inventory co-mingling.

Apple bought a bunch of chargers and found over 80% were fake iirc.

If you buy a charger/power brick on amazon, from any vendor, amazon's unethical inventory mingling and lack of care mean there's a very high chance you get a cheap chinese knockoff that wouldn't come close to passing UL.

ps -- I told amazon about a charger they had with a fake Intertek (a UL competitor) mark. Their response was to offer me a refund... and keep selling the device. Which (imo) should be illegal to sell.

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

#365

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

tnorthcutt wrote: post #10
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #6

The only way I've got problems solved with Amazon is going to the police and let them sort it out. Worked every time. Amazon was in now way responsive or helpful before I've got the police involved.

What did that process look like for you? Do you just call up your local non-emergency number and and tell them Amazon cheated you?

(Germany) For example someone used our bank account to buy on Amazon. We found out by checking our bank account. We told Amazon about it, but they only would remove the bank data from that account. No blacklisting of our bank account IBAN or anything else. Then some time later this happened again by the same person with a much larger amount. We discovered it again because we regularly check our bank account. Amazon has no blacklisting or other protection. Again they only removed the account. Then a third time it happened with even a larger amount. Wouldn't we have checked, we'd lost some money. And obviously we would not like to play that game the next 20 years - because let's name it, someone stole from our bank account and Amazon didn't prevent it but helped although told about it.

We made a report online with the police, they had some questions and it never happened again.

This was one of several incidents with Amazon that only involving the police got fixed.

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

#366

Post by yladiz »

Retra wrote: post #361
Shivetya wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, ebay screwed me over with their "no action after 30 days" policy when it took me longer than that to figure out the item was never shipped. Maybe they've gotten better over the last 8 years, but I'm not coming back regardless.

I think 30 days is really reasonable to see if something shipped or not. Maybe eBay could do more to alert you but if you purchase something you really should follow up and make sure you're getting it.

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

#367

Post by setzer22 »

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 once bought a projector that stopped working after 6 months. I tried all the "channels" directly available in the UI (like contact the seller) and got no answer.

When I thought there was nothing else to do, a friend told me: "The first thing you need to do in Amazon, is getting in touch with a real human". And he showed me how, which involved a complicated series of UI steps. Once I talked to a real person I got my money back in a week.

So, yes, I definitely agree. Amazon is making it increasingly difficult to talk to real humans. If I can't get into a phone call, or at least a chat, I don't bother anymore.

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

#368

Post by noncoml »

JangoSteve wrote: post #354
noncoml wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ok fair enough. I meant what more could it to to rectify the situation after he received the item and found out it was counterfeit.

Why they choose to mingle their inventory with 3rd party inventory is beyond me.

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

#369

Post by dizzystar »

snowwrestler wrote: post #267
jjoonathan wrote: post #247

Earlier 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…

Both eBay and Amazon are "hackable" by both the buyer and seller. The available scams are different, but neither party of a transaction is 100% safe.

In my experience, eBay is MUCH more slanted to the seller than Amazon.

The real sophisticated scammers are truly unbelievable. Unfortunately, I can't say more on this stuff, but I'll hint that the most egregious scams use both eBay and Amazon, pitting the flaws of each company against each other.

I can't say with any pride that I likely know every possible scam to run on each site as a buyer or seller, although I've never personally executed any scams.

As an FYI, any seller who sells on eBay sells on Amazon. They will push to whatever they can get away with on each platform.

I'll add: to protect yourself as a buyer, find the seller ratings before you decide to purchase. For eBay, bare minimum, 99%. Anything less is too low, even for Top Rated. For Amazon, 99% as well.

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

#370

Post by hobofan »

mikeash wrote: post #221
nwellnhof wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is really worth it for Amazon to have them? I struggle to see how. I think the main reason is that it gives Amazon huge amounts of market data essentially for free. For example, they can easily identify best-selling new products even if they're not sold directly by Amazon. If you're successful selling stuff on Amazon, it's only a matter of time until Amazon will compete with you and possibly destroy your busines…

That is a really interesting angle on it.

> If you're successful selling stuff on Amazon, it's only a matter of time until Amazon will compete with you and possibly destroy your business.

Mind you that this is not just a "when Amazon turns bad" scenario, but actually what they are doing daily. When I was writing software for Amazon sellers, their most profitable items were always some new niche product they discovered and worked well for ~1 month until Amazon swooped in and sold the same thing.

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