Amazon Warehouse scam: 16TB HDD swapped for 8TB, returned for full refund(twitter.com)
twitter.com
Amazon Warehouse scam: 16TB HDD swapped for 8TB, returned for full refund
https://twitter.com/BlissWallpaper/status/1286419567783432193
422 comments
"But certainly I would expect accounts would accumulate warning flags and at some point be banned."
https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-style-rating-helps-bran...
Though there seems to be a bit of a conflict with such a system -- wouldn't every retailer want to say everyone is terrible, you surely don't want to deal with them, etc.
https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-style-rating-helps-bran...
Though there seems to be a bit of a conflict with such a system -- wouldn't every retailer want to say everyone is terrible, you surely don't want to deal with them, etc.
But isn’t the fact that it’s anti-retailers the whole purpose, that it holds retailers more accountable? The whole reason it’s controversial with Uber is that the drivers are more like independent contractors, rather than businesses, and as such is very stressful for them. Whereas with e-commerce, the way the retailers present themselves and operate as is much more like a proper business. Holding them more accountable here isn’t as bad as with Uber.
In this case it is retailers secretly rating customers, and sharing those ratings between each other. Retailers can and purportedly do use this to determine how to interact with you, how forgiving to be, etc.
My only real concern with it is that it kind of has the incentive for every retailer to say that every customer is terrible, in a way that ostensibly lead their competitors to treat customers worse.
My only real concern with it is that it kind of has the incentive for every retailer to say that every customer is terrible, in a way that ostensibly lead their competitors to treat customers worse.
I feel like this needs to be the top comment. Buying warehouse items is risky, that's why it's cheaper.
Also, you can just return it if you don't like.
I don't think this deserves the scrutiny it's getting here.
Also, you can just return it if you don't like.
I don't think this deserves the scrutiny it's getting here.
I'd think that it's cheaper not because it's risky (specially since Amazon says it inspects the item), but because it's second hand. Trying to pass the risk to the user is probably not what most people would expect.
You can return things if you don’t like them. A quick search shows the excuses you can give that not only allow you to return them, but get free return shipping too.
Outrage drives clicks... link has been up for 5 hours and is on the front page of HN, while other links with (probably) more worthwhile content stagnate and die. It's just how the internet works.
I got a set of Hue bulbs for less than half price (packaging was beat up, but the contents were fine), and a pair of headphones for 25% off the new price (had a cable missing). I've also had stuff arrive in _far_ worst condition than was noted on the listing. It's a bit hit and miss.
I often wonder if Amazon even inspects returns. I will often order items with listed cosmetic defects (major scratches) but receive brand new items in sealed
packaging.
This really confused me when I bought an industrial label printer from them. I didn't know what "Amazon Warehouse" was and assumed it was just a used device they used in their warehouse. Didn't get around to using the device for a couple months and it turned on but wouldn't print because the motor wouldn't turn. Too late to return it, and I won't be buying anything from warehouse any more.
I made that mistake too of not using an iPad keyboard once coronavirus began. I can’t remember if I properly used it before then or not. At best I tried it once. A few weeks ago I got around to it again and it didn’t work any more.
"But certainly I would expect accounts would accumulate warning flags and at some point be banned."
They do exactly that, but sometimes, it goes wrong. It happened to me in October 2019 and I'm still trying to get out of this nightmare.
I bought a high-end desktop for $2700 from amazon, it was shipped with a GTX 660 instead of a RTX 2080Ti! The graphic card had been swapped by the previous person and Amazon blames it on me.
- They say they checked the item before sending it, they obviously didn't
- There was no indication when buying that this item had been previously returned
- They say I did this scam several times before but I order a couple of times a year and for low value. I never returned anything
- They refuse to listen to me and consider they made a mistake. The India-based chat support is entirely useless, they keep telling me "there is nothing I can do", "so sorry", etc. I sent an email to [email protected] and they tell me "we'll not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters, and any further inquiries on this matter won't receive a response."
They do exactly that, but sometimes, it goes wrong. It happened to me in October 2019 and I'm still trying to get out of this nightmare.
I bought a high-end desktop for $2700 from amazon, it was shipped with a GTX 660 instead of a RTX 2080Ti! The graphic card had been swapped by the previous person and Amazon blames it on me.
- They say they checked the item before sending it, they obviously didn't
- There was no indication when buying that this item had been previously returned
- They say I did this scam several times before but I order a couple of times a year and for low value. I never returned anything
- They refuse to listen to me and consider they made a mistake. The India-based chat support is entirely useless, they keep telling me "there is nothing I can do", "so sorry", etc. I sent an email to [email protected] and they tell me "we'll not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters, and any further inquiries on this matter won't receive a response."
In these cases go directly to your bank or payment card provider (Visa, MasterCard, etc.). You usually have ~6 months from the day of the purchase to make chargeback request.
If you chargeback Amazon, assumedly you'll never be able to use Amazon again which seems like a pyrrhic victory at best
Just sign up with a different card. As a matter of fact, if I ever did a chargeback I would probably insist I get a new card number and maybe consider changing my address with the bank to be slightly different (maybe spell out "street", use my full zip, etc.). Might not be enough, but clearly Amazon doesn't care much about detecting fraud. And, anecdotally, I've had three different accounts over the years with various Prime promos and haven't had a problem.
If this happened to you I doubt you would ever want to use Amazon again anyway.
I did contact the bank to chargeback, still waiting on their answer.
After seeing how good customers are treated when their processes go wrong, I'm definitely never going to buy anything from them again
After seeing how good customers are treated when their processes go wrong, I'm definitely never going to buy anything from them again
The gap between the 2080ti n the 660 could be worth it....
I mean if I had to do a chargeback, honestly I probably wouldn’t ever shop with Amazon again. And I work there.
That's awful to hear. Did you try to do a chargeback?
I have had two swaps happen to me with Walmart and Amazon. Now I’ve started opening anything more than $50 or so in front of our Ring doorbell. My thinking is what you said, don’t want to seem like a scammer.
Yup, me too. I set up the iPad, tap recording and then unpack the ordered item. It's zero hassle and potentially saves a lot of discussion.
Yeah that works great. Good thinking m
Amazon definitely keeps metrics.
There was a point where I had a string of returns that bumped my overall return rate up above 30%.
I got an email saying they noticed excessive returns and would cancel my account and amazon prime If it continued.
I started doing more diligence in screening vendors I was buying from as a result (and stopped ordering as much from amazon).
There was a point where I had a string of returns that bumped my overall return rate up above 30%.
I got an email saying they noticed excessive returns and would cancel my account and amazon prime If it continued.
I started doing more diligence in screening vendors I was buying from as a result (and stopped ordering as much from amazon).
I semi-recently bought a Samsung 970 EVO from Amazon, except new (and not from a third-party seller). Instead I received a security blanket: https://i.imgur.com/DTPdhAn.jpg
The SSD box was seemingly factory sealed.
I also bought a Dyson fan recently and what came was an obviously used, yellow stained, disgustingly old model of a Dyson fan. I hopped on Live Chat, they apologized, initiated a return - few weeks later I get a semi-threatening email from Amazon telling me that the Dyson fan I sent back "wasn't sent back in its original condition" - I hopped on Live Chat and made sure everything was ok with my account (it was) - but still, ..wtf. this is a problem.
The SSD box was seemingly factory sealed.
I also bought a Dyson fan recently and what came was an obviously used, yellow stained, disgustingly old model of a Dyson fan. I hopped on Live Chat, they apologized, initiated a return - few weeks later I get a semi-threatening email from Amazon telling me that the Dyson fan I sent back "wasn't sent back in its original condition" - I hopped on Live Chat and made sure everything was ok with my account (it was) - but still, ..wtf. this is a problem.
I keep telling everyone I come across, STOP BUYING THINGS from Amazon. They know they have a huge problem and refuse to face it.
I was injured in 2010 by counterfeit toiletries and since have embargoed them completely. I'm happy to buy things from the manufacture and pay shipping, at least I know with a reasonable confidence that what I am getting is going to be the real thing.
I was injured in 2010 by counterfeit toiletries and since have embargoed them completely. I'm happy to buy things from the manufacture and pay shipping, at least I know with a reasonable confidence that what I am getting is going to be the real thing.
There need to be better indexed shopify and big cartel sites. So many great online stores I've bought from use that as a web front.
I don't think that's a solution. While I really, really like Shopify as an ecommerce platform its usage alone tells you nothing about the legitimacy of the seller. Indexing all products on a certain platform just seems like another marketplace to me.
Is the new app Shopify launched like that or not good enough?
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I have probably purchased tens of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise over a decade from Amazon and I can’t remember ever having a problem with receiving the wrong item or what I could tell was a counterfeit item.
Out of curiosity, how did a toiletry injure you?
Dioxin tainted shaving soap... Bad times.
Had no idea it wasn't legit until I started having crazy dermal issues and saw a doctor.
Paid crazy amounts to have a sample tested to see if there was anything I could do to solve it.
Had no idea it wasn't legit until I started having crazy dermal issues and saw a doctor.
Paid crazy amounts to have a sample tested to see if there was anything I could do to solve it.
Stop buying things because a small percentage of them are broken. Makes sense.
If a fucking toiletry fucks with me... are you even serious? You see nothing remotely wrong with this?
Stop buying things with high profit margin that are easily adulterated. Everything I buy passes through a filter: How profitable is it to fake this and do I care if it is?
If you can't reliably distinguish between genuine and scam vendors, yes, that makes sense.
My guess: The chat agent selected an incorrect reason for the return, causing Amazon to expect the actual item back.
Whenever possible, I always initiate the return myself to avoid customer service messing things up (there is a specific return reason "received incorrect item" in the dropdown).
Whenever possible, I always initiate the return myself to avoid customer service messing things up (there is a specific return reason "received incorrect item" in the dropdown).
Similarly I had to get a refund on a 10-pack of items when I only received a 5-pack. Months later I get an email saying I didn't return all 10 that I had ordered.
No shit, that was the problem!
No shit, that was the problem!
I once ordered a rail of Atmel Microcontrollers from Digikey. Got four 74HC00's. Called them, sent them back. And then Digikey sent the $28 bill to collections. I complained and they politely told me to fuck off.
There are scammers who will buy the item, open the shrink wrap and remove the item before rewrapping it to make it look like they never opened it. This becomes more difficult if there are security seals.
See: https://lawyerrant.wordpress.com/favorite-scams/the-empty-bo...
See: https://lawyerrant.wordpress.com/favorite-scams/the-empty-bo...
Does Amazon really maintain a database of products -> security seals and verify them when they come in?
Oh wow, I had literally the exact same thing happen to me last June: https://imgur.com/a/qzVDuJr
Now we all wonder if this is actually the same blanket ...
I propose to add some markings to these products to explore how often Amazon will try to sell the same non-product.
I propose to add some markings to these products to explore how often Amazon will try to sell the same non-product.
Years ago, when I worked as a hall tech. I'd mark certain parts that had intermittent errors, whenever I RMA'd them, so that when I got them back later, I would immediately know. Because it was SOP to replace parts until the PC worked (not every tech was particularly good at troubleshooting), parts would end up coming back pretty regularly, since there was often nothing wrong with them. But it was super frustrating to get back the motherboard you knew had a faulty dimm slot, only to see that dimm slot fail for another machine replacement.
This could be a really entertaining version of Wheresgeorge/Bookcrossing, but with returned Amazon shipments...
Unlikely to be the same blanket, as Amazon did not request that I send it back to them as I recall.
lol wow!
I know sometimes they use weight to detect if the right item is in the box. I would still expect a visual check though.
Checking weight makes sense, maybe that’s why more than one person received an emergency blanket in an ssd box. Someone discovered it weighed about the same as the ssd.
There seems to be a real problem with those Samsung SSD's on Amazon. There's quite a few reviews where people even received a fake SSD, the only thing that gives it away is the connector[0]! I decided I wouldn't take the risk and bought mine elsewhere.
[0]: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71u2ZnjYcWL...
[0]: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71u2ZnjYcWL...
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Could there be a crime ring in the factory?
A shrink wrap machine is relatively cheap and does wonders for people running these operations. Nobody is going to check inside a "factory sealed" box.
Folks were running scams like this in the 90's. I remember a friend of mine bought a hard drive from CompUSA. Turned out it was actually a brick sealed in a box.
Folks were running scams like this in the 90's. I remember a friend of mine bought a hard drive from CompUSA. Turned out it was actually a brick sealed in a box.
I don't suppose it was a MiniScribe Disk?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniScribe
> In July 1987, Jesse Parker, director of far east operations, told Wiles that something was amiss. In August, Wiles travelled to Hong Kong and Singapore where he found a complete loss of control. The inventory count from that fall showed that the numbers had grown to $15 million, mostly in Colorado. A report was prepared to consider various solutions, but Wiles suggested that they continue hiding the problem, ordering all copies of the report be destroyed. This led to the company's most infamous cover-up; the managers rented a second warehouse in Colorado, where they personally packed 26,000 bricks into hard drive boxes and shipped them to Singapore in order to shore up the inventory count. After the count was complete, they recalled those serial numbers as defective units, but instead of writing them off, they checked them into inventory, along with other failed drives that had been returned.[6]
Maybe one of the bricks made its way to a store :P
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniScribe
> In July 1987, Jesse Parker, director of far east operations, told Wiles that something was amiss. In August, Wiles travelled to Hong Kong and Singapore where he found a complete loss of control. The inventory count from that fall showed that the numbers had grown to $15 million, mostly in Colorado. A report was prepared to consider various solutions, but Wiles suggested that they continue hiding the problem, ordering all copies of the report be destroyed. This led to the company's most infamous cover-up; the managers rented a second warehouse in Colorado, where they personally packed 26,000 bricks into hard drive boxes and shipped them to Singapore in order to shore up the inventory count. After the count was complete, they recalled those serial numbers as defective units, but instead of writing them off, they checked them into inventory, along with other failed drives that had been returned.[6]
Maybe one of the bricks made its way to a store :P
Hah. This was in the mid to late 90's (possibly '96 or '97), so not one of those. I'm pretty sure it was a Western Digital drive. It had large "retail" packaging that included foam padding and extra hardware, like mounting rails for a 5.25 bay, etc.
Lol. I worked there in college and someone had the great idea to put things like hard disks and video cards on the shelf instead of behind the counter to reduce labor costs.
People ran all sorts of scams, most commonly putting a $500 video card in a $20 box. I’d catch them all of the time, but if you reported it you had a chance of losing commissions when loss prevention people interviewed you.
Solution: avoid the aisle.
The other crazy one was what we called the crime bus. A charter bus of Asian people, usually Chinese, would pull up and flood the store with like 30 people on a weekday, pinning down every employee with stupid questions. Another group would loot the aisles of hard disks, various video/other cards and certain inks. I was there for one — it was absolutely insane.
They put that stuff back behind the counter a few months later.
People ran all sorts of scams, most commonly putting a $500 video card in a $20 box. I’d catch them all of the time, but if you reported it you had a chance of losing commissions when loss prevention people interviewed you.
Solution: avoid the aisle.
The other crazy one was what we called the crime bus. A charter bus of Asian people, usually Chinese, would pull up and flood the store with like 30 people on a weekday, pinning down every employee with stupid questions. Another group would loot the aisles of hard disks, various video/other cards and certain inks. I was there for one — it was absolutely insane.
They put that stuff back behind the counter a few months later.
They'd also accept returns of software if you gave a plausible excuse. My friend would usually say one of the floppies had a read/write error, and he changed his mind.
Too bad they went broke! In the 90's, CompUSA was one of the only local places that had a large selection of computer parts.
Too bad they went broke! In the 90's, CompUSA was one of the only local places that had a large selection of computer parts.
This is why we can't have nice things like local computer stores :/
Losing the ability to rent PC games when I was about 8 rocked my world. I'll never forget the last game I ever rented, SimTown. Going to that rental store was almost as exciting as walking through a computer expo.
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Years back a coworker was telling me his scheme for buying a video card and returning it with an older model in the box. Only thing was when he opened up the box his card was already swapped with an older one by a previous customer. So he had to go back to the store and plead that he was the victim. They eventually accepted the return if he testified to the police officer (probably for an insurance claim.)
It's sad how many stories of these sorts of scams there are, even in this one thread. Retailers really get screwed, and we all pay for it.
Also, I wonder how many customers even failed to notice they wound up with an older card. Probably not all of them!
Also, I wonder how many customers even failed to notice they wound up with an older card. Probably not all of them!
It happens in enterprise space too. Over the years my team or I have caught all sorts of shady shit from resellers.
> People ran all sorts of scams, most commonly putting a $500 video card in a $20 box. I’d catch them all of the time, but if you reported it you had a chance of losing commissions when loss prevention people interviewed you.
Wait, what? The loss prevention people wanted you to not prevent loss?
Wait, what? The loss prevention people wanted you to not prevent loss?
I guess they would take away the commission for this sale and maybe question past sales?
No, they would basically interrogate you.
Sitting in some windowless office at $5.75 an hour for two hours basically cost me $100-300 in commissions from lost sales.
Those jobs were great in the 90s. One year I paid for my College tuition in the week before Christmas.
Sitting in some windowless office at $5.75 an hour for two hours basically cost me $100-300 in commissions from lost sales.
Those jobs were great in the 90s. One year I paid for my College tuition in the week before Christmas.
ahh the good old days when college tuition was actually reasonably affordable. My tuition at Texas A&M was IIRC between 1 and 3 grand a semester...
Their job isn't to prevent loss, it's to catch people.
I worked at Best Buy and Sears in the late 90’s. People tried to scam us every day.
Sears didn’t do any checks if anything. You just took your boxed up computer to the back of the store and you got your money back. It was common to pull the RAM and HD from a computer, return it for another, and then you had double the memory and drive space for free.
