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

petapixel.com

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

#71

Post by mikeash »

jacquesm wrote: post #65
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…

Is there a way to just turn third party offers off?

I don't think so. Filtering for Prime or Free Shipping by Amazon helps a lot though. You still get third-party sellers, but they're at least fulfilled by Amazon so the chances of trouble are quite a bit lower.

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

#72

Post by adekok »

ajross wrote: post #44
mikeash wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thei…

> My words were "scams are hard to detect" and I stand by them.

I think it should be easy to detect that two addresses are not identical. Which should make this scam easy to detect.

* shipped to different address

* shipped to different name

Even low-paid support people should be able to detect that. If they can't, then Amazon is hiring people who can't (or won't) read.

i.e. if support people can't read, they shouldn't be support people.

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

#73

Post by bitexploder »

_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.

Or small claims court. That will get their attention quickly. This is the perfect place for that, though I guess, since this is USPS/Mail fraud that works. Small claims court has appeal because they absolutely can't ignore you, whereas even with a police report they can.

(edit: perfect place for police involvement, since an actual mail fraud type crime was comitted, but also a great place for small claims court. I am just thinking police aren't going to have much recourse since whoever did this is probably very far away. Small claims court you can do it right to amazon for failure to deliver the goods bought, and maybe find some language in the A-to-z guarantee to hold them accountable?)

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

#76

Post by pionar »

jacquesm wrote: post #65
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…

Is there a way to just turn third party offers off?

When you search for an item, you can filter it to only items sold by Amazon directly. It's under the "Seller" category. I do this quite a bit.

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

#77

Post by jacquesm »

mikeash wrote: post #71
jacquesm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way to just turn third party offers off?

I don't think so. Filtering for Prime or Free Shipping by Amazon helps a lot though. You still get third-party sellers, but they're at least fulfilled by Amazon so the chances of trouble are quite a bit lower.

Oh that's clever, thank you for that idea. If I ever go back to ordering stuff on Amazon I'll definitely use it. I got burned twice with one order from two different sellers and I'm kind of done with them for a while (both out of print biology texts).

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

#78

Post by Veratyr »

toast0 wrote: post #8

It won't get your money back, but it is worthwhile to file a fraud complaint with the USPS as well. Mail fraud for $1500 is a big deal to sweep under the rug with a charge back.

Might not get the money back but might also get the sender 20 years prison and/or a fine: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1341

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

#79

Post by GVIrish »

garyfirestorm wrote: post #47
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?

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.

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

#80

Post by mikeash »

ajross wrote: post #69
mikeash wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get how this shows that "scams are hard to detect." This scam was trivial to detect. When the seller's supposed proof of delivery shows a different address, then it's not actually proof of delivery. All it would have taken to detect this was looking at the tracking info and looking at the order's shipping address and observing that they weren't the same. Yes, obviously something is terribly wrong at Amazon wh…

> This scam was trivial to detect. No, it's trivial to understand . It's simply an objective truth that it's hard to detect, given that you and I are hearing about it for the first time in August of the year 2017, when it exploits a USPS tracking data that probably hasn't changed much in 15 years or more. If it's so trivial why didn't you figure it out before? Why haven't Amazon and the post office closed the hole? W…

What do you mean, why hasn't the post office closed the hole? Are you or I misunderstanding what happened here? The post office had no problems here.

And what do you mean, "why didn't you figure it out before?" Why would I have figured anything out about this...?

Why haven't more people been scammed? How do you know they haven't?

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