I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by mikeash » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 8:03 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #41

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 par…

Amazon is getting hit with a chargeback on this one, and I see a lot of comments critical of Amazon on here. And this is a tech-savvy crowd. Most Amazon customers probably don't pay enough attention to Amazon to understand the difference between "Sold by Amazon" and "Fulfilled by Amazon" and straight third-party sellers. When it goes wrong, people will blame the one entity they actually interacted with: Amazon.

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

#52

Post by soyiuz » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 8:03 PM UTC

The A-Z guarantee is actually pretty biased towards the costumer. Something went wrong here obviously, but in part it is a side effect of too much information. There was no need to go visit your neighbors--once the wrong address is confirmed, A-Z should come into effect. Get someone on the phone if you can.

The larger problem is the integrity of the package. For example, as a seller, I've had multiple chargebacks from customers who claimed that the package they received was empty (and A-Z always ruled in their favor). I've also had customers "return" items that were not at all the same as the original purchase. In once case, the returned materials were clearly counterfeit (where I sold the originals)! A-Z ruled in customer's favor in each case. I've since stopped selling on Amazon due to prevalent fraud.

The package is pretty well tracked, how do we make sure what goes into the box corresponds to the sale or refund?

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

#53

Post by shiftpgdn » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 8:03 PM UTC

This is the poison in Amazon's well. The average layman has very little grasp of sold & shipped by amazon vs amazon marketplace. Amazon needs to tighten the clamps on all of these awful third party sellers before they become a casualty like ebay.

Anecdotally my father purchased a projector recently and the seller tried the "I can't ship it unless you make payment on my offsite merchant page because Amazon is holding me hostage" scam. My father remarkably recognized this as fraud and reported it to Amazon. He said they were less than helpful in getting a refund to his credit card so he could go make a purchase from a legitimate merchant. They made him wait out the full 30 days it could have possibly taken to ship before they were willing to work with him.

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

#54

Post by hellofunk » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 8:03 PM UTC

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.

A good reason never to mix a shopping account with a development account. If you are using Amazon developer services, I never understood why you wouldn't want that as a dedicated development account with Amazon.

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

#55

Post by erroneousfunk » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 8:03 PM UTC

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…

In addition, the package (listed on the USPS documentation) didn't have the correct weight, which should have been further proof that something was wrong. The package was 8oz, the lens itself, even without packaging, weighs 3.2 pounds.

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

#56

Post by snarf21 » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 8:04 PM UTC

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 think it is mostly about maximizing scale (and lower costs) for the shipping and logistics business. It also used to be that buying from Amazon as the seller was safe but that has gone by the wayside as they decided it was worth the risk to not have to manage separately. I think they will soon have to roll that decision back. At least then their brand stays strong and the get economies of scale for logistics for the third parties.

There was also a story recently about the number of people who post stuff on ebay and just drop ship from Amazon directly. Then the customer gets the product and thinks "this is just from Amazon" and looks up the price. The seller had marked it up and the buy say "bullcrap" and returns the original item and buys it direct from Amazon. However, the actual OEM now has countless returns for no reason. The seller was just running a business on top of Amazon. This is something they have to stop.

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

#57

Post by Blackthorn » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 8:04 PM UTC

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?

This whole blog post is about wanting someone to take notice and step aside from an automated process that had failed, and you are suggesting replacing it with an even further immutable automated process?

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

#58

Post by jjnoakes » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 8:04 PM UTC

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.

For the truly paranoid: have two amazon accounts, one for services (AWS, Kindle, etc) you care about, and one for purchases that you wish to protect.

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

#59

Post by btown » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 8:05 PM UTC

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…

What the brand gains at the expense of quality is MUCH more valuable: the notion that "if I only have time to check one website, Amazon's going to have it because Amazon has EVERYTHING." Adding third-party sellers allows it to have a much larger catalog of obscure items.

Any shopper who's been burned will still use Amazon in the way you are, just being careful to filter by Prime and/or Fulfilled by Amazon. So the damage to the core brand is minimal even for rare cases like OP, who even ends his article with "even if it’s through an online retailer as trustworthy as Amazon." Despite this experience, he'll still buy his memory cards and Whole Foods groceries over Amazon Prime.

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

#60

Post by liveoneggs » Fri, Aug 11, 2017, 8:05 PM UTC

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?

How does the payment type change anything?