You couldn’t do that at Best Buy, the Tech bench (before they had the Geek Squad) would inspect your returns. If you wanted to fool us, you’d have to make it look like you never opened the boxes, and put the correct amount of patio bricks in it.
You couldn’t swap video cards or RAM, we checked the model numbers. So you’d have to take the video card over to the appliance department, slice the side of the box with a knife, remove the video card and throw the empty box in a washer or microwave. When the Voodoo 5 came out we found every single one was stolen and the boxes in a freezer that was on display.
We even had a RAM tester that would tell you the speed and size of the chips. We never got one that would do DIMMs, just SIMMs, so as the Pentium II became popular it was less useful.
Now, if you knew someone who worked at the tech bench, you could bring your home PC in for a bullshit service like a $29.99 disk defrag, and you could get it loaded up with memory, disk drives, or hell, you could just stick as many audio CD’s as you could in your tower. Just make sure the case screws are on tight when you leave, or the panel falls off along with whatever you were smuggling out, right in front of the whole store.
Lastly, there was a DEVO area towards the back of the store, basically a dumpster full of returns. I heard they got sold to the lowest bidder, stuff we couldn’t return to the manufacturer for some reason. Memory, hard drives, all kinds of random stuff would end up back there because the computer said so. Anything that could fit in a pocket, people helped themselves to.
Sears didn’t do any checks if anything. You just took your boxed up computer to the back of the store and you got your money back. It was common to pull the RAM and HD from a computer, return it for another, and then you had double the memory and drive space for free.
You couldn’t do that at Best Buy, the Tech bench (before they had the Geek Squad) would inspect your returns. If you wanted to fool us, you’d have to make it look like you never opened the boxes, and put the correct amount of patio bricks in it.
You couldn’t swap video cards or RAM, we checked the model numbers. So you’d have to take the video card over to the appliance department, slice the side of the box with a knife, remove the video card and throw the empty box in a washer or microwave. When the Voodoo 5 came out we found every single one was stolen and the boxes in a freezer that was on display.
We even had a RAM tester that would tell you the speed and size of the chips. We never got one that would do DIMMs, just SIMMs, so as the Pentium II became popular it was less useful.
Now, if you knew someone who worked at the tech bench, you could bring your home PC in for a bullshit service like a $29.99 disk defrag, and you could get it loaded up with memory, disk drives, or hell, you could just stick as many audio CD’s as you could in your tower. Just make sure the case screws are on tight when you leave, or the panel falls off along with whatever you were smuggling out, right in front of the whole store.
Lastly, there was a DEVO area towards the back of the store, basically a dumpster full of returns. I heard they got sold to the lowest bidder, stuff we couldn’t return to the manufacturer for some reason. Memory, hard drives, all kinds of random stuff would end up back there because the computer said so. Anything that could fit in a pocket, people helped themselves to.
> Nobody is going to check inside a "factory sealed" box.
I'm surprised Amazon doesn't X-ray incoming merchandise and then use Computer Vision (i.e. face tagging but for objects) to say whether what's inside the box matches what "should" be in there according to a database of SKU X-ray "fingerprints."
I'm surprised Amazon doesn't X-ray incoming merchandise and then use Computer Vision (i.e. face tagging but for objects) to say whether what's inside the box matches what "should" be in there according to a database of SKU X-ray "fingerprints."
It's probably not worth the cost. Even though the numbers would seem large to us, at their scale it's probably not.
If theY ignore fraud the fraudsters will naturally increase their activity.
A percentage is a percentage...
A penny is a percentage of a dollar, a hundred dollars, and a thousand dollars.
That percentage matters less the smaller it gets.
That percentage matters less the smaller it gets.
So, that is why I thought they put in a security blanket inside the SSD box.
Maybe some rudimentary thermal imagery, and that is the method?
Maybe some rudimentary thermal imagery, and that is the method?
It's probably more about weight, size, and convenience. SSDs don't weigh much. Neither do blankets and that one probably fits in the SSD box without any hassle.
Electronics on Amazon in general seems to be a hit-or-miss made worse by inventory commingling. Recently bought a PS4 controller from Amazon (purportedly from Sony). Did not last 3 months. The original controller I got with the PS4 itself still works great after more than 2 years.
Interesting. I tore one down recently. It was a gift for my nephew but didn't work out of the box. Well, it did "work", as in, it identified as genuine controller; had all "real stuff" look, but buttons skipped, lagged, or just didn't work.
The insides revealed a mix of genuine components (probably off of scrap?) and an assembly-line quality bodge-work. (I didn't take any pictures, but I still have it -- so I can post some pictures if anyone's interested.)
The insides revealed a mix of genuine components (probably off of scrap?) and an assembly-line quality bodge-work. (I didn't take any pictures, but I still have it -- so I can post some pictures if anyone's interested.)
Certainly would like to see this also;
Would be quite good content to let other places know too - hackaday for example.
Would be quite good content to let other places know too - hackaday for example.
I took a few pictures and uploaded them here [1].
I recall that I'd already de-soldered a few components (for the salvage-drawer!) and cleaned the awful flux residues so the my pictures look much cleaner than how it was when I opened it [2].
It still turns on though, so I might end up doing more digging into it. I'd add whatever I find in the repo soon.
Hope that this is useful for "reasons"!
[1] https://github.com/prashnts/mods/tree/master/devices/dubious...
[2] https://github.com/prashnts/mods/blob/master/devices/dubious...
I recall that I'd already de-soldered a few components (for the salvage-drawer!) and cleaned the awful flux residues so the my pictures look much cleaner than how it was when I opened it [2].
It still turns on though, so I might end up doing more digging into it. I'd add whatever I find in the repo soon.
Hope that this is useful for "reasons"!
[1] https://github.com/prashnts/mods/tree/master/devices/dubious...
[2] https://github.com/prashnts/mods/blob/master/devices/dubious...
Unfortunately I suspect everything on Amazon is unreliable now, we just notice technology item issues first because we know them better.
Not necessarily; tech items have huge margins compared to raw materials cost, most of the expense is design and QC. Binned/inferior components marked as the genuine article are worth counterfeiting in a way that other items aren't, besides the other known exceptions (e.g. fashion items)
Does anyone know if "Shipped from and sold by Amazon.com" still guarantees not co-mingled inventory?
That's been my one line of defense against knockoffs after hearing in the past that was the case. Whereas an item that's "Sold by Sony and fulfilled by Amazon.com" will pay Sony for the sale but might actually use co-mingled inventory that came from a fraudulent seller.
I guess neither of them address the problem in the article though which is now a new source of issues I didn't know I needed to be looking out for, of getting a return which may have been tampered with or swapped out instead of a brand new product.
That's been my one line of defense against knockoffs after hearing in the past that was the case. Whereas an item that's "Sold by Sony and fulfilled by Amazon.com" will pay Sony for the sale but might actually use co-mingled inventory that came from a fraudulent seller.
I guess neither of them address the problem in the article though which is now a new source of issues I didn't know I needed to be looking out for, of getting a return which may have been tampered with or swapped out instead of a brand new product.
Did that ever guarantee you wouldn't get commingled inventory? The only guarantee I know is to buy amazon basics products. Unfortunately using this as a strategy to guarantee a minimum quality provides perverse incentives.
As of a few years ago even "Shipped from and sold by Amazon.com" resulted in comingled inventory for me. I was unable to purchase a new Sony phone without getting some other seller's comingled inventory. Which was problematic since that seller incorrectly labeled Hong Kong versions of the phone as US versions.
I bought gilette razors from Amazon and really was convinced Gilette was going downhill. Nope. They were probably counterfeits.
Wow. I thought the explanation was that also they were going downhill after my 5 year hiatus from shaving. This is a plausible explanation.
So what do you think actually happened here? Was the controller a really good counterfeit, or was it real but used? In the latter case, did it show signs of wear?
Yeah, there are fake PlayStation controllers floating around. Sony issued a warning about fake PS3 controllers a while back: https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/legal/warning-counterfeit-...
Definitely a really good counterfeit.
My brother has the opposite problem. He ordered a pan and got a very expensive Samsung SSD — 3 times.
I would like to have that problem, which pan is it?
That's probably not a scam, and due to something like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22285099
What a terrible problem! What's the pan?
I got a paperlike screen protector from Amazon warehouse. When it arrived it had obviously been ripped off another iPad Pro and set on the floor. There was a pubic/pet/?? Hair under it and it was obviously unusable. Of course it still had the factory inspected seal though bc amazon drones dgaf.
Amazon did refund, but made me resend the item rather than throwing in the trash. Proof: https://photos.app.goo.gl/f1jxjvooWAPVuh4DA
Amazon did refund, but made me resend the item rather than throwing in the trash. Proof: https://photos.app.goo.gl/f1jxjvooWAPVuh4DA
> Of course it still had the factory inspected seal though bc amazon drones dgaf.
Given the purported working conditions in their warehouses, is it that much of a surprise?
Given the purported working conditions in their warehouses, is it that much of a surprise?
Even ignoring the horrible working conditions in Amazon warehouses, this is not a problem we can reasonably expect the warehouse staff to solve or even approach in any meaningful way. They have absolutely no power over Amazon's internal problems. Amazon will simply fire warehouse staff if they take too long fulfilling orders because they're questioning the legitimacy of items in the warehouse.
People who shop Amazon really don’t care about the people who work there. Only they stuff they buy.
I was worried about getting ripped when I bought my last Samsung, so I ordered directly from their site. I don't think they use Amazon for fulfillment (unlike Anker), and all was well. Every time I order something from Anker, I worry about getting hosed.
This could have been a warehouse error. I would err on the side of warehouse error. A real fraud would have sent you a brick or a worthless tile of the same dimension and weight.
Isn't this just "cost of doing business" for a company of Amazon's size? Like sure, this does happen but at what rate?
For the most part I do not buy anything other than media from Amazon any more - books, Kindle, CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, games, and of course streaming. One notable exception is the Amazon Basics range of cables where I tend to go a little nuts. Again, for the most part, these are the things they were originally good for in the 90s and early noughties; these are the things they're still good for now. Everything else is Russian roulette.
In the late noughties/early onesies I went through this period where I realised I could just buy anything I wanted that wasn't food from Amazon, and it was briefly great. However, they have had a huge problem with counterfeit, poor quality, seconds, and reconditioned goods for a number of years now. If you need thing X you're much better buying it from a specialist retailer, direct from the manufacturer or - depending on what it is - even from eBay, Gumtree (or its US equivalent Craigslist), particularly for used items.
Avoid Amazon like the plague for non-media items.
In the late noughties/early onesies I went through this period where I realised I could just buy anything I wanted that wasn't food from Amazon, and it was briefly great. However, they have had a huge problem with counterfeit, poor quality, seconds, and reconditioned goods for a number of years now. If you need thing X you're much better buying it from a specialist retailer, direct from the manufacturer or - depending on what it is - even from eBay, Gumtree (or its US equivalent Craigslist), particularly for used items.
Avoid Amazon like the plague for non-media items.
Honestly I’m not even sure Amazon is a particularly good place to get books anymore. Amazon made it possible for publishers to make out-of-print works widely “available” but when you order such a book you might get one from the original run (printed with offset printing to a generally high standard), or you might get a “print on demand” book with terrible quality with vague, feathered letter shapes and plates which look like they came out of an inkjet printer running low on ink.
Apparently Amazon’s own print on demand service produces high quality books but it is impossible to know what sort of book you are getting until it arrives.
Apparently Amazon’s own print on demand service produces high quality books but it is impossible to know what sort of book you are getting until it arrives.
Amazon is no longer capable of packing books. They just toss them in a box with some of that crumpled paper and by the time it gets to you all the corners are smashed in from sloshing around in shipping.
You could complain about the packaging, but it’s not quite as easy as using their app to take a photo. I’ll note last time I ordered a book from Amazon.com for international shipping to Canada, it arrived in the pressure-tight cardboard packaging I expected.
I ordered an audio CD set from Amazon.jp and it arrived faster than it would by US ground and the packaging was flawless, with Apple-esque plastic attached to the easy-open cardboard to keep every corner perfectly sharp.
So... it varies by region?
Or I’ve gotten lucky, n=1 ;-)
(Aside: that’s the annoying part about Amazon, 9 times out of 10 it’s exactly what you expected but then there’s that one time, maybe you buy something you wouldn’t normally, or the box is mostly empty, or the item’s serial number is invalid, and... you really don’t know what you’re going to get sometimes. And Amazon doesn’t make it easy to report it, it’s simply not something they visibly care about...)
I ordered an audio CD set from Amazon.jp and it arrived faster than it would by US ground and the packaging was flawless, with Apple-esque plastic attached to the easy-open cardboard to keep every corner perfectly sharp.
So... it varies by region?
Or I’ve gotten lucky, n=1 ;-)
(Aside: that’s the annoying part about Amazon, 9 times out of 10 it’s exactly what you expected but then there’s that one time, maybe you buy something you wouldn’t normally, or the box is mostly empty, or the item’s serial number is invalid, and... you really don’t know what you’re going to get sometimes. And Amazon doesn’t make it easy to report it, it’s simply not something they visibly care about...)
Is there another good place to get out-of-print books? Or are you saying that for current books, a brick-and-mortar store is best, and for out-of-print, rolling the dice with Amazon is better than nothing?
Try Powells https://www.powells.com/
I have used addall.com in the past. Its a meta search of all the major online book stores.
I'd recommend abebooks.com. Everything I've received has been in great shape and since it is media mail shipping is free or at most a dollar (for normal sized books that it, I haven't bought text books).
I don't know if you realize, but abebooks are a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon: https://www.abebooks.com/about -- so this is like protesting Facebook by setting up an Instagram account.
Wow thanks for that! I didn't know and was happily using them for some time now.
Use www.bookfinder4u.com and evaluate sellers case-by-case.
There are even stories of amazon selling fake books... Their way of acquiring themselves and of course intermingling goods makes the whole of amazon hard to trust.
In Europe a number of companies (most notably shoe company Birkenstock) are refusing to sell on amazon due to them mixing fake and real products and the producer gets the losses AND takes the commercial and reputational hit when things go wrong.
In Europe a number of companies (most notably shoe company Birkenstock) are refusing to sell on amazon due to them mixing fake and real products and the producer gets the losses AND takes the commercial and reputational hit when things go wrong.
I bought a couple DVDs from Amazon last year and they'd clearly been used before. One was so scratched up I couldn't get it to play.
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Same thing happened to me with RAM. Security blanket instead of the RAM. The package had a similar graphic but was a completely different size.
It was the single most frustrating customer service experience of my life. The return was a nightmare but it wasn’t because of the counterfeit. Some weird glitch with the return label and a terrible call center employee.
It was the single most frustrating customer service experience of my life. The return was a nightmare but it wasn’t because of the counterfeit. Some weird glitch with the return label and a terrible call center employee.
These stories amaze me. I'm not saying they're not true, I believe you're having these experiences. I just stunned because the worst thing that happened to me with Amazon lately is their in-house delivery service has a bad track record of losing things, but I still get it in the end. I rarely have a problem with Amazon orders. Weird.
This is why I refuse to pre-pay for high value items. I will wait for the delivery guy, inspect the item myself, then pay if everything is alright.
This happened to me recently with what was supposed to be an 8GB Raspi 4 in a seemingly factory sealed box.
I was trying to figure out how it was swapped, and assuming the original packaging was used, it looked like the glue of one flap may have been slit open with a box cutter and then resealed with low viscosity adhesive.
It probably also wouldn't be hard to scan an unfolded box and then print it with an altered barcode on some light container board or card stock, just a lot more effort.
I was trying to figure out how it was swapped, and assuming the original packaging was used, it looked like the glue of one flap may have been slit open with a box cutter and then resealed with low viscosity adhesive.
It probably also wouldn't be hard to scan an unfolded box and then print it with an altered barcode on some light container board or card stock, just a lot more effort.
I recall seeing youtube videos about people who purchased pallets of returned items from Amazon. Kind of an "unboxing" video for a huge stack of returned items. Yes I was bored.
They had a few similar scenarios where people had clearly purchased expensive computer components like motherboards etc and then returned the box with some worthless motherboard in there instead of the expensive one. You can imagine some poor Amazon warehouse worker receiving the package, opening it up and seeing the motherboard "yup - looks like some computer gubbins. approved." and off it goes.
The video people seemed to react like this was quite a common occurrence.
So this makes me wonder, if amazon are bundling-up returned items into pallets and selling them in bulk, how did clearly returned items get sold back to an end user? Frankly I am amazed the scammer went to the effort of putting in a 8TB device and connecting it, rather than either returning it empty or with some random old IDE drive in it as a decoy.
They had a few similar scenarios where people had clearly purchased expensive computer components like motherboards etc and then returned the box with some worthless motherboard in there instead of the expensive one. You can imagine some poor Amazon warehouse worker receiving the package, opening it up and seeing the motherboard "yup - looks like some computer gubbins. approved." and off it goes.
The video people seemed to react like this was quite a common occurrence.
So this makes me wonder, if amazon are bundling-up returned items into pallets and selling them in bulk, how did clearly returned items get sold back to an end user? Frankly I am amazed the scammer went to the effort of putting in a 8TB device and connecting it, rather than either returning it empty or with some random old IDE drive in it as a decoy.
> So this makes me wonder, if amazon are bundling-up returned items into pallets and selling them in bulk, how did clearly returned items get sold back to an end user?
If the item is (looks) unopened and pristine, Amazon will usually sell it again as new.
Some switcharoos are caught, some are not.
If the item is (looks) unopened and pristine, Amazon will usually sell it again as new.
Some switcharoos are caught, some are not.
They could catch it multiples ways. Simple precise weight measurement would catch basic scammers. They could X-ray the package and use cv to determine if the contents have been modified or not.
Xray + CV will fail horribly when the device is sent back with the power cable wrapped around it...
