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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

#41

Post by falcolas »

mikeash wrote: post #26

I'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'm wondering more and more why Amazon hosts third-party sellers at all.

It's pretty much pure profit from Amazon's point of view. They got their cut of that $1500, and no matter how much furor comes out of this (and similar) articles, Amazon's overall brand won't be adversely affected.

After all, look at the comments here. Everyone is primarily blaming the seller, not Amazon. Amazon comes across as a secondary party to this at most.

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

#42

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

eutropia wrote: post #13

Maybe this sort of fraud becomes impossible if we had cryptographic ledger based delivery confirmation systems (keyed to sender, recipient, delivery address). Edit: Because apparently technological solutions aren't to be discussed if they involve recent, trendy tech?

It doesn't need that at all - just upgrade the USPS (and UPS and FedEx) "signed for" systems to also include a photograph of the recipient for high-value items, and the lat/long coordinates of the hand-off - that would immediately show when items were mis-delivered and as a bonus, get a photo for possible police investigations.

Or better yet: make it possible for those "shipping status" pages to show the full recipient address (e.g. by entering your own address first, maybe with a texting service using your USPS-registered phone number?)

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

#44

Post by ajross »

mikeash wrote: post #20
ajross wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more sympathetic to Amazon here than most. Scams are hard to detect. They set up a shipping confirmation process that's worked fine for them for almost two decades now. It has a hole (it only checks the town and has no closed loop to verify that the shipper shipped to the right address in that town), but none of the existing employees actually know that it has a hole. They get a report about a missing shipment, c…

The author appealed, stating that the delivery address was incorrect. Amazon's rejected the appeal on the basis that the tracking information "shows that someone at your address signed for the package." That's not a mysterious hole that low-level employees are unaware of, that's just inattention on the part of whoever was handling the appeal.

The point was more that "mysterious hole" and "innatention" are mostly the same thing. My words were "scams are hard to detect" and I stand by them. The people you want to be more attentive make hourly wages and probably see thousands of these appeals every week, statistically none of which are creative scams worthy of arguing about on HN.

You're asking too much. Those employees don't exist. You have to get over their heads to people who design the processes, and that sometimes requires writing blog posts and making noise in public.

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

#45

Post by problems »

ceejayoz wrote: post #25
deft wrote: post #5

These amazon emails literally look like automatic mails with a small custom message on top. He stated multiple times that what they said was WRONG yet no one bothered to listen to that part. If I was the author or if this ever happens to me, I'll go directly to disputing the charge.

As the "owner" of thousands of dollars worth of Kindle books, I'm terrified of disputing an Amazon charge.

Yeah, I would highly recommend you download all of those and run them through Calibre with the DRM stripping plug in as soon as possible.

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

#47

Post by garyfirestorm »

dingaling wrote: post #3

Recap 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…

also its funny that even though the mail was sent to Jeff himself, no one in Amazon cared enough to verify the delivery address?

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

#48

Post by pjc50 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #43
pjc50 wrote: post #37

As the author says, this is what the credit card dispute system ought to sort out.

Not if you've got EC2 instances or Kindle books.

You're saying that disputing with Amazon will pull all your kindle books? I don't think that would fly in countries with consumer rights. Bear in mind this is also a Marketplace seller and not the real Amazon.

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

#49

Post by LeifCarrotson »

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.

Uh... isn't it obvious that you should never use your personal shopping/Prime account for business-critical services?

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

#50

Post by Stratoscope »

vgprice wrote: post #36

I 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 those products may be commingled with third-party inventory. (I don't have any personal knowledge on that one way or the other.)

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