Very weird -- earlier this year the FedEx guy delivered some photo mattes to the apartment across the street. The vendor wouldn't refund me because it showed as delivered, but Amazon told me (and refunded the $40) specifically under their A-Z program. Eventually a few weeks later, the box turned up because I guess someone decided to actually check the address and re-deliver it.
I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
371–380 of 447 posts
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except for comingling of SKUs. If a supplier ships knock-off producrs to a particular product code it all gets mixed in the warehouse and you get product roulette.
They don't prefix with the vendor? So they mix the stock of all their suppliers? That's pretty unbelievably sloppy, is there some public proof of this?
I doubt that is true, and I haven't seen any proof of it either.
What I can tell you though, is that Amazon is incredibly lenient on enforcing EANs. So even though there is that identifier that should be able to uniquely identify a product, often times third-party replacements for the product, or even completely unrelated items are listed under the EAN, and Amazon doesn't give a shit.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#373I don't even buy anything that is not sold via Prime. I assume anything non-prime is of the lowest possible quality or a scam. For some reason I feel comfortable with prime thinking that the items have had some sort of quality approval. (at least getting my item as described and expected.)
Prime doesn't mean it's sold by Amazon. It can be a third party seller using Fulled by Amazon services. And in that case, the item may not even come from the specific seller you're buying from, because of inventory commingling - they put all of the sellers' inventories into one big bin and send you any of them. What you may be looking for is "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com". But there have been reports that even t…
On the German Amazon site there are now even "Prime" articles directly sent from the third-party seller.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a sort of counterpoint, I really wish that Amazon UK was integrated with the Amazon US customer database. I'd like to be able to log into Amazon UK with my normal credentials and order something from there, with the option of international shipping - because occasionally I want to order a product that's not available over here in any way.
It works this way for me. My credentials work for both .uk and .com although I only have Prime on .com. My order history is unique to the country site, but address book is the same for both.
Are you sure you didn't create accounts on both with the same credentials? That's what I did.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#375Thanks for putting that out here. Amazon shouldn't get away with their bots like that.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#376I'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…
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.
Or just stop using Amazon altogether, until they can sort their crap out.
Would love to see some official response now that the story has hit HN.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#377I'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 "ful…
Not even books are safe on Amazon https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They really can't. This opens up the buyer and seller to myriad scams. You'd be surprised at how many buyers contact the seller, having no clue what site they bought the actual product from.
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#379Earlier 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 offered a return without even questioning you. I don’t know a lot of companies that would do that.
There's an automatic right to a refund within 14 days of delivery in the EU, so every company must offer that. I wonder if that means these frauds don't happen here?
http://europa.eu/youreurope/business/sell-abroad/on-line/ind...
Re: I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You could get fired from Google for saying this