The reference was to shrink wrapped(unopened) returns. If it’s open, employees could do a manual inspection.
Why automate? Pay someone to open the box and check.
Cost of multiple shifts at multiple locations + cost of implementing verification process + cost of security and oversight + cost of extra inventory loss due to employee theft
vs
Cost of negative image (deferred via simple returns) + cost of inventory loss duo to fraud + cost of inventory loss due to employees
It's simpler to simply eat the cost of abuse.
vs
Cost of negative image (deferred via simple returns) + cost of inventory loss duo to fraud + cost of inventory loss due to employees
It's simpler to simply eat the cost of abuse.
And now the (possibly fake) security seal is definitely broken, so "probably new" becomes "definitely used"
> If the item is (looks) unopened and pristine, Amazon will usually sell it again as new.
This is a big reason I stopped purchasing most goods from Amazon.
I was tired of getting open-box merch sold as brand new.
This is a big reason I stopped purchasing most goods from Amazon.
I was tired of getting open-box merch sold as brand new.
Isnt this mass fraud being committed by amazon then?
I'm no legal expert, but I imagine it would be very difficult to prove that Amazon is committing fraud.
In Washington State, Fraud has a very specific meaning, and requires me (the victim) to prove 9 elements of fraud.
These elements include proving Amazon intentionally mislead me by stating false facts, and that as a result of the fraud, I suffered damages.
As other threads have mentioned, the sheer scale at which Amazon operates means they deal with logistical issues differently than other retailers. To ensure 100% rate for returns would increase the cost to Amazon, which would either be eaten by the company, or passed along to the consumer.
In Washington State, Fraud has a very specific meaning, and requires me (the victim) to prove 9 elements of fraud.
These elements include proving Amazon intentionally mislead me by stating false facts, and that as a result of the fraud, I suffered damages.
As other threads have mentioned, the sheer scale at which Amazon operates means they deal with logistical issues differently than other retailers. To ensure 100% rate for returns would increase the cost to Amazon, which would either be eaten by the company, or passed along to the consumer.
You've described the process: When the Vendor misses the bogus return, it's sent back to another sales bin, and resold. Next, the Customer accepts it, or returns it again. At this point, the loop should exit, but we already know the Vendor is imperfect. I've wondered how often this iterate before exiting. The worst case is fun to speculate on, since both are motivated to pass that hot potato.
Those bundles are liquidation pallets where, for whatever reason, Amazon decide they want to sell the stock for cash. It doesn't mean every returned item will be liquidated in that fashion.
This reminds me of how a friend (as a teenager in the 90s) would buy expensive video cards from Best Buy and CompUSA only to swap them out with cheap cards off eBay, re-shrink wrap the box and return for a hefty profit. I thought it was a clever, profitable hack at 16 years old but now I’m ashamed I didn’t just call this what it was: theft.
Fry's electronics when I was there was a victim of that. Fry's management in their heydays (before newegg, amazon) gave the directive to open boxes, even when these boxes appear new, during the return-process. This is the result of lessons.
Hopefully, Amazon will learn it or make it a problem for the vendors.
Hopefully, Amazon will learn it or make it a problem for the vendors.
At least they were doing something about it. In my younger days working retail at CompUSA, I once pointed out that a customer was attempting to return a cheaper video card in a better video card's box.
I got in trouble (not much trouble, but still) for making the customer unhappy :/.
I got in trouble (not much trouble, but still) for making the customer unhappy :/.
The managers were annoyed at you for a while? How did it end
Oh, the ending wasn't super interesting. I was telling the customer that I wasn't going to process the return, they asked to get a manager - and when I obliged, the manager sided with the customer and chided me a little after they left. That's pretty much the end of it, I don't recall it coming up after that one day.
I recall people doing this but just putting a NIC in there and returning it to Best Buy. The Geek Squad employee would open the box to verify a card was in there, but wouldn’t know what it should look like and would accept a $15 NIC in place of a $200 video card.
Fry's is the only retailer I have been to where an LP associate insisted on opening up a product I just bought new to inspect it. Yep, its a rice cooker, I should have went over to returns to return it as its condition changed from new to open box before I left the store.
too bad fry's is done for. despite the problems, i miss them now.
towards the end, ie the last few years, when i brought an expensive-ish item to the counter, or more often when they brought it out of the cage for me to complete the purchase, i'd open the item at the counter in front of the cashier. 100% of the time the cashier would balk "hey you can't do that" (i hadn't paid yet), which is of course stupid to say. i just needed to verify that the item was new and also not a 52-switcheroo, as we used to call it.
recently (2019-2020) i've bought 2 damaged high end products from best buy. outer box perfect, inner product damaged. luckily BB is like amazon and has complete no-hassle returns.
more longer ago i've received a few duds from ebay and other non-amazon retail merchants. smaller value things i just write off but some of the bigger ones it's been painful getting the rep to take it back. the next time i do such a purchase i am setting up a camera to do an unboxing video.
towards the end, ie the last few years, when i brought an expensive-ish item to the counter, or more often when they brought it out of the cage for me to complete the purchase, i'd open the item at the counter in front of the cashier. 100% of the time the cashier would balk "hey you can't do that" (i hadn't paid yet), which is of course stupid to say. i just needed to verify that the item was new and also not a 52-switcheroo, as we used to call it.
recently (2019-2020) i've bought 2 damaged high end products from best buy. outer box perfect, inner product damaged. luckily BB is like amazon and has complete no-hassle returns.
more longer ago i've received a few duds from ebay and other non-amazon retail merchants. smaller value things i just write off but some of the bigger ones it's been painful getting the rep to take it back. the next time i do such a purchase i am setting up a camera to do an unboxing video.
Yep I just said above I’ve started opening any non cheap purchase in front of a Ring doorbell. Have a scissor in a hidden spot above front door on the outside so I don’t get too lazy and bring the unopened box inside.
I’ve only done it twice so far after getting really bad luck and back to back swapped items in May.
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On the other hand, my friend who sells on eBay frequently said even if I film myself packing up, sealing, and giving the same box to UPS or post office, EBay and PayPal (if they’re still doing eBay stuff) probably won’t care and side with buyer still.
I’ve only done it twice so far after getting really bad luck and back to back swapped items in May.
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On the other hand, my friend who sells on eBay frequently said even if I film myself packing up, sealing, and giving the same box to UPS or post office, EBay and PayPal (if they’re still doing eBay stuff) probably won’t care and side with buyer still.
Should have? Just because 'floor model/return' and 'only the box was touched' fall under the same umbrella doesn't mean you should treat them the same.
A discount would be unreasonable, and getting your money back wouldn't improve your situation at all. Unless that was some kind of collector's item rice cooker.
A discount would be unreasonable, and getting your money back wouldn't improve your situation at all. Unless that was some kind of collector's item rice cooker.
No, you should have said "No thank you, have a great day" and keep on walking. You already bought the item and you have no duty to them for anything further.
(I do this at any store that checks receipts, except for Costco, because I don't want to risk them revoking my membership. Never had a problem.)
(I do this at any store that checks receipts, except for Costco, because I don't want to risk them revoking my membership. Never had a problem.)
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, but I also don't know why anyone would stand in a line to leave a store. Just say no thanks and walk past them, like every other unwanted solicitation.
> Yep, its a rice cooker
A rice cooker is a cylindrical item that usually comes in a rectangular box that leaves empty room in the corners. The LP associate was checking for additional unpurchased items in the box, not that you were getting a rice cooker.
A rice cooker is a cylindrical item that usually comes in a rectangular box that leaves empty room in the corners. The LP associate was checking for additional unpurchased items in the box, not that you were getting a rice cooker.
And you could have stuffed something quite expensive inside the rice cooker
It was a sealed box.
There may have been some inside theft / collusion going on with employees.
Example: Employee takes a rice cooker off the shelf, puts high value electronics (memory, processors, etc) inside, reseals it with shrink wrap. He tells his friend on the outside to buy the rice cooker to smuggle it out. They then split the proceeds.
This probably goes on for weeks until the store wonders why they're suddenly selling so many rice cookers, but are already running low on Pentium Pros and 32 meg SIMMs.
Example: Employee takes a rice cooker off the shelf, puts high value electronics (memory, processors, etc) inside, reseals it with shrink wrap. He tells his friend on the outside to buy the rice cooker to smuggle it out. They then split the proceeds.
This probably goes on for weeks until the store wonders why they're suddenly selling so many rice cookers, but are already running low on Pentium Pros and 32 meg SIMMs.
So, what your saying is I should expect being treated like this, after I have purchased the product, thus making it my property.
I will go ahead and just go over to returns next time and go somewhere else.
I will go ahead and just go over to returns next time and go somewhere else.
I'm just guessing. I don't work in retail but I'm sure all sorts of scams happen, ones we can't even imagine. Was this recent?
Yes, they are like that. However, it is mandatory for the LP to check any thing that an employee has bought. They also check lunch bags, boxes. One time, LP caught an employee who stuffed his lunch bag with lots of DVDs.
Other time, the LP manager and the customer service manager (who manages the front checkouts and cash) got colluded, and switched the direction of the camera near the cash counting area; then $10K cash was gone. Both managers got fired.
Another incident. One LP associate and another guy at the return counter ran a scam together by issuing store credit for things that are NOT returned. For every return there, LP associate has to sign off.
Other time, the LP manager and the customer service manager (who manages the front checkouts and cash) got colluded, and switched the direction of the camera near the cash counting area; then $10K cash was gone. Both managers got fired.
Another incident. One LP associate and another guy at the return counter ran a scam together by issuing store credit for things that are NOT returned. For every return there, LP associate has to sign off.
I think it's pretty obvious Amazon has done the math and determined it's not worth their time to do anything about it.
>Hopefully, Amazon will learn it or make it a problem for the vendors.
The problem is, it'd be trivial for someone with a sticker printer to slam a new label on the drive, saying 16TB. It'd be quite unrealistic to have Amazon own the tools and perform QA testing on all the millions of items on their site. You see a similar problem with knock off headphones, even plugging them in and listening to a song wouldn't be enough to find most fakes.
I think the only real solution is this to be fixed at the government level. At the moment it's too expensive and risky to go after customers, even when Amazon can determine they are running this scam. Either you get drawn into a legal battle trying to prove it, or you get labeled as evil Amazon going after the innocent little guy in the media. It's easiest for Amazon to just raise prices 1% and call it a day. Which is what Walmart does for theft/return fraud as well, and likely every company in the U.S.
There needs to be a law that makes it easy for Amazon (and other companies) to go "this account was found to have returned different merchandise 5 times, they need to pay $xxxx fine" and it to be done. But if even if one of these cases go to trial, it'd be at least a $5000 expense to Amazon.
As long as this is impossible in our legal system, these scammers will continue to thrive.
The problem is, it'd be trivial for someone with a sticker printer to slam a new label on the drive, saying 16TB. It'd be quite unrealistic to have Amazon own the tools and perform QA testing on all the millions of items on their site. You see a similar problem with knock off headphones, even plugging them in and listening to a song wouldn't be enough to find most fakes.
I think the only real solution is this to be fixed at the government level. At the moment it's too expensive and risky to go after customers, even when Amazon can determine they are running this scam. Either you get drawn into a legal battle trying to prove it, or you get labeled as evil Amazon going after the innocent little guy in the media. It's easiest for Amazon to just raise prices 1% and call it a day. Which is what Walmart does for theft/return fraud as well, and likely every company in the U.S.
There needs to be a law that makes it easy for Amazon (and other companies) to go "this account was found to have returned different merchandise 5 times, they need to pay $xxxx fine" and it to be done. But if even if one of these cases go to trial, it'd be at least a $5000 expense to Amazon.
As long as this is impossible in our legal system, these scammers will continue to thrive.
Your solution is for a private company to be able to levy fines against people without having to prove anything in court? That seems worse than the current system.
My solution is somehow a system is put in place where when providing overwhelming evidence, a company can avoid a lawsuit that could easily cost 10s of thousands of dollars, and at the very least, five thousand (if they have to show up at all, that is very much not free).
It's a hard problem to solve, that's why people talk about it so much.
It's a hard problem to solve, that's why people talk about it so much.
What will evaluate whether the evidence is overwhelming or not? There's a reason we have courts.
No one goes after doorstep package thieves, why would they crack down on this?
> It'd be quite unrealistic to have Amazon own the tools and perform QA testing on all the millions of items on their site. You see a similar problem with knock off headphones, even plugging them in and listening to a song wouldn't be enough to find most fakes.
If amazon doesnt have capacity to verify products they are selling, they shouldnt be selling them. They are knowingly contributing to fraud and we write it off as "they're too big to regulate themselves"
If amazon doesnt have capacity to verify products they are selling, they shouldnt be selling them. They are knowingly contributing to fraud and we write it off as "they're too big to regulate themselves"
So should most customer returns just go to a landfill?
Returns are sold in pallets to resellers who accept the risk. But amazon shouldnt be selling returns if they can't or haven't verified the item is correct and functional.
The solution is don't buy expensive sensitive equipment at a flea market like Amazon.
> At the moment it's too expensive and risky to go after customers, even when Amazon can determine they are running this scam.
Amazon could very easily prevent future returns from these customers, preventing them from running the scam.
Amazon could very easily prevent future returns from these customers, preventing them from running the scam.
X-ray plus machine learning could probably solve that problem quite effectively.
Or tamper-resistant RFID tags attached directly to the product.
Or tamper-resistant RFID tags attached directly to the product.
Used to work at Computer City in the mid 90s. It was not always that easy to verify if you had the right product in the box even when opening a returned item, especially if you were not familiar with the product being returned. Looking things up on the internet was not always possible / slow.
Every store did have a shrink wrap machine which were used nightly. Hard to say how many improperly returned products were resold back then, or even how many goods may have been repackaged in the back warehouse on reception before ever hitting the floor.
Every store did have a shrink wrap machine which were used nightly. Hard to say how many improperly returned products were resold back then, or even how many goods may have been repackaged in the back warehouse on reception before ever hitting the floor.
A very common tactic during the period when video cards were improving rapidly was to buy a card, use it for six months, and then return it and buy the newer one.
Rinse and repeat.
For a while a lot of these electronics retailers had a zero question policy, but when they moved to asking "Why?", people would proudly talk about ruining the card with 120v to justify the return.
There are ways that people can rationalize these gaming of the system behaviors, but it just seems to be a descent to crapitude, where every retailer treats every return as a crime, because often it really is.
Rinse and repeat.
For a while a lot of these electronics retailers had a zero question policy, but when they moved to asking "Why?", people would proudly talk about ruining the card with 120v to justify the return.
There are ways that people can rationalize these gaming of the system behaviors, but it just seems to be a descent to crapitude, where every retailer treats every return as a crime, because often it really is.
> There are ways that people can rationalize these gaming of the system behaviors, but it just seems to be a descent to crapitude, where every retailer treats every return as a crime, because often it really is.
I do wonder where the line is, though.
I didn't have a PS3 growing up, but I wanted to play Uncharted and a few other games when I was in High School. Game rentals were long gone by then, much less console rentals—but I realized that Gamestop had a 7-day return policy on used hardware.
So one year, during spring break, I bought a used PS3 and copies of Uncharted 2 and 3. I didn't manage to finish the latter in time, but I still enjoyed myself.
I am to this day convinced I did nothing wrong. The console was used both before and after purchase, and I took good care of the hardware and followed the written return policy. And in the process, I bought multiple non-returnable games from the store.
But I was definitely taking advantage of the return policy, since I had no intention of holding on to the console.
I do wonder where the line is, though.
I didn't have a PS3 growing up, but I wanted to play Uncharted and a few other games when I was in High School. Game rentals were long gone by then, much less console rentals—but I realized that Gamestop had a 7-day return policy on used hardware.
So one year, during spring break, I bought a used PS3 and copies of Uncharted 2 and 3. I didn't manage to finish the latter in time, but I still enjoyed myself.
I am to this day convinced I did nothing wrong. The console was used both before and after purchase, and I took good care of the hardware and followed the written return policy. And in the process, I bought multiple non-returnable games from the store.
But I was definitely taking advantage of the return policy, since I had no intention of holding on to the console.
I think you're good. Gamestop was never on the high end of the integrity debate.
"oh you have a game that was $60 12 months ago? Here's $2 and I'll put that on the shelf for $57"
"oh you have a game that was $60 12 months ago? Here's $2 and I'll put that on the shelf for $57"
But that doesn't seem like a great way to make decisions, right? "It's okay to screw over this store because I don't like Other Thing X that they're doing."
I have a friend who regularly buys items on Amazon, uses them for a couple of years and then returns them just before the warranty expires because of "dead pixels" or some other excuse, and gets a full refund.
That is so mean.
Meanwhile I got a new Galaxy S9+ (not in USA obv.) which was broken from day 1 and couldn't get it replaced without suing the store and that would take years. I had to get a brand new phone serviced instead (battery, motherboard). And maybe it wasn't water resistant anymore after being opened.
World isn't fair. :(
Meanwhile I got a new Galaxy S9+ (not in USA obv.) which was broken from day 1 and couldn't get it replaced without suing the store and that would take years. I had to get a brand new phone serviced instead (battery, motherboard). And maybe it wasn't water resistant anymore after being opened.
World isn't fair. :(
find better friends
There are some products that are so unreliable that I have zero sympathy for the company that's reaping what they sow with the warranty. I have a personal electric heater that has a two year warranty but refuses to last a winter. Like it just sits in my bedroom living a cushy life as far as heaters go. But I'm on my 3rd replacement and they keep re-upping the warranty and so I'll probably get a new one every year at this point.
I'm not surprised this can be abused - I emailed Amazon a few years ago about a pair of headphones asking if they could do anything as the manufacturer wouldn't honour the warranty (part of the serial number was illegible IIRC), 18 months after purchase (they had a two year warranty). I was expecting them to, at best, send a replacement. They sent me a full refund before I'd even sent the item back, even though the price of the item had dropped in the mean time.
I had the same thing happen with a Canon 50mm lens, I was starting out with photography and thought I was just bad, until I realized two years later that the lens would not focus properly, and never did. After testing it, I told Amazon, and they asked me to send the lens back and sent me a full refund.
In my case, the product was legitimately broken ever since I bought it, but I dislike people abusing the system.
In my case, the product was legitimately broken ever since I bought it, but I dislike people abusing the system.
>now I’m ashamed I didn’t just call this what it was: theft.
Isn't it technically fraud?
Isn't it technically fraud?
Theft: dishonestly appropriating something, with the intent of permanently depriving the owner.
He dishonestly took the item. He had no intent of giving it back.
He dishonestly took the item. He had no intent of giving it back.
It's technically both - theft by defrauding.
Possibly both theft and fraud
My father was a victim to that type of fraud.
You could write a check to Best Buy (have it delivered via an attorney to protect your identity) and make good on your theft. It's too late for CompUSA--you already put them out of business.
> your theft
> you already
It was their friend, not them.
> you already
It was their friend, not them.
That's why Fry's Electronics--a bay area retailer--scans the serial numbers of hard drives, DIMM memory and other electronic stuff. During the return process, Fry's employees check the serial number of the returned item against what's there in the receipt. This strategy was born precisely because of the scam that Amazon is seeing now.
But here an internal component was swapped. The serial number on the product was unchanged.
I've never seen a receipt list any serial number, let alone serial numbers of multiple internal components.
I've never seen a receipt list any serial number, let alone serial numbers of multiple internal components.
At least Fry's electronics used to TEST memory sticks, motherboards, CPUs in front of customers during the return process. I knew cases where customers tried to return CPUs with bent pins, and their returns were denied.
IIRC, Fry's did not test hard disks, except to match the serial numbers. So, now this scam requires testing of hard drives of their capacity during the return process. And this is a cat-and-mouse game.
IIRC, Fry's did not test hard disks, except to match the serial numbers. So, now this scam requires testing of hard drives of their capacity during the return process. And this is a cat-and-mouse game.
I feel like the testing was more of a way to 1. try to avoid the return by proving it worked and 2. put it right back out on the shelf for sell. Actually picked up some good deals in the good days of Frys from returns. It's a shame they're nothing more than an as seen on tv store these days.
First, they used to put these reshrink-wrapped items back on the shelves without any labels. Few years later, they started to put the label "Returned item".
Fry's is dead, as their HQ on Brokaw Road is being converted to an office complex. They missed the dot com gravy train; had they gone to IPO around 1999, they would have made a killing. However, Fry's brothers and their management are weird.
Fry's is dead, as their HQ on Brokaw Road is being converted to an office complex. They missed the dot com gravy train; had they gone to IPO around 1999, they would have made a killing. However, Fry's brothers and their management are weird.
oh is it? last i knew there were 3 bids over the last year or os, all unable to get through re-zoning. The last news I heard was april 2020 and it is still stuck.
do you know something very recent, or are you going on vaporware press releases.
do you know something very recent, or are you going on vaporware press releases.
Nothing new, just that April 2020 news. Fry's done for now thanks to Covid. It was slowly dying before that.
Here are some facts: (a) most of the shelves are empty; (b) shelves between two shelves are removed, to make it appear business as usual; (c) vendors were not getting paid by Frys; (d) therefore, any decent vendor doesn't want to send them items on credit; (e) so, Fry's is left with the junk we see on TVs.
In some aspects, I miss Fry's. Fry's used to hire all kinds of people, gave jobs to new immigrants without English skills. Now we such people driving Uber, Lyft.
Here are some facts: (a) most of the shelves are empty; (b) shelves between two shelves are removed, to make it appear business as usual; (c) vendors were not getting paid by Frys; (d) therefore, any decent vendor doesn't want to send them items on credit; (e) so, Fry's is left with the junk we see on TVs.
In some aspects, I miss Fry's. Fry's used to hire all kinds of people, gave jobs to new immigrants without English skills. Now we such people driving Uber, Lyft.
There's basically no way to stop a consumer returning something, no matter what state they got it in or what state it's in now.
Any discussion about how it was when it was sold is their word against yours.
Ultimately they can just charge-back. Short of taking them to court, what are you going to do about that?
It's important for consumer rights though.
Any discussion about how it was when it was sold is their word against yours.
Ultimately they can just charge-back. Short of taking them to court, what are you going to do about that?
It's important for consumer rights though.
> Ultimately they can just charge-back. Short of taking them to court, what are you going to do about that?
Refuse to sell to customers who make too many returns, apparently.
Refuse to sell to customers who make too many returns, apparently.
On the WD external drives, the serial number on the case matches the serial number on the drive inside. Once you get a couple complaints from either WD corporate returns or customers you sold the returned product to, I'd expect returns to be checked for this --- especially if there looked opened, but it takes a minute to power on and ask the disk for its serial number. You can check the smart pre-failure indicators too and maybe decide not to ship hard drives in a big empty box with three air pillows. (I dunno, I'm never buying a hard drive from amazon until they learn how to ship them)
Some manufacturers also opt in to similar SN tracking on Amazon. This is a smart way to handle it. Amazon is not nearly proactive enough in dealing with return fraud in part because it tends to externalize those costs to their vendors (the brand) and to third party sellers, who also absorb the cost of returns.
Tangent: Isn't Fry's on the brink of death?
Amazon does this for Apple products. My recent Apple Watch purchase had its serial number on the invoice, which I managed to use to look up its date of manufacture. (I needed one that works with a jailbreakable iPhone.)
Amazon was motivated to include the serial number presumably because Apple stuff either had a lot of return fraud, or Apple themselves requested for the supply chain to be tightened up.
Amazon was motivated to include the serial number presumably because Apple stuff either had a lot of return fraud, or Apple themselves requested for the supply chain to be tightened up.
Way back when I was in high school, it became a fad among the tech-geeks to have our TI-85 graphing calculators modded with a "turbo" switch that would let you run some games like Wolfenstein and Tetris at better speeds. It involved cutting a hole in the back plastic casing inside the battery compartment to make room for the switch, and then soldering a few connections on the board underneath.
There was one kid who was doing it for everyone at $20 a pop, but he made no guarantees about not accidentally bricking the calculator in the process. I was a little apprehensive about having him do it since TI calculators were (and still are) ridiculously expensive, and asked him what his success rate was. He told me it didn't really matter because even if he accidentally screwed up, all you had to do was go buy a new TI-85 from Future Shop (which was like a Canadian version of Best Buy before they were actually bought by Best Buy), put the broken calculator in the box, and then return it the next day for a full refund. He would then mod the new one for no additional charge.
My turbo switch was installed fine so I didn't have to pull the scam, but I knew a few kids who did.
There was one kid who was doing it for everyone at $20 a pop, but he made no guarantees about not accidentally bricking the calculator in the process. I was a little apprehensive about having him do it since TI calculators were (and still are) ridiculously expensive, and asked him what his success rate was. He told me it didn't really matter because even if he accidentally screwed up, all you had to do was go buy a new TI-85 from Future Shop (which was like a Canadian version of Best Buy before they were actually bought by Best Buy), put the broken calculator in the box, and then return it the next day for a full refund. He would then mod the new one for no additional charge.
My turbo switch was installed fine so I didn't have to pull the scam, but I knew a few kids who did.
The reply from Amazon's support Twitter is the indication of a far larger problem in most business. Namely, it's easier to deal with the consequences of "mistakes" than it is to not make them.
e.g.
- the "fines" Google and Facebook keep getting for breaking privacy and other laws which are laughably small.
- customer support teams not dealing with serious customer issues until they get attention (viral tweet, front page HN etc)
- monopolies in most forms: e.g. the big-tech anti-poaching agreements
Generally I'm all for "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission" but that assumes that you are acting in good faith but still sometimes screw up. It seems like "screwing up" has become a good way to ensure short-term profits and as everyone is obsessed with KPIs and OKRs at a 1-week to 3-month time frame, the incentives are all wrong.
And "mission statements" and "cultural values" are too synthetic to come close to fixing this.
e.g.
- the "fines" Google and Facebook keep getting for breaking privacy and other laws which are laughably small.
- customer support teams not dealing with serious customer issues until they get attention (viral tweet, front page HN etc)
- monopolies in most forms: e.g. the big-tech anti-poaching agreements
Generally I'm all for "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission" but that assumes that you are acting in good faith but still sometimes screw up. It seems like "screwing up" has become a good way to ensure short-term profits and as everyone is obsessed with KPIs and OKRs at a 1-week to 3-month time frame, the incentives are all wrong.
And "mission statements" and "cultural values" are too synthetic to come close to fixing this.
I honestly don't think any country in the world actually cares about monopolies or the abuses by these companies. Apple no longer has to pay a fine the EU gave them. The same will likely happen to the 2 billion+ fines they gave Google.
So far, no amount of fines, or laws, has actually changed anything as far as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google or Microsoft are concerned. They're still in dominant positions, where AI or computer made decisions can devastate the "little guys" like being wiped off Google (or the play store removing your app), or the horror stories of businesses on Amazon.
Truth is, they're too big, and at this point, can't be stopped. Laws won't work, fines won't work. They haven't so far, and I doubt they will in the future.
So far, no amount of fines, or laws, has actually changed anything as far as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google or Microsoft are concerned. They're still in dominant positions, where AI or computer made decisions can devastate the "little guys" like being wiped off Google (or the play store removing your app), or the horror stories of businesses on Amazon.
Truth is, they're too big, and at this point, can't be stopped. Laws won't work, fines won't work. They haven't so far, and I doubt they will in the future.
> The same will likely happen to the 2 billion+ fines they gave Google.
> Truth is, they're too big, and at this point, can't be stopped. Laws won't work, fines won't work. They haven't so far, and I doubt they will in the future.
First of all, Google has paid their EU fines. Secondly, I think you misunderstand the nature of what's going on with these fines. A combination of strong trade agreements and savvy tax jurisdiction selection has left most EU countries with little capacity to tax US tech companies, so they have resorted to fines. The play is old hat at this point. Pass a piece of vague legislation that probably applies to the target company's activities, then fine them before clarifying the law to the extent that the company can actually avoid breaking it. Rinse and repeat. The EU fined Google a few billion dollars last year, and the year before, and now this year, and they will surely do it again next year and the year after that. This is just a roundabout means of taxing Google. It will of course never change anything about Google, except that each year once the law is clarified Google's lawyers will make sure that they are scrupulously no longer violating this year's new regulation, but the extent of the regulation and the value of the fines is calibrated to not be so high that it would actually drive Google to extract itself from EU jurisdiction.
Now that it's clear they've lost their tax battle with Apple I expect the EU will begin fining them as well.
> Truth is, they're too big, and at this point, can't be stopped. Laws won't work, fines won't work. They haven't so far, and I doubt they will in the future.
First of all, Google has paid their EU fines. Secondly, I think you misunderstand the nature of what's going on with these fines. A combination of strong trade agreements and savvy tax jurisdiction selection has left most EU countries with little capacity to tax US tech companies, so they have resorted to fines. The play is old hat at this point. Pass a piece of vague legislation that probably applies to the target company's activities, then fine them before clarifying the law to the extent that the company can actually avoid breaking it. Rinse and repeat. The EU fined Google a few billion dollars last year, and the year before, and now this year, and they will surely do it again next year and the year after that. This is just a roundabout means of taxing Google. It will of course never change anything about Google, except that each year once the law is clarified Google's lawyers will make sure that they are scrupulously no longer violating this year's new regulation, but the extent of the regulation and the value of the fines is calibrated to not be so high that it would actually drive Google to extract itself from EU jurisdiction.
Now that it's clear they've lost their tax battle with Apple I expect the EU will begin fining them as well.
> So far, no amount of fines, or laws, has actually changed anything as far as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google or Microsoft are concerned.
That seems like hyperbole. E.g. all the three big EU-Google anti-trust cases (Shopping, AdSense, Android) resulted in Google changing their practices on the issues in question.
(Shopping, Android: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google, AdSense: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_...)
That seems like hyperbole. E.g. all the three big EU-Google anti-trust cases (Shopping, AdSense, Android) resulted in Google changing their practices on the issues in question.
(Shopping, Android: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google, AdSense: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_...)
I can't speak for all the companies listed, but I know we've spent a lot of SDE time ensuring we're compliant with GDPR and various privacy laws. Building new systems and changing existing systems (on the scale of dozens, probably 100+, of individual teams). It's more likely that it's hard to quickly change the direction of large ships. I've certainly seen my leadership (and engineers) take things like GDPR compliance extremely seriously, to the point that I've seen it as a cultural shift over the last couple of years.
Apples fines were because EU commissioners demanded Ireland charge them higher tax rates. The courts ruled they were wrong in doing so. Not an anti trust issue at all.
Do you really want to live in a world where bureaucrats can issue fines without recourse?
Do you really want to live in a world where bureaucrats can issue fines without recourse?
Being an asshole apparently works out great, at scale.
A mom and pop shop would be hit much harder by a scam like this, I think.
A mom and pop shop would be hit much harder by a scam like this, I think.
But from a business POV, it makes sense. Assuming that they have a million returns monthly, and from those only a dozen are scams (I have no idea about the real numbers, just guessing), it would be way more expensive to them to do a deep inspection on every returned item than do a soft/cheap check on the returns. When something falls throught the cracks (and the user find out), customer care will just send a new one (usually it's hassle free) and the company absorb the damage from that one scam, which it's usually cheap.
I know it hurts when amazon relies on real customers to do their deep inspection, but it's all about costs. I don't expect this to change.
I would love to stop using amazon for a million reasons, but this is not one of them.
I know it hurts when amazon relies on real customers to do their deep inspection, but it's all about costs. I don't expect this to change.
I would love to stop using amazon for a million reasons, but this is not one of them.
The HDD swap isn't unique to Amazon either, this is something that has plagued retail since birth. There was always jokes about "rocks in the box" in the 90's when I worked at an electronics store.
You hit the head of the nail though, it's a calculated loss / cost. With retail they dealt with physical theft way more than this and anticipated up to 10% of inventory loss for a plethora of reasons. It's not surprising the thieves have transitioned here. I would expect that between this and mixed inventory, these issues are far more common that people would think.
While amazon is at fault for passing it back on, I imagine they make it right. They have always fixed issues for me with no hesitation. It sucks, but I wouldn't get out a pitchfork unless they denied it. And like I mentioned above, Amazon isn't unique, any company has this happen.
You hit the head of the nail though, it's a calculated loss / cost. With retail they dealt with physical theft way more than this and anticipated up to 10% of inventory loss for a plethora of reasons. It's not surprising the thieves have transitioned here. I would expect that between this and mixed inventory, these issues are far more common that people would think.
While amazon is at fault for passing it back on, I imagine they make it right. They have always fixed issues for me with no hesitation. It sucks, but I wouldn't get out a pitchfork unless they denied it. And like I mentioned above, Amazon isn't unique, any company has this happen.
Of course they always make it right.
The question is where does the discount from my doing their inspection for them go? It doesn't go to the prices, they're the same everywhere. It doesn't go to the shipping, that's my Prime account.
The question is where does the discount from my doing their inspection for them go? It doesn't go to the prices, they're the same everywhere. It doesn't go to the shipping, that's my Prime account.
I'm not sure i'm following. Your inspection is something you would do with any product purchased. If your request is a discount or price because you found something that was wrong, then that would be between you and Amazon. I've never received anything other than a new item when it's happened at other retailers like BestBuy (This exact scenario with wrong HDD in external chassis).
I would argue that just like they bake in issues, you as a consumer have to account for that in your purchase decision.
There's no perfect answer, but i'm not sure you would be entitled to anything beyond them fixing the issue in a responsible manner. If you want something beyond, it's within your right to request that from them and theirs if they accept it. I will say, often if you have issues on individual packages with delays, they extend your prime by X days.
I would argue that just like they bake in issues, you as a consumer have to account for that in your purchase decision.
There's no perfect answer, but i'm not sure you would be entitled to anything beyond them fixing the issue in a responsible manner. If you want something beyond, it's within your right to request that from them and theirs if they accept it. I will say, often if you have issues on individual packages with delays, they extend your prime by X days.
Oh, you mention that Amazon's prices are not low, and they are the same everywhere. I missed that part.
I don't buy on amazon very much, and I'm in Canada. But I don't see prices lower than Amazon frequently. Usually on other huge companies like best-buy or walmart. But they usually offer the same return policy and I'm pretty sure they face the same kind of scams.
But hey, that's my experience. You might have experienced something very different.
I don't buy on amazon very much, and I'm in Canada. But I don't see prices lower than Amazon frequently. Usually on other huge companies like best-buy or walmart. But they usually offer the same return policy and I'm pretty sure they face the same kind of scams.
But hey, that's my experience. You might have experienced something very different.
TBH nowadays in the USA I'm seeing significantly cheaper prices on ebay vs amazon for many things. Ex: an HDMI capture card was $13 on ebay vs $20-25 on amazon. Shipping is a bit slower, but something has to give.
Yeah it's going to be the same all around. Ease of returns at the others won't likely be.
well, Amazon prices are low. And I'm not ignoring the fact that they also can do that because they run a huge monopoly that crushes the mid-size business and destroys the competition, I'm just pointing that they are low. Usually lower than the competition. That's basically your reward.
Imagine that mister Bezos start spending millions of dollars and employing an army to do deep-check into every item returned. Who's paying that bill? Amazon's stockholders won't. You will. I will.
But, as I said in a previous post, I'm not defending Amazon's behavior. I'm just pointing out that it's all about cost and the vast majority of users benefit from this as well (with lower prices and no-question-asked-return-policy), while a tiny-tiny minority of them might face an inconvenience of returning an used item from time to time.
Imagine that mister Bezos start spending millions of dollars and employing an army to do deep-check into every item returned. Who's paying that bill? Amazon's stockholders won't. You will. I will.
But, as I said in a previous post, I'm not defending Amazon's behavior. I'm just pointing out that it's all about cost and the vast majority of users benefit from this as well (with lower prices and no-question-asked-return-policy), while a tiny-tiny minority of them might face an inconvenience of returning an used item from time to time.
From what I can tell tricks are being pulled directly by brands in all online sales.
Repackaging, or even directly steering imperfect merchandise to online orders is happening all of the time.
“Model” or perfect versions are sent to retailers where consumers will interact with the product is purchased.
Online, photos and videos show the same “perfect” products.
I’ve seen clear examples of this by Fossil and Pendleton. I believe Apple does this in some cases, at least in repackaging.
There are rational reasons to do this as a business but it can be a bad thing for consumers.
Fwiw, Amazon has among the best return policies and the least friction in completing a return.
Return friction is where a company‘s selective inventory quality steering borders on anti-customer.
Repackaging, or even directly steering imperfect merchandise to online orders is happening all of the time.
“Model” or perfect versions are sent to retailers where consumers will interact with the product is purchased.
Online, photos and videos show the same “perfect” products.
I’ve seen clear examples of this by Fossil and Pendleton. I believe Apple does this in some cases, at least in repackaging.
There are rational reasons to do this as a business but it can be a bad thing for consumers.
Fwiw, Amazon has among the best return policies and the least friction in completing a return.
Return friction is where a company‘s selective inventory quality steering borders on anti-customer.
This practice predates internet shopping; before Amazon, it was the discount retailers like Walmart that were getting seconds.
While your premise is true, any supplier giving Walmart seconds has their days numbered. Walmart runs such a tight ship around their supply chain that it'd neither go unnoticed nor unpunished.
What appears to be Walmart getting factory seconds is usually Walmart demanding a custom variant of a product. Walmart uses their own consumer research and sales (and just as importantly, returns) data to form strong opinions on optimal price points, margins, feature requirements, warranty periods, materials, etc for a given product/category, and they'll use their volume to get a manufacturer to create a custom variant of a product with what Walmart considers an optimized design/bill of materials.
It's true the "Walmart version" of a product is likely less robust than the non-Walmart version, but that is the result of explicit and precise demands formed from actual consumer behavior. Manufacturers then have to consistently and reliably fulfill Walmart's orders to those exacting demands; that's rarely achievable by binning seconds to Walmart. Especially so for product variants that require actual BOM changes. Rather, it usually entails dedicated production runs, with all of the level of care and QC as the original product's manufacturing.
What appears to be Walmart getting factory seconds is usually Walmart demanding a custom variant of a product. Walmart uses their own consumer research and sales (and just as importantly, returns) data to form strong opinions on optimal price points, margins, feature requirements, warranty periods, materials, etc for a given product/category, and they'll use their volume to get a manufacturer to create a custom variant of a product with what Walmart considers an optimized design/bill of materials.
It's true the "Walmart version" of a product is likely less robust than the non-Walmart version, but that is the result of explicit and precise demands formed from actual consumer behavior. Manufacturers then have to consistently and reliably fulfill Walmart's orders to those exacting demands; that's rarely achievable by binning seconds to Walmart. Especially so for product variants that require actual BOM changes. Rather, it usually entails dedicated production runs, with all of the level of care and QC as the original product's manufacturing.
While this worked before, I think this is going to get wrecked by the efficiency of Amazon’s process.
Where a generic product like a selfie light ring smartphone holder is improved by various merchants until a winning design and price point is clear.
THEN Amazon selectively considers making their own version and pricing it. Or Amazon just keeps pulling their fees.
If IP protection prevents an Amazon Basics version, Amazon doesn’t have to create a version in cooperation with the brand—-it just promotes it to compete with the brand’s own e-commerce.
With Nike, it is only recently the checkout and delivery came anywhere near what Amazon would do for the same shoes, same price.
Where a generic product like a selfie light ring smartphone holder is improved by various merchants until a winning design and price point is clear.
THEN Amazon selectively considers making their own version and pricing it. Or Amazon just keeps pulling their fees.
If IP protection prevents an Amazon Basics version, Amazon doesn’t have to create a version in cooperation with the brand—-it just promotes it to compete with the brand’s own e-commerce.
With Nike, it is only recently the checkout and delivery came anywhere near what Amazon would do for the same shoes, same price.
That's a bit of a different topic.
There's the type of generic/private label stuff you mentioned, which both Amazon and Walmart do. Amazon originally had a major competitive advantage here in that they could leverage insights from their own sales and third party sellers in order to inform decisions for AmazonBasics (and their other private label brands). But Walmart also introduced third-party sellers to their ecommerce platform. Amazon's sheer volume of third party sales still gives them a leg up over Walmart in this area, but the type of risk-free consumer intelligence Amazon gets from third-party sales data is no longer something only they have.
Then there's retailer-specific SKUs of branded products, which is what I was referring to before. Amazon does this as well, but they take a fundamentally different approach to it that doesn't really impact the effectiveness of Walmart's approach. Amazon-specific SKU variants will likely have the "same" product as the standard SKU, but have unique packaging that's optimized for shipping. Walmart-specific SKU variants are optimized to sell the greatest volume possible while being considered "good enough" by consumers, and usually result in actual product changes in order to meet the price point, reliability, and feature set Walmart deems necessary to do so.
Because they have different optimization functions in their approach to retailer-specific SKUs of branded products, Walmart's approach is likely to continue working for Walmart, at least for their B&M sales. They'll start to have some of the same optimization concerns as Amazon as their ecommerce sales grow, but will be able to benefit from all the experience manufacturers and packaging companies are currently gaining from their current work with Amazon.
There's the type of generic/private label stuff you mentioned, which both Amazon and Walmart do. Amazon originally had a major competitive advantage here in that they could leverage insights from their own sales and third party sellers in order to inform decisions for AmazonBasics (and their other private label brands). But Walmart also introduced third-party sellers to their ecommerce platform. Amazon's sheer volume of third party sales still gives them a leg up over Walmart in this area, but the type of risk-free consumer intelligence Amazon gets from third-party sales data is no longer something only they have.
Then there's retailer-specific SKUs of branded products, which is what I was referring to before. Amazon does this as well, but they take a fundamentally different approach to it that doesn't really impact the effectiveness of Walmart's approach. Amazon-specific SKU variants will likely have the "same" product as the standard SKU, but have unique packaging that's optimized for shipping. Walmart-specific SKU variants are optimized to sell the greatest volume possible while being considered "good enough" by consumers, and usually result in actual product changes in order to meet the price point, reliability, and feature set Walmart deems necessary to do so.
Because they have different optimization functions in their approach to retailer-specific SKUs of branded products, Walmart's approach is likely to continue working for Walmart, at least for their B&M sales. They'll start to have some of the same optimization concerns as Amazon as their ecommerce sales grow, but will be able to benefit from all the experience manufacturers and packaging companies are currently gaining from their current work with Amazon.
That's a long way of saying that Walmart is complicit in the brand scam.
Is this still true? I recently went to a Walmart for the first time in a decade+, and it was obvious most of the items weren't seconds, they were just cheaply made. Even higher-end retailers with outlet stores have just started making lower-end merchandise specifically for outlet stores.
I meant seconds in the sense of second-quality items: ones that wouldn't pass QA for their primary distribution channels, whether that's high-end department stores or their own storefronts.
That's different from secondhand items, which are items that had been previously sold, used, and then refurbished to be sold again.
That's different from secondhand items, which are items that had been previously sold, used, and then refurbished to be sold again.
Walmart doesn't sell 'seconds' as you might normally consider. They do often receive inferior quality merchandise from their suppliers, often under the same SKU. This is how they compete on price. It's like the mattress business, at scale.
When it comes to some products, especially the more expensive ones like televisions, certain retailers will get custom SKUs. The products will have a feature added or removed or be in a slightly different color.
The idea is to short circuit the price match guarantees that they heavily promote.
The idea is to short circuit the price match guarantees that they heavily promote.
> often under the same SKU.
If the SKU is the same, wouldn't this open everyone up to the problem in which a buyer buys one item from the expensive retailer (better product) and one from the cheap retailer (inferior product), then returns the inferior product to the more expensive retailer (keeping the better product at the cheaper price)?
If the SKU is the same, wouldn't this open everyone up to the problem in which a buyer buys one item from the expensive retailer (better product) and one from the cheap retailer (inferior product), then returns the inferior product to the more expensive retailer (keeping the better product at the cheaper price)?
This can and does happen. Though, for most items, the net gain you'll realize probably isn't worth the effort.
Consider this from Walmart [1]. Mobile 1 5W-30. Something I buy frequently, but not from walmart. Walmart's site doesn't list a SKU, but you can see the UPC code from one of the pictures.
Same exact SKU as Advance Auto [2]. The problem? I know for absolute fact that the containers that hold the oil look totally different (and Walmart's online photo does not reflect reality). I don't buy motor oil from Walmart because this is the crap they pull. And it's not like this just recently happened or the manufacturer recently switched. I've compared the containers across years and several states now.
Maybe the packaging is just different but it really is the same oil on the inside. I don't trust Walmart enough to find out.
1: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mobil-1-Advanced-Full-Synthetic-M...
2: https://shop.advanceautoparts.com/p/mobil1-advanced-5w-30-fu...
Consider this from Walmart [1]. Mobile 1 5W-30. Something I buy frequently, but not from walmart. Walmart's site doesn't list a SKU, but you can see the UPC code from one of the pictures.
Same exact SKU as Advance Auto [2]. The problem? I know for absolute fact that the containers that hold the oil look totally different (and Walmart's online photo does not reflect reality). I don't buy motor oil from Walmart because this is the crap they pull. And it's not like this just recently happened or the manufacturer recently switched. I've compared the containers across years and several states now.
Maybe the packaging is just different but it really is the same oil on the inside. I don't trust Walmart enough to find out.
1: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mobil-1-Advanced-Full-Synthetic-M...
2: https://shop.advanceautoparts.com/p/mobil1-advanced-5w-30-fu...
It's a different SKU, but same product name.
Thule did this to me as well (open box product).
An even sneakier trick is changes to product models without changing the model name.
I’ve seen Camelbak use cheaper parts on the “same” backpack, for example.
This happens on Amazon a lot, you see reviews saying “I bought this three years ago it was great, new one uses cheap xyz.”
I think you largely are going to see every business, Amazon merchants, brands, etc get away with whatever they can to cut costs, so long as it doesn’t have widespread effect on brand perception.
I’ve seen Camelbak use cheaper parts on the “same” backpack, for example.
This happens on Amazon a lot, you see reviews saying “I bought this three years ago it was great, new one uses cheap xyz.”
I think you largely are going to see every business, Amazon merchants, brands, etc get away with whatever they can to cut costs, so long as it doesn’t have widespread effect on brand perception.
I've seen this a lot with clothing/footwear. Things like logos that used to be stiched on are now printed, material type will change, etc. Some of these don't really matter (like logos) but are easily noticed and indicative of design changes you don't see.
Pure players are getting EAFP on us rather than LBYL, I wonder where they learned that frop...
Amazon's example is completely different from that of Google or Facebook.
- In Amazon's case, it is only Amazon that is that victim of its mistakes: if they decide it's more efficient to give money to scammers than to avoid getting scammed, I couldn't care less.
- In the case of Google and Facebook, they're not the victims for disrespecting their user's privacy, their users are. So, regulators should keep making the fines larger until it really really hurts them.
- In Amazon's case, it is only Amazon that is that victim of its mistakes: if they decide it's more efficient to give money to scammers than to avoid getting scammed, I couldn't care less.
- In the case of Google and Facebook, they're not the victims for disrespecting their user's privacy, their users are. So, regulators should keep making the fines larger until it really really hurts them.
The victim isn't Amazon, it's the next customer who buys the returned product--which wasn't even necessarily labeled as such.
Now if Amazon included a guide with returned products, instructing customers what to evidence of fraud or tampering to look for? That would be a different story.
Now if Amazon included a guide with returned products, instructing customers what to evidence of fraud or tampering to look for? That would be a different story.
>The victim isn't Amazon, it's the next customer who buys the returned product--which wasn't even necessarily labeled as such.
Not saying that I'd want this to happen to me, but assuming Amazon made it right I'd say that I was just inconvenienced and they were the victim.
Not saying that I'd want this to happen to me, but assuming Amazon made it right I'd say that I was just inconvenienced and they were the victim.
You're the victim if you didn't realize it was the wrong item within the return period, which is a lot more common especially among people who aren't as intimately familiar with the technical details
Plenty of people have been scammed on microSD cards, a common target for this fraud, because they didn't know how to properly test them and never pushed the capacity until after the return period.
Plenty of people have been scammed on microSD cards, a common target for this fraud, because they didn't know how to properly test them and never pushed the capacity until after the return period.
No, the next customer will just return it as well.
It's a mild inconvenience, the customer is hardly the victim. I'm for regulation of bad corporate actors, but punishing for mediocre customer service is going too far.
It's a mild inconvenience, the customer is hardly the victim. I'm for regulation of bad corporate actors, but punishing for mediocre customer service is going too far.
If they're buying something as "new" and getting something that has been returned and is not factory sealed then they're getting ripped off. This time the buyer caught it, but what if it had been swapped for the same item with 80% of it's expected life used?
Even though the HDD was a warehouse deal, Amazon is getting scammed in the "new and sealed" department as well.
When I bought a new NZXT AOI cooler Amazon sent me the original box with a fake seal sticker on it. The original contents were taken out and the box was filled with an old used Corsair cooler and some random electronics. Even the manual was replaced with one for a pull up bar.
Amazon could have known the sticker was fake because it was just a blank sticker without a logo and the box should be completely sealed in plastic when new.
When I bought a new NZXT AOI cooler Amazon sent me the original box with a fake seal sticker on it. The original contents were taken out and the box was filled with an old used Corsair cooler and some random electronics. Even the manual was replaced with one for a pull up bar.
Amazon could have known the sticker was fake because it was just a blank sticker without a logo and the box should be completely sealed in plastic when new.
They might not. Less technically savvy users may not realize that the performance on their "new" video card is less than it should be. Or they might realize too late and miss the window on their return. Or they might just give up because uninstalling the device, packaging and returning it is too much of a pain in the ass.
If this is a "mild inconvenience" to the individual who has to deal with identifying that their product is not what they ordered and returning it, are you suggesting that Amazon--a company with a $1.4 TRILLION market cap--is somehow the real victim?
If this is a "mild inconvenience" to the individual who has to deal with identifying that their product is not what they ordered and returning it, are you suggesting that Amazon--a company with a $1.4 TRILLION market cap--is somehow the real victim?
Amazon Warehouse Deals are discounted customer returns.
> Namely, it's easier to deal with the consequences of "mistakes" than it is to not make them
What we're seeing is a widespread use of "fractional fraud".
Transactions and business lines that are 1%-5% fraudulent are unlikely to be challenged, but have a huge effect on profitability.
The best example I've seen is Bunnie Huang's deep dive on counterfeit SD cards [1]. Margins on SD cards are like 1%, so blending in defective cards at a 1% rate can double your profit. Another example is retail trade payment for order flow. A major broker-dealer was just sanctioned for front-running its clients.
As long as your defect ("mistake") rate stays below your customer's response threshold, you can keep doing it. It is impossible to overstate how important social norms are for policing this kind of misconduct.
[1] https://nostarch.com/hardwarehackerpaperback
What we're seeing is a widespread use of "fractional fraud".
Transactions and business lines that are 1%-5% fraudulent are unlikely to be challenged, but have a huge effect on profitability.
The best example I've seen is Bunnie Huang's deep dive on counterfeit SD cards [1]. Margins on SD cards are like 1%, so blending in defective cards at a 1% rate can double your profit. Another example is retail trade payment for order flow. A major broker-dealer was just sanctioned for front-running its clients.
As long as your defect ("mistake") rate stays below your customer's response threshold, you can keep doing it. It is impossible to overstate how important social norms are for policing this kind of misconduct.
[1] https://nostarch.com/hardwarehackerpaperback
I'm reminded of an internet fable
> A city boy, Kenny, moved to the country and bought a donkey from an old farmer for $100. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day.
> The next day the farmer drove up and said: “Sorry son, but I have some bad news. The donkey died.”
> Kenny replied, “Well then, just give me my money back.”
> The farmer said, “Can’t do that. I went and spent it already.”
> Kenny said, “OK, then just unload the donkey.”
> The farmer asked, “What ya gonna do with him?”
> Kenny: “I’m going to raffle him off.”
> Farmer: “You can’t raffle off a dead donkey!”
> Kenny: “Sure I can. Watch me. I just won’t tell anybody he is dead.”
> A month later the farmer met up with Kenny and asked, “What happened with that dead donkey?”
> Kenny: “I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at $2 a piece and made a profit of $998.00.”
> Farmer: “Didn’t anyone complain?”
> Kenny: “Just the guy who won. So I gave him his $2 back.”
> Kenny grew up and eventually became the chairman of [company you want to mock]
> A city boy, Kenny, moved to the country and bought a donkey from an old farmer for $100. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day.
> The next day the farmer drove up and said: “Sorry son, but I have some bad news. The donkey died.”
> Kenny replied, “Well then, just give me my money back.”
> The farmer said, “Can’t do that. I went and spent it already.”
> Kenny said, “OK, then just unload the donkey.”
> The farmer asked, “What ya gonna do with him?”
> Kenny: “I’m going to raffle him off.”
> Farmer: “You can’t raffle off a dead donkey!”
> Kenny: “Sure I can. Watch me. I just won’t tell anybody he is dead.”
> A month later the farmer met up with Kenny and asked, “What happened with that dead donkey?”
> Kenny: “I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at $2 a piece and made a profit of $998.00.”
> Farmer: “Didn’t anyone complain?”
> Kenny: “Just the guy who won. So I gave him his $2 back.”
> Kenny grew up and eventually became the chairman of [company you want to mock]
I legit thought this was going to end up in a loop where there was never any donkey and it was the same scam the original farmer pulled. Dead non-existent donkeys all the way down.
Sorry, not a native speaker. What does it mean to "raffle somebody off"? (Edit: googling it says: "dispose of in a lottery", which makes me wonder: why is there such a specific verb in the English language? I have never even thought of "disposing of anything in a lottery")
A "raffle" as distinct from a "lottery" in American English differs in how the prize is decided, and what kinds of things are typically the prize.
Typically a lottery runs in one of two ways: with pre-decided winning tickets, or a number that's drawn after the tickets are distributed to decide which ticket (if any) is the winner. In this way, the odds of winning are mostly independent of the number of tickets sold. The prize is usually money.
A raffle works by selling tickets, and then picking exactly one of those tickets to be the winner, making the odds directly dependent on the number of tickets sold. The prize is usually a physical object, and not money (though there are exceptions, e.g., a 50/50 raffle).
Typically a lottery runs in one of two ways: with pre-decided winning tickets, or a number that's drawn after the tickets are distributed to decide which ticket (if any) is the winner. In this way, the odds of winning are mostly independent of the number of tickets sold. The prize is usually money.
A raffle works by selling tickets, and then picking exactly one of those tickets to be the winner, making the odds directly dependent on the number of tickets sold. The prize is usually a physical object, and not money (though there are exceptions, e.g., a 50/50 raffle).
Thanks for the explanation. I'm familiar with the both forms of gambling, but for some reason, I've encountered "lottery" as a term a lot more; "raffle" I hardly knew, until now. Thanks!
Usually raffles in the US are for charity or fundraising purposes. You can't run a lottery usually, as those run against gambling laws. You can run a raffle, where an item worth $X (and usually donated so X=0) will be given away to the owner of a random ticket which costs $Y. The runner of the raffle sells N tickets. Your profit/fundraising is $YN - $X.
Often raffles are sold significantly below expected value. A popular raffle to support a charity is called a 50/50 raffle. This is where the winner of the raffle receives 50% of $YN, and the charity receives the other 50%. Buying a ticket isn't a good financial decision, but it's for a charity, and you can end up winning, so they are popular.
Often raffles are sold significantly below expected value. A popular raffle to support a charity is called a 50/50 raffle. This is where the winner of the raffle receives 50% of $YN, and the charity receives the other 50%. Buying a ticket isn't a good financial decision, but it's for a charity, and you can end up winning, so they are popular.
From what I understand, the game of bingo is similar to lottery in the sense that the participants can and do decide the contents of their tickets themselves. Is organizing bingo OK in the US or does it run against the gambling laws?
The event itself is called “a raffle” and the verb comes from that.
The technical difference, vs a lottery, is that a raffle always has exactly one winner, drawn from all of the entries. In most lotteries, it’s possible for no one to win or several people to share the prize.
Raffle also implies that the event is a smaller, one-off event, usually with non-cash prizes and often for charity. A church might have a raffle to raise money for a new roof, using prizes donated by the parishioners. This is in contrast to lotteries, which are usually run by the government, feature cash prizes, and occur on a fixed schedule.
The technical difference, vs a lottery, is that a raffle always has exactly one winner, drawn from all of the entries. In most lotteries, it’s possible for no one to win or several people to share the prize.
Raffle also implies that the event is a smaller, one-off event, usually with non-cash prizes and often for charity. A church might have a raffle to raise money for a new roof, using prizes donated by the parishioners. This is in contrast to lotteries, which are usually run by the government, feature cash prizes, and occur on a fixed schedule.
A raffle is a game of chance. You "buy into" the raffle and get a ticket that goes into a hat or bowl. The person doing the raffle chooses a ticket at random and the person that owns that ticket is the winner.
It's not really about "disposing" the donkey it is about giving other people the chance to win the donkey...that is dead
It's not really about "disposing" the donkey it is about giving other people the chance to win the donkey...that is dead
Anyway, to the fellow confused people, here's the simple English version: Kenny made the donkey a prize of a lottery he organized, and didn't tell the participants the donkey was dead.
In response to your question in the edit: it's the word "off" at the end that gives the phrase a nuance that could be interpreted as "disposing of".
English has an unusually large vocabulary, many words with very specific meanings.
I think you forgot the last few lines, where the guy who won ended up telling a friend at the bar how he won the donkey but the donkey was dead all along. And then an irate mob descended upon Kenny's farm, burned down his house, put him against a tree and shot him, and then took his $998.00 and bought rounds for everyone back at the bar.
> Another example is retail trade payment for order flow. A major broker-dealer was just sanctioned for front-running its clients.
You can say Robinhood. Their agreement says that they can't do anything to imply that it was incorrect, like threatening to sue people for talking about what got them sanctioned.
You can say Robinhood. Their agreement says that they can't do anything to imply that it was incorrect, like threatening to sue people for talking about what got them sanctioned.
Hang on a sec. Mixing in defective product is literally fraud.
Payment for order flow is not only legal, but good for retail investors. It, and practices like it, are the only reason joe schmoes can go buy 2 shares of TSLA in their robinhood account (actual traders deal in round lots - 100 shares. Price levels featuring less than 100 shares aren't even protected price levels!).
There's also the technicality of the wholesalers technically providing a very small (<=1 cent) price improvement, but retail investors don't care about that.
I really object to the frankly callous and irresponsible bandying about of financial stuff like this. It damages trust in what is potentially one of the best-regulated and most efficient systems in the world.
I also want to note that, assuming you're referring to Citadel's 700k fine, 1) the SEC's description of what happened is too vague to really infer what's going on, 2) my guess based on their description is that they essentially had a bug that technically constituted trading ahead of a small, small % of client orders (though it does not seem like it was actually getting an advantage by doing so, since it was a bug) and 3) this is all corroborated by it being only a 700k USD fine, which is comically small for a fine from both the SEC and for a firm as large as Citadel. This was the lightest of slaps on the wrist from a regulator who will absolutely destroy firms with fines when they have hard evidence.
If anyone wants to look deeper into this, Matt Levine has written extensively at this point on the subject of the payment-for-order-flow boogieman.
Payment for order flow is not only legal, but good for retail investors. It, and practices like it, are the only reason joe schmoes can go buy 2 shares of TSLA in their robinhood account (actual traders deal in round lots - 100 shares. Price levels featuring less than 100 shares aren't even protected price levels!).
There's also the technicality of the wholesalers technically providing a very small (<=1 cent) price improvement, but retail investors don't care about that.
I really object to the frankly callous and irresponsible bandying about of financial stuff like this. It damages trust in what is potentially one of the best-regulated and most efficient systems in the world.
I also want to note that, assuming you're referring to Citadel's 700k fine, 1) the SEC's description of what happened is too vague to really infer what's going on, 2) my guess based on their description is that they essentially had a bug that technically constituted trading ahead of a small, small % of client orders (though it does not seem like it was actually getting an advantage by doing so, since it was a bug) and 3) this is all corroborated by it being only a 700k USD fine, which is comically small for a fine from both the SEC and for a firm as large as Citadel. This was the lightest of slaps on the wrist from a regulator who will absolutely destroy firms with fines when they have hard evidence.
If anyone wants to look deeper into this, Matt Levine has written extensively at this point on the subject of the payment-for-order-flow boogieman.
Depending on the product, there is an expected and accepted defect rate. This can be very high in situations where detecting and removing the defects would cost more to the supplier than the customer would spend handling the defects. If you deal in dirt cheap electronic junk (think novelty holiday junk) the rate can be as high as 10%. Bottom of the market SD cards are getting close to that standard.
From the perspective of law, it matters very much how that defect rate is reached, because intent matters more than the outcome itself.
If you have a 10% defect rate for unavoidable causes, that sucks. If you have a 10% defect rate because you chose to cut all corners and cheap out on every aspect of your manufacturing and testing, that sucks but it's legal. However, if you have a 5% defect rate and intentionally choose to mix in extra 5% of known defective units - that's fraud.
If you have a 10% defect rate for unavoidable causes, that sucks. If you have a 10% defect rate because you chose to cut all corners and cheap out on every aspect of your manufacturing and testing, that sucks but it's legal. However, if you have a 5% defect rate and intentionally choose to mix in extra 5% of known defective units - that's fraud.
Depends on the industry. There are industries where high defect rates are an accepted norm. These are not necessarily codified. For example: if you order fresh fruit/vegetables in bulk, a certain percentage always arrive below acceptable quality. That is simply a norm in the industry. You are free to inspect/reject as much as you want, but nobody will want to sell to you if you make a lawsuit out of every bad apple.
I don't think what you described differs from the GP. The bad apples were not thrown into the lot intentionally.
[deleted]
At Google, they say "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission".
At Google, they say "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission".
I hope you're not under the impression that this is another SV "innovation," because it's been a saying since at least the 1600's.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/06/19/forgive/
I hope you're not under the impression that this is another SV "innovation," because it's been a saying since at least the 1600's.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/06/19/forgive/
OTOH, getting 99 cards and 1 bad card for the price of 50
good cards is a good deal for the buyer.
What
As a user I am totally happy with Amazon's service. They shouldn't change their entire setup and make things a lot more expensive for everyone based on these infrequent use cases.
And Amazon customer support is awesome. Your bullet 2 is false.
And Amazon customer support is awesome. Your bullet 2 is false.
> The reply from Amazon's support Twitter is the indication of a far larger problem in most business. Namely, it's easier to deal with the consequences of "mistakes" than it is to not make them.
In general I agree that this is a problem. But I don't see how this is an instance of that. I mean, how are they supposed to respond? "We will find the customer that scammed us and sue him. We will find the employee that checked this item and fire him."
In general I agree that this is a problem. But I don't see how this is an instance of that. I mean, how are they supposed to respond? "We will find the customer that scammed us and sue him. We will find the employee that checked this item and fire him."
You could start taking photos during the inspection of the returned item and before sending it, send a photo to the customer to confirm it’s what they ordered? You could establish a policy where you offer posted discounts (and lose money) if items aren’t as described? You could involve manufacturers in the re-certification process such that for high value items there’s maybe an extra shipping expense and time delay to market but the item’s quality could be verified before resale? You could strictly accept and sell only new items, putting returned or third-party FBA items in less efficient markets but completely isolated from the main market of trusted goods from known validated sources in your supply chain?
[deleted]
Welcome to Amazon shopping for the past 5 or so years. Everything is fakes, used goods marked as new, and low quality goods with 4.7+ stars from fake reviews.
The convenience is so nice, yet about 50% of the time I'm disappointed with any purchase made on Amazon.com. But, those stock profits :heart_eyes_emoji:.
The convenience is so nice, yet about 50% of the time I'm disappointed with any purchase made on Amazon.com. But, those stock profits :heart_eyes_emoji:.
Why the surprise here. This "scam" (or theft) is as old as stores taking "no questions asked" returns. I knew someone who did this a time or two back in the mid-90's to Circuit City and/or CompUSA. I warned them that this could be traced back to them if the stores became interested enough to do so, that did not deter them much.
Yeah, back in the days when tech didn't move so fast, it wasn't uncommon for some of the circle I moved in to go grab a 160G drive from Best Buy and swap out a 20/40G drive that had died and claim it didn't work out of the box. Free upgrade!
Same scam, different day.
Same scam, different day.
I recently bought a Nintendo Switch from Amazon (not a third party seller) only to open the box and find the switch itself missing. Baffled at how this slipped through.
I've ordered three Xbox Play and Charge kits from Amazon, two were blatantly counterfeit (came in a plastic bag, scratched and with no markings, I don't believe it's "OEM"), the other was genuine but with batteries manufactured four years before and pretty much DOA (probably used and sent back by someone?)
I had to order from Microsoft directly to get an acceptable product.
I had to order from Microsoft directly to get an acceptable product.
I have a new Lenovo laptop, purchased on Amazon directly from Lenovo, arriving on Tuesday.
I intend to unbox the laptop and record it on my GoPro.
Seems silly, but...
I intend to unbox the laptop and record it on my GoPro.
Seems silly, but...
After this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23941572) I always record. I had no problem to return and didn't need to prove that it arrived cracked but... better safe than sorry
I learned my lesson with TVs on Amazon a few years ago too. There were a couple reviews noting cracked screens, thought it was probably just rare bad luck. Bought the TV, it arrived cracked.
Had Amazon schedule a UPS pickup for return and bought the TV locally. Poor packaging for TVs on Amazon just seems to be normal.
Had Amazon schedule a UPS pickup for return and bought the TV locally. Poor packaging for TVs on Amazon just seems to be normal.
I always record when I'm opening stuff, and I pretend I run one of those unboxing channels while I do it. It beats the boredom and makes it less fishy that I have a recording of me opening an item I have to return (since it might look like a set-up).
Here in Brazil we have a very popular eBay-like site called Mercado Livre, which I use a lot, and I record the unboxing of every single thing I buy through them and I don't even try to disguise the fact I'm doing it for safety (scams are very common here).
My recordings start from the closed package, showing tracking codes, names, addresses, etc. to the object inside and its serial numbers (when applicable), all in a single take and always keeping the object in frame.
Luckily I never got scammed, but I sure it will happen with the first package I don't record.
My recordings start from the closed package, showing tracking codes, names, addresses, etc. to the object inside and its serial numbers (when applicable), all in a single take and always keeping the object in frame.
Luckily I never got scammed, but I sure it will happen with the first package I don't record.
If you're going to buy a Lenovo laptop from Lenovo, why not buy it directly from Lenovo? You'll get free shipping either way. Shipping speed, or something else?
I don't see why anyone would think that's silly[1]. TBH, I'm tempted to record all of my unboxings at this point, at least for more valuable items...
...especially after reading some of the experiences here.
[1] Okay, so someone could argue it was staged, but there's a point in time where you can't "prove" something any further without disproportionate costs to your time or finances.
...especially after reading some of the experiences here.
[1] Okay, so someone could argue it was staged, but there's a point in time where you can't "prove" something any further without disproportionate costs to your time or finances.
I just plain don't buy electronics on Amazon. I've rarely had it go well. It's usually something - anywhere from something like this, to paying full price for something that was obviously previously opened.
I don't understand who all these people are who are having bad experiences with Amazon. I only ever buy products that have the Prime label and have plenty of verified positive reviews. Stuff always arrives very quickly (often the next day), and I have literally never had a fake product mailed to me when I do this.
One time I bought a used product from Amazon and it was a little beat up but it still worked.
Another time I bought something that was clearly manufactured and sold from China, and sure enough it sucked, but I just returned it and it was no big deal.
One time I bought a used product from Amazon and it was a little beat up but it still worked.
Another time I bought something that was clearly manufactured and sold from China, and sure enough it sucked, but I just returned it and it was no big deal.
> I have literally never had a fake product mailed to me when I do this.
It's possible you're not buying commonly-faked items, or possibly it happened and you just didn't notice. Lots of fakes are of similar reliability for the first 20-50% of normal lifespan.
It's possible you're not buying commonly-faked items, or possibly it happened and you just didn't notice. Lots of fakes are of similar reliability for the first 20-50% of normal lifespan.
I had assumed this was common knowledge that this occurred. We used to experience returns like this all of the time that Amazon would accept up-front before acceptance by our warehouse. >$200 chargers returned in original boxes containing $10 chargers. There have been other stories of iphone boxes full of playdough or just anything that would weight roughly the same.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are other 3rd party fulfillment providers that rather than dealing with having had this pushed on them by Amazon, they just put that return back on the shelf and they get shipped out to other customers.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are other 3rd party fulfillment providers that rather than dealing with having had this pushed on them by Amazon, they just put that return back on the shelf and they get shipped out to other customers.
What did you do when you get such a return, and what would Amazon do?
Probably more expensive to train some warehouse workers to analyze returns to the extent of plugging it into a computer and seeing the size than to just deal with this happening some time.
I bought an alternator for my wife's car. While replacing it, I discovered this:
https://imgur.com/a/E53NxjE
Prior customer bought, discovered the holes were machined incorrectly (part would not bolt up), clearly marked the part, returned it, and Amazon put it back on the shelf to send to the next buyer. With the car half torn apart, Amazon offered they could get me a replacement item in 8 calendar days. Yeah, that's not going to work, so I took it over to a milling machine and had it milled out to fit (first photo shows immediately after milling, second and third photo are before, third photo has the new part doweled to the old part to align one of the holes and show how far off the second hole is). Just like this case, Amazon A2Z was willing to accept the return and ship another one, but the real customer failure was during the previous return, not when I had the complaint.
There's a customer satisfaction angle that "Earth's most customer centric company" should probably be considering here.
https://imgur.com/a/E53NxjE
Prior customer bought, discovered the holes were machined incorrectly (part would not bolt up), clearly marked the part, returned it, and Amazon put it back on the shelf to send to the next buyer. With the car half torn apart, Amazon offered they could get me a replacement item in 8 calendar days. Yeah, that's not going to work, so I took it over to a milling machine and had it milled out to fit (first photo shows immediately after milling, second and third photo are before, third photo has the new part doweled to the old part to align one of the holes and show how far off the second hole is). Just like this case, Amazon A2Z was willing to accept the return and ship another one, but the real customer failure was during the previous return, not when I had the complaint.
There's a customer satisfaction angle that "Earth's most customer centric company" should probably be considering here.
Amazon hasn’t actually been a customer-centric company since they got big enough to run their own in-house delivery service.
If a customer has to physically punch a new hole in a product, I consider that a full refund without return :)
That’s what I’d have expected from 2010 Amazon. It’s not what I was offered by 2020 Amazon.
I have had luck having Amazon credit me back part of the purchase price when I need to repair what they sent me. Their chat agents have refunded me 20-30% of purchase price for keeping defective items like yours.
I got a hard-anodised aluminium oven tray which was bent at the corner. These things are solid, no way it was bent in transit unless it was by heavy machinery - if you slammed it in a van door I think you'd just break the door. Contacted seller and arranged a discount but it was a pain to do and going through the Amazon systems seemed janky. It was a case where the product worked, it was really just aesthetics, but I wasn't paying full price for a [factory] damaged item. Saved some product miles at least.
I’m kind of surprised they’ll even take open-box returns of hard drives that aren’t defective. How do you know the drive is safe to use?
It seems to me kind of like underwear: once you buy it, you keep it and in the unlikely event you need to return the item it goes right in the trash.
It seems to me kind of like underwear: once you buy it, you keep it and in the unlikely event you need to return the item it goes right in the trash.
Because the dirty secret is that "new" does not mean you are the first customer to open the item.
When you return an item to Amazon, one of the reasons you can select in the dropdown menu is "received used item" (or something similar).
It's disappointing that this scam is so pervasive they added UI to handle it.
And for most items that’s not too big of a deal. A returned textbook or toaster can be re-sold after it’s been opened without much fear that it’s been tampered with but I’m not sure the same can be said for a hard drive.
Or maybe it’s more like a bottle of medicine. Even if it’s exceedingly unlikely that it’s been tampered with I’m not going to risk it if the manufacturer’s seal is broken. It’s just not worth it.
Or maybe it’s more like a bottle of medicine. Even if it’s exceedingly unlikely that it’s been tampered with I’m not going to risk it if the manufacturer’s seal is broken. It’s just not worth it.
Textbooks are actually a bad example, now that an awful lot of them have one-time codes linked to online materials (homework, etc.). Sure, the contents of the book may not be "used up", but that doesn't mean it's necessarily "good-as-new".
Here is my most recent Amazon returns story.
I bought a $1200 commercial generator through Amazon. Delivered by truck about in about 10 days. It had several problems. Took it to the local authorized service center myself. They struggled with it for about a month.
Ultimately they had me call the manufacturer for a replacement. I tried but the manufacturer sent me to Amazon for a refund. I did so and Amazon refunded the full purchase price immediately.
The service center didn't care; they still had a defective generator on their hands and kept working on it with the manufacturer on my behalf despite the fact that I had gotten a full refund, which I made clear to them. Ultimately the manufacturer decided they wanted the unit returned for analysis by their engineers and drop shipped a replacement to me knowing perfectly well that I'd already received a refund.
The replacement works perfectly. I got a $1200 commercial generator for 'free.' I'd have rather just had the working product in the first place, and I still feel like I've cheated somehow despite the fact that I was entirely above board with everyone.
I bought a $1200 commercial generator through Amazon. Delivered by truck about in about 10 days. It had several problems. Took it to the local authorized service center myself. They struggled with it for about a month.
Ultimately they had me call the manufacturer for a replacement. I tried but the manufacturer sent me to Amazon for a refund. I did so and Amazon refunded the full purchase price immediately.
The service center didn't care; they still had a defective generator on their hands and kept working on it with the manufacturer on my behalf despite the fact that I had gotten a full refund, which I made clear to them. Ultimately the manufacturer decided they wanted the unit returned for analysis by their engineers and drop shipped a replacement to me knowing perfectly well that I'd already received a refund.
The replacement works perfectly. I got a $1200 commercial generator for 'free.' I'd have rather just had the working product in the first place, and I still feel like I've cheated somehow despite the fact that I was entirely above board with everyone.
The problem is that cases where you get lucky like this are in the minority. In the majority of cases, the inconvenience caused by a defective/counterfeit/missing product thwarts whatever compensation they give you after the fact.
This happened to me buying a Yamaha MG06 Compact Stereo Mixer from Amazon Warehouse.
The one I received had clear indications that it had been in use for a long time, dust grime and wear—-it was gross.
In this case it appeared the person returned the same model for a new one. It was a good trick that Amazon resolved without feedback on my pointing this out when I returned it.
I bought it brand new after that.
Previous to this, I had ordered something else from amazon warehouse, again a “like new” item for a steep discount and it was as described. A great deal.
The one I received had clear indications that it had been in use for a long time, dust grime and wear—-it was gross.
In this case it appeared the person returned the same model for a new one. It was a good trick that Amazon resolved without feedback on my pointing this out when I returned it.
I bought it brand new after that.
Previous to this, I had ordered something else from amazon warehouse, again a “like new” item for a steep discount and it was as described. A great deal.
Sounds about right. I have had overall VERY GOOD Amazon Warehouse experiences, but I have also had TWO VERY TERRIBLE Amazon Warehouse experiences with two separate products that could have been avoided if items were actually "Inspected"...
Hue Outdoor Motion Sensors (May 2019) -- Several sensors in my first order had obvious water damage outside packaging and MOLD inside packaging. Just looking at packages during "Inspection" would have prevented this. Requested replacements. Received MORE water damage and MOLD. Repeat several times until finally received NON-MOLD items or for refund.
GE Smart Light Switch, Smart Fan Switch (Feb 2020) -- Ordered several of each, kept receiving wrong model (e.g. ZigBee instead of ZWave Plus, or ZWave instead of ZWave plus) as if prior customer gave up on large project and randomly threw products back into whatever boxes. Comparing product number on item to product number on box during "Inspection" would have prevented this! Kept requesting replacements, kept receiving wrong items. Finally returned items for a refund. Amazon CS did finally issue full refund, but had trouble unraveling the mess on their end because so many items were in play.
Hue Outdoor Motion Sensors (May 2019) -- Several sensors in my first order had obvious water damage outside packaging and MOLD inside packaging. Just looking at packages during "Inspection" would have prevented this. Requested replacements. Received MORE water damage and MOLD. Repeat several times until finally received NON-MOLD items or for refund.
GE Smart Light Switch, Smart Fan Switch (Feb 2020) -- Ordered several of each, kept receiving wrong model (e.g. ZigBee instead of ZWave Plus, or ZWave instead of ZWave plus) as if prior customer gave up on large project and randomly threw products back into whatever boxes. Comparing product number on item to product number on box during "Inspection" would have prevented this! Kept requesting replacements, kept receiving wrong items. Finally returned items for a refund. Amazon CS did finally issue full refund, but had trouble unraveling the mess on their end because so many items were in play.
Pro tip: don't bother with Amazon France, order from the UK.
For some reason, all the non-consumables that I ordered in France were re-furbished items sold as new. In contrast, the UK has always been stellar. Once Brexit hits, I will stop using Amazon altogether.
For some reason, all the non-consumables that I ordered in France were re-furbished items sold as new. In contrast, the UK has always been stellar. Once Brexit hits, I will stop using Amazon altogether.
Does it matter at all? Won't the item be shipped from closest amazon warehouse regardless of site used?
Due to Brexit this is changing:
https://tamebay.com/2020/07/amazon-fba-brexit-bombshell-efn-...
Previous discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23888510
https://tamebay.com/2020/07/amazon-fba-brexit-bombshell-efn-...
Previous discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23888510
Anecdotal but my current experience is the opposite.
Just some weeks ago, I bought a dumb phone (new and sold by Amazon FR) on the Amazon FR website and it was sent by a fulfillment center in UK. The phone I received was opened, missing earbuds and was the Middle East version with the wrong keypad.
Just some weeks ago, I bought a dumb phone (new and sold by Amazon FR) on the Amazon FR website and it was sent by a fulfillment center in UK. The phone I received was opened, missing earbuds and was the Middle East version with the wrong keypad.
Got a Motorola phone, same-day shipping from the US, and actually got it just few hours later.
Phone screen broke. Contacted Motorola for support, they said the phone IMEI is from India and can't be serviced in the US under warranty, I have to ship it to India if I want it fixed by them :/
Phone screen broke. Contacted Motorola for support, they said the phone IMEI is from India and can't be serviced in the US under warranty, I have to ship it to India if I want it fixed by them :/
[deleted]
I am surprised at this , for a long time the reverse use to happen .
Also it is usually not coz the IMEI, it is because each model has sub geo variants depending on the spectrum they are allowed to use in those regions etc. Cross region variants other region decline to service . It is not just Moto, Apple does the same .
Also it is usually not coz the IMEI, it is because each model has sub geo variants depending on the spectrum they are allowed to use in those regions etc. Cross region variants other region decline to service . It is not just Moto, Apple does the same .
I think the Indian one was cheaper, so they probably bought a big batch then sold it in the US for more expensive US prices. Indian model also had dual-SIM, which US phones generally don't have.
This is a consequence of amazon being too big to care. They aren't doing the most basic check to verify that what's in the box is what the outside of the box claims it is. Some years ago, I bought two identical routers from Best Buy and then decided I didn't need the second so I went to return it. I put it in the wrong box. Best Buy refused the return because the serial number on the router didn't match the serial number on the box.
The whole concept of Amazon is fundamentally flawed. I've gotten too much counterfeit stuff and junk to ever trust them again.
The whole concept of Amazon is fundamentally flawed. I've gotten too much counterfeit stuff and junk to ever trust them again.
What are your favorite alternatives to Amazon? E.g., I go to monoprice for cables. Are there other niche options that you like for different products where you can expect quality?
Even in the best case where you get something that is superficially what you ordered, you have a sneaking feeling that you're getting something counterfeit:
https://twitter.com/timsneath/status/1286821682968051712
It's frustrating when you have to treat every transaction as if you're buying from a flea market.
It's frustrating when you have to treat every transaction as if you're buying from a flea market.
I shopped on Amazon for many years. I never had problems until around the time of COVID19. It seems to be a cesspool of scammers and conartists now. Amazon doesn't do much of anything about it either. I'm out a couple hundred bucks.
I'm kind of annoyed. I need a reliable place to order stuff. Aliexpress and eBay seem ahead of Amazon now. That's bad.
My favorite scam: Futures. Sellers will sell low-availability things at (slightly) inflated prices and long ship times. If prices go down, you get the product. If prices go up, they refund you. It's too complex for Amazon minimum wage drones to understand why this is a scam, so you can't do anything about it.
Amazon wouldn't refund my Prime, which renewed around the time of COVID19, and which hasn't really worked. That's turning into a scam too.
I'm kind of annoyed. I need a reliable place to order stuff. Aliexpress and eBay seem ahead of Amazon now. That's bad.
My favorite scam: Futures. Sellers will sell low-availability things at (slightly) inflated prices and long ship times. If prices go down, you get the product. If prices go up, they refund you. It's too complex for Amazon minimum wage drones to understand why this is a scam, so you can't do anything about it.
Amazon wouldn't refund my Prime, which renewed around the time of COVID19, and which hasn't really worked. That's turning into a scam too.
> Aliexpress and eBay seem ahead of Amazon now.
Wow, that is bad.
Wow, that is bad.
File a dispute with your bank.
If you do that, you'll never have to worry about getting scammed at Amazon again, since they'll probably close your account.
"Amazon wouldn't refund my Prime" -> I assumed this was to close account :)
And i believe they wouldn't close the account.
And i believe they wouldn't close the account.
Why would you assume that? A prime subscription is not a requirement for an Amazon account. It seems to me they were saying that they didn't want to pay for expedited shipping if Amazon couldn't provide expedited shipping.
And it is fairly common for online retailers to ban accounts that do charge-backs. Amazon will ban people for having too many returns.
And it is fairly common for online retailers to ban accounts that do charge-backs. Amazon will ban people for having too many returns.
Ok, then open another one. It is a bit time consuming but at least you don't take the loss.
It's not that easy, Amazon closes accounts that attempt to evade their bans too, by cross referencing shipping addresses, names, emails, credit cards, IP addresses, etc.
> It's too complex for Amazon minimum wage drones to understand why this is a scam, so you can't do anything about it.
Too be fair, it's not exactly a scam. No one is really being cheated out of anything. It's annoying for sure, but there is no deception.
Too be fair, it's not exactly a scam. No one is really being cheated out of anything. It's annoying for sure, but there is no deception.
It is a scam. It's a sophisticated scam. I thought I was buying an item. I was giving the seller a free options contract, valued at a few hundred dollars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valuation_of_options
Price jumped up by a $150, and I never got my item. I needed the item and not receiving it resulted in a couple hundred bucks of damages. If price had gone down a hundred bucks, I would have overpaid by that much.
The seller, by the way, did charge my card. It was marked as shipped. The seller issued a refund on the day it was supposed to arrive, claiming it was "lost in trucking." Many other buyers had their orders "lost in trucking" too from reviews of that and other sellers.
My opinion is that Amazon should have made the seller fulfill the orders. At the time I ordered, several items were available at the same price. At the time I was to receive the order, price had gone up $150. It's not like the seller couldn't have fulfilled it; they would have just taken a loss to do so.
I'll mention this isn't the only time I got scammed on Amazon this year; just the most clever scam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valuation_of_options
Price jumped up by a $150, and I never got my item. I needed the item and not receiving it resulted in a couple hundred bucks of damages. If price had gone down a hundred bucks, I would have overpaid by that much.
The seller, by the way, did charge my card. It was marked as shipped. The seller issued a refund on the day it was supposed to arrive, claiming it was "lost in trucking." Many other buyers had their orders "lost in trucking" too from reviews of that and other sellers.
My opinion is that Amazon should have made the seller fulfill the orders. At the time I ordered, several items were available at the same price. At the time I was to receive the order, price had gone up $150. It's not like the seller couldn't have fulfilled it; they would have just taken a loss to do so.
I'll mention this isn't the only time I got scammed on Amazon this year; just the most clever scam.
Never mind third-party sellers, I've had Amazon themselves pull this on me with a book I pre-ordered directly from them.
On the day my order was supposed to be delivered, it mysteriously became "unavailable", only to reappear a couple of weeks later at a higher price.
On the day my order was supposed to be delivered, it mysteriously became "unavailable", only to reappear a couple of weeks later at a higher price.
> It's not like the seller couldn't have fulfilled it; they would have just taken a loss to do so.
Contract law exists to enforce contracts that one party doesn't want to complete because they regret entering into the deal once they have more information, or the costs change, etc.
You could try to sue the vendor in small claims court to recover your damages, including the costs of the suit. The vendor is counting on you and other parties not actually doing that.
Contract law exists to enforce contracts that one party doesn't want to complete because they regret entering into the deal once they have more information, or the costs change, etc.
You could try to sue the vendor in small claims court to recover your damages, including the costs of the suit. The vendor is counting on you and other parties not actually doing that.
The problem is that the vendor is technically Amazon; they are the one who provide the technical, financial and logistical services as well as profit from it (if the scam went in the seller's favor). The seller itself is likely abroad.
We have a regulatory problem here where you think you deal with a local company abiding by local laws, you get charged by a local company that's supposed to be abiding by local laws (Amazon charges customers and they pays out the sellers later), but when things go wrong they can suddenly pull the "we are a platform" get-out-of-jail-free card. This should not be possible.
We have a regulatory problem here where you think you deal with a local company abiding by local laws, you get charged by a local company that's supposed to be abiding by local laws (Amazon charges customers and they pays out the sellers later), but when things go wrong they can suddenly pull the "we are a platform" get-out-of-jail-free card. This should not be possible.
Out of curiosity, what was the item that has such price swings?
Chest freezer.
A lot of items had these swings though: face masks were the most obvious, but virtually all emergency supplies went through major up-and-down spikes. Dry shelf-stable food, some medicines, toilet paper, etc. All of a sudden, the whole world wanted to stock up.
That made it really hard to buy those items if you have a non-emergency use for them.
A lot of items had these swings though: face masks were the most obvious, but virtually all emergency supplies went through major up-and-down spikes. Dry shelf-stable food, some medicines, toilet paper, etc. All of a sudden, the whole world wanted to stock up.
That made it really hard to buy those items if you have a non-emergency use for them.
Ahh I hadn't thought of COVID related price changes. Thanks for the response!
Charging the card and not yet shipping is a scam.
But they don't charge the card until they ship.
Yes but they tie up the opportunity to charge the card for weeks on end while you try to get them to ship or have Amazon cancel it. Imagine buying a $500 widget and the seller delays and delays. You decide to order elsewhere and then finally the seller fulfills the order. You are now committed to $1000 of widget when you only wanted one.
But when you buy from the second vendor you can just cancel the first order.
Amazon lets you cancel any time before shipment. They don't do pre-auths on the card either.
Amazon lets you cancel any time before shipment. They don't do pre-auths on the card either.
imo it's a bit like an auction where the seller can accept or refuse to honor the outcome, depending on the highest bid.
but is there actually "no deception"? i mean, if i order something i'm usually reasonally sure i'll actually get the product. them not honoring their side of the contract does seem like deception.
but is there actually "no deception"? i mean, if i order something i'm usually reasonally sure i'll actually get the product. them not honoring their side of the contract does seem like deception.
I switched mainly to eBay a few years ago. No inventory commingling, and the users generally post seller reviews associated with the seller instead of on a generic product page.
In Mexico most of the times you'll get a previously opened and returned package. Which in turn would usually return myself and ask for a new package (happened with an AIO cooler unit which even had the thermal paste applied on it...
Or the items won't work as expected which has happened to me with laptops and tablets. The only good thing is there is no problem returning the used / bad stuff. But you lose time and the discount price.
Or the items won't work as expected which has happened to me with laptops and tablets. The only good thing is there is no problem returning the used / bad stuff. But you lose time and the discount price.
It's cheaper to just accept returns instead of checking every product for complete function.
And I think it's acceptable considering how easy returns are with Amazon.
And I think it's acceptable considering how easy returns are with Amazon.
I don't think its acceptable at all. An easy return doesn't fix having to wait an additional at least a few days before you actually get what you paid for.
That is just basically accepting that Amazon is completely unreliable for anything even remotely time sensitive, despite what made them huge in the first place - extremely fast delivery.
That is just basically accepting that Amazon is completely unreliable for anything even remotely time sensitive, despite what made them huge in the first place - extremely fast delivery.
Isn’t that what was called pulling a “scamazon” on Shameless? I haven’t had this happen with Amazon (but I know they’d make it right)
I did just have it happen with an order from a sketchy web front obviously shipping out of China. I knew it was risky but I used PayPal, which I’ve used in the past and used their buyer guarantee. This time the dispute is lagging (maybe COVID-related staffing issues) but I see many reports on their forums of it happening and claims being closed without resolution, requiring a ton of extra work to escalate and find someone who can help, etc.
I was supposed to receive $65 of cleaning products, but wound up with a cheap small pair of socks (lightweight and easy to ship. Even the customs declaration says “socks” on it)
However according to USPS the package was delivered. So a quick review looks like they fulfilled their obligation. I’m hoping I get a chance to send in pictures showing what I got obviously not matching the order (which conveniently wasn’t line itemed in PayPal, so hopefully they will accept my email showing the actual items...)
I did just have it happen with an order from a sketchy web front obviously shipping out of China. I knew it was risky but I used PayPal, which I’ve used in the past and used their buyer guarantee. This time the dispute is lagging (maybe COVID-related staffing issues) but I see many reports on their forums of it happening and claims being closed without resolution, requiring a ton of extra work to escalate and find someone who can help, etc.
I was supposed to receive $65 of cleaning products, but wound up with a cheap small pair of socks (lightweight and easy to ship. Even the customs declaration says “socks” on it)
However according to USPS the package was delivered. So a quick review looks like they fulfilled their obligation. I’m hoping I get a chance to send in pictures showing what I got obviously not matching the order (which conveniently wasn’t line itemed in PayPal, so hopefully they will accept my email showing the actual items...)
A close friend has a very similar thing recently, except it was/should have been a new Ryzen 3700x, not a warehouse deal.
If you've bought one you'll know it comes in a box with a big cooler on top, and the proc is at the bottom in a bit of plastic packing.
He got the big cooler but no Ryzen. Contacted Amazon, got another Ryzen and cooler sent out.
I think this is incredibly common...
If you've bought one you'll know it comes in a box with a big cooler on top, and the proc is at the bottom in a bit of plastic packing.
He got the big cooler but no Ryzen. Contacted Amazon, got another Ryzen and cooler sent out.
I think this is incredibly common...
This is not a scam unique to Amazon. It happens everywhere, and has for decades at least. A more insidious version attacks eBay sellers. The buyer will send an item back broken and ask for a refund, meanwhile keeping the good verse;n you sent them. Take serial numbers, secretly hide marks and photograph them before sending anything.
But do you do with that serial number mismatch and 'missing secret marks' evidence? A seller could easily fudge that "proof" and eBay/Amazon aren't big on taking sellers at their word. There's no fool-proof way to collect evidence of return fraud and there isn't much you can do once you have that evidence.
It happened to me when I bought a new motherboard from Amazon (shipped and sold by Amazon, not Amazon Warehouse nor fulfilled by Amazon). I opened the motherboard box and inside was a 10-year old motherboard.
I knew this was a possibility when buying from Amazon Warehouse but didn't expect it when buying new directly from Amazon.
I knew this was a possibility when buying from Amazon Warehouse but didn't expect it when buying new directly from Amazon.
A year ago I bought a TV (same as you: directly from Amazon). It came with the screen cracked. I asked for a new one... The replacement came cracked. On the reviews, I saw a couple people mentioning that the screen came cracked. They wanted me to send them back by Canada Post, but I said no way I would do that, as I don't drive, and I would not carry 2 55" TVs on the streets. They ended up paying for purolator to pick them up at my place.
I asked for a refund and bought on Best Buy. No problems!
I asked for a refund and bought on Best Buy. No problems!
The way Amazon runs things is completely inexcusable. If you can't order directly from Amazon and get a non-fraudulent product, then the whole platform is basically going to a flea market, having all the vendors turn their backs, shuffling product amongst the vendors, and sending normal citizens through to buy what they want.
Any traceability and trust the end consumer would have is gone. Amazon may be able to trace a particular product to a vendor, but that's of no help to a consumer wanting a consistent supply of goods. Amazon also doesn't show if a vendor chooses to opt out of comingled inventory, which would go a long way towards helping end consumer trust.
Any traceability and trust the end consumer would have is gone. Amazon may be able to trace a particular product to a vendor, but that's of no help to a consumer wanting a consistent supply of goods. Amazon also doesn't show if a vendor chooses to opt out of comingled inventory, which would go a long way towards helping end consumer trust.
A similar thing has happened to me in the past. Brought a phone dock from amazon, and when it arrived, it didn't fit my phone, looking at the serial number on the dock itself, it was for the previous model of phone but the packaging was for the latest.
So someone had decided to upgrade for free.
So someone had decided to upgrade for free.
I think what a lot of people are missing in the comments when they say "I bought <product> from <brand> not a third party..." is that for new products the 'seller name' you're buying from does not correspond to which box you get off the shelf. It's called co-mingled inventory--Amazon doesn't track which box you (as seller) sent them, they just throw it on the shelf with all the other "new" same product boxes.
Obvious fraud is at least somewhat Amazon's problem since it gets returned, but the huge problem for the name-brand vendors is all the support requests / bad reviews they get when people get counterfeit crap, thinking they bought from <brand> directly.
Obvious fraud is at least somewhat Amazon's problem since it gets returned, but the huge problem for the name-brand vendors is all the support requests / bad reviews they get when people get counterfeit crap, thinking they bought from <brand> directly.
IIRC, if you're a seller, you have to pay extra to not have your goods co-mingled with the "same" product from other companies. It would appear that seagate didn't do that.
> if you're a seller, you have to pay extra to not have your goods co-mingled
It would be great if Amazon passed that information on to the purchaser. It might even justify paying a higher price to buy from a non-comingled vendor because it would indicate increased accountability.
It would be great if Amazon passed that information on to the purchaser. It might even justify paying a higher price to buy from a non-comingled vendor because it would indicate increased accountability.
While true, this does not apply in this case, "Warehouse" (=re-sold returned goods) inventory is not comingled.
I recently purchased a open box Apple Pencil from BestBuy. When I got it, it didn’t work. I realized the pencil s/n didn’t match the box and looked up the manufacture date. It was several years old and the battery must’ve been shot. Someone had bought a new pencil and used the box to return their old pencil and BestBuy must not have checked.
BestBuy gave me a new one, no hassle. But then crazily enough, the brand new Apple Pencil didn’t work either. Bad luck! They were out of stock at that point so they just gave me a refund.
Anyway, I know this is a risk with open box. A friend just purchased a brand new Garmin Fenix via Amazon. When she opened the Garmin box, nothing was inside! Amazon refunded her. She purchased it from REI instead.
BestBuy gave me a new one, no hassle. But then crazily enough, the brand new Apple Pencil didn’t work either. Bad luck! They were out of stock at that point so they just gave me a refund.
Anyway, I know this is a risk with open box. A friend just purchased a brand new Garmin Fenix via Amazon. When she opened the Garmin box, nothing was inside! Amazon refunded her. She purchased it from REI instead.
Someone did this scam even at a local Best Buy. When I returned it, they unpack it and scan the barcode on the case, but of course not on the actual HDD. (the person doing the scam didn't even do a good job, and broke some of the plastic clips in the process)
Reminds me of scrolls with the “king’s seal”...we might need to start demanding more than fancy shrink-wrap to ensure that something is actually in factory packaging.
I think an interesting way to do it would be to have slightly stronger plastic wrap that can be “dented” in several places similar to a UPC pattern, that in turn can be scanned by a phone for authenticity. (This could be done both by warehouses prior to agreeing to stock something, and by consumers to verify what they get.) Scammers might eventually figure it out but at least they’d need to recreate a complex dent pattern after shrink-wrapping, and they would need to be able to do it for each unique company they’re claiming to be.
I think an interesting way to do it would be to have slightly stronger plastic wrap that can be “dented” in several places similar to a UPC pattern, that in turn can be scanned by a phone for authenticity. (This could be done both by warehouses prior to agreeing to stock something, and by consumers to verify what they get.) Scammers might eventually figure it out but at least they’d need to recreate a complex dent pattern after shrink-wrapping, and they would need to be able to do it for each unique company they’re claiming to be.
I need to buy 15 16GB SD cards for a high school robotics team for Raspberry Pis that are guaranteed to be shutdown improperly and bumped around a lot.
I balked at Amazon. I just don’t know how to trust their stuff anymore. Left having no idea where to get a sensible price.
I balked at Amazon. I just don’t know how to trust their stuff anymore. Left having no idea where to get a sensible price.
Newegg! Usually it's pretty close to competitive with Amazon for electronics.
I have no idea why newegg didn’t cross my mind. I guess because I’m not buying desktop computer parts.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Depending on what brand you want, they're as cheap as $5 on B&H: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?q=sd%20card&filters=fc...
Wow $5. That’s by far the best I’ve found for a brand name I recognize. Purchased. Thank you from me and the students.
Even worth it with the import duty fees to Canada.
Even worth it with the import duty fees to Canada.
This was a big reason that I stopped buying stuff from best Buy.
I would buy some peripheral or appliance, get home, open the box, and see a dirty, stained, clearly broken device.
They were always very good about refunding, but they treated my wasted time as if it were nothing.
This has not [yet] happened to me with Amazon, for new devices, but it did happen once with a used "New condition" peripheral (what arrived was broken, dirty, and packed with toilet paper and rolled up newspapers). The third-party vendor jerked me around so much, I had to use Amazon's A-Z guarantee.
I tend to use Costco for home appliances, these days, and my expensive kit from manufacturers.
I would buy some peripheral or appliance, get home, open the box, and see a dirty, stained, clearly broken device.
They were always very good about refunding, but they treated my wasted time as if it were nothing.
This has not [yet] happened to me with Amazon, for new devices, but it did happen once with a used "New condition" peripheral (what arrived was broken, dirty, and packed with toilet paper and rolled up newspapers). The third-party vendor jerked me around so much, I had to use Amazon's A-Z guarantee.
I tend to use Costco for home appliances, these days, and my expensive kit from manufacturers.
Amazon has become very difficult. I end up using ebay more and more: sellers there are small businesses and they bear more responsibility. It feels more decentralized. Longer shipping, but cheaper and more reliable.
WAY cheaper! I used to default to Amazon for everything. So many things that Amazon charges $10-15 for (with free shipping, of course) can be had for $5 with $0-$3 shipping on eBay. I've saved tons over the last couple years.
I don't know how best buy our other brick and mortar stores deal with this kind of scams. Unless they actually hook it up and check for that kind of scam its tough. In that sense its not a uniquely Amazon issue. At Amazon's scale though it gets exaggerated and also because of that scale they can ignore it and keep replacing items for their customers. The process to check each and every item for scams might be too costly. Its a fascinating study nonetheless and it will be great to get some real insight from people working on these issues.
You can just drive back and hand it to them and get a new one or a refund in just an hour or so. Not so easy with Amazon.
Gavin Free of the Slow-Mo Guys talked on a podcast how he got 2 cans of Dr. Pepper instead of a dremel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-LRgWpyMEI&t=29s
I wonder what else could "black hats" do with this "exploit". Buy laptops, install malware, return them? The higher-end the laptop, the higher the chances are the next buyer will be rich, and that seems like an interesting way to access someone's bank account.
I wonder what else could "black hats" do with this "exploit". Buy laptops, install malware, return them? The higher-end the laptop, the higher the chances are the next buyer will be rich, and that seems like an interesting way to access someone's bank account.
I had this exact thing happen with the purchase of a Nest Protect from Amazon. Nest packaging complete with "Inspected" sticker on the box and a First Alert detector inside.
I no longer shop at Amazon.
I no longer shop at Amazon.
have a former friend that would do a brick and mortar version of this... even went so far as to buy a shrink wrap machine.
buy an external drive, take it home and remove the drive.. fill case with rocks or wood or something to add mass.. put it back in the box, shrink wrap it and have his wife return it.. doing a slight upgrade to the next size up. repeat a couple of times.. then get full refund.
he'd even end up with his own crap filled drives once in a while..
buy an external drive, take it home and remove the drive.. fill case with rocks or wood or something to add mass.. put it back in the box, shrink wrap it and have his wife return it.. doing a slight upgrade to the next size up. repeat a couple of times.. then get full refund.
he'd even end up with his own crap filled drives once in a while..
Reminds me of how someone went to Target to buy an iPod for her daughter, found it full of rocks and exchanged it after getting her refund rejected, only for a replacement iPod from another Target to also be filled with rocks.
https://www.engadget.com/2007-10-09-birthday-girl-gets-two-r...
https://www.engadget.com/2007-10-09-birthday-girl-gets-two-r...
A long time ago, I bought Half-Life 1 in a regular store. I tried to play with a friend online but it said my CD-key was already being used.
Turned out my friend had bought the game, came without a CD-key printed on the box, so the store opened a random box and gave him that CD-key. I bought that exact same box.
In the end, my friend sent a picture of the box to Valve and got a fresh CD-key, and we could finally play together.
In the end, my friend sent a picture of the box to Valve and got a fresh CD-key, and we could finally play together.
This is why retailers are starting to get drivers licenses to complete a return; its much harder to scam if you cant do it anonymously.
I doubt this will do much. They would still need to actually investigate the issues which they already don't do.
Online banks nowadays do ID verification with passports, etc and yet very basic fraud committed intentionally by the account holder is still happening because the truth is even though the information to identify the perpetrator is there nobody can be bothered enough to act on it.
Online banks nowadays do ID verification with passports, etc and yet very basic fraud committed intentionally by the account holder is still happening because the truth is even though the information to identify the perpetrator is there nobody can be bothered enough to act on it.
Just had something similar happen to myself a couple months ago -- bought some good condition used Galaxy Buds Plus (released 2020) sold by Amazon, received Galaxy Buds (Non-Plus, released 2019) inside Galaxy Buds Plus packaging. I had zero problem returning the item and getting a full refund, but I do wonder if the person who did this got away with it.
Bought an Intel CPU, got an "Intel" box that was full of Chinese playing cards. Amazon rep insisted it was "just a mistake", my ass. It's fraud.
https://imgur.com/a/P05mh4j
edit: Intel product, Sold by Amazon. None of that third-party stuff warehouse stuff here.
https://imgur.com/a/P05mh4j
edit: Intel product, Sold by Amazon. None of that third-party stuff warehouse stuff here.
I learned many years ago that auto theft is almost 100% committed by a very tiny fraction of the overall population.
Probably same phenomenon here. Small # of people doing this. I'm hopeful Amazon does not go easy on these people. The numbers are likely in their favor even if they decided to take every single one of those cases to court.
Probably same phenomenon here. Small # of people doing this. I'm hopeful Amazon does not go easy on these people. The numbers are likely in their favor even if they decided to take every single one of those cases to court.
Curious what countries this is happening in?
I’m in the Uk and never had these problems despite being a fairly prolific Amazon user.
I’m in the Uk and never had these problems despite being a fairly prolific Amazon user.
I buy a lot of stuff from amazon and only on 1 occasion did something like this happen. Bought a 16Gb DDR4 SODIMM, mind you from the warehouse deals (half price!) and a 4Gb module arrived. Opened a case with Amazon and they sent me a second one, but this time the correct size...
I once bought a lawnmower where someone had swapped it out with a lower-end model. That was from Lowe's.
I'd like to know what action companies take against this type of theft, it seems trivial to identify the culprit but maybe difficult to prove anything and probably expensive.
I'd like to know what action companies take against this type of theft, it seems trivial to identify the culprit but maybe difficult to prove anything and probably expensive.
Unless there's some sort of large scale, organised fraud occurring, or it is so hugely prevalent as to be affecting the bottom line then I'd be very surprised if any action was taken. If you think about the amount of time and effort involved (legal counsel is expensive) then it's not worth it.
Oh so that's why where I'm from most stores require an ID to return something.
Had a similar issue with Best Buy: ordered a 10TB HDD (quite a few) and inside was a 250GB HDD.
To be fair, they were champs and replaced it with another unit, but unfortunately there are people who do this and then they don’t validate it. The HDD was also an absurdly old one too.
To be fair, they were champs and replaced it with another unit, but unfortunately there are people who do this and then they don’t validate it. The HDD was also an absurdly old one too.
Yeah the return fraud is also a problem for third-party Amazon sellers.
Buyers can essentially destroy the item and return it claiming warehouse damage, and then Amazon won’t always take responsibility even if it was sent to FBA near perfect or new.
Buyers can essentially destroy the item and return it claiming warehouse damage, and then Amazon won’t always take responsibility even if it was sent to FBA near perfect or new.
I've had this happen with a graphics card.
Bought a 2070. Got a 2060 in scruffy packaging.
To add insult to injury I sent it back and doesn't seem to have arrived yet and/or covid ate it. 5 fuckin months later it's still:
>Your refund will be processed when we receive your item.
Bought a 2070. Got a 2060 in scruffy packaging.
To add insult to injury I sent it back and doesn't seem to have arrived yet and/or covid ate it. 5 fuckin months later it's still:
>Your refund will be processed when we receive your item.
Curiously enough I encountered the inverse problem the other day.
I received a refund for an item sitting on my desk. I purchased it, received it, and did not request any refund at all.
I called Amazon about it and they said to let the refund go through and they sent me an email I could reply to when I was ready to be re-charged.
Extremely odd, and I was worried there was some scam I was missing. Amazon rep said the returns department made a mistake somehow.
I imagine there's probably someone that returned the same item I bought and they're still waiting for their refund. :-/
I received a refund for an item sitting on my desk. I purchased it, received it, and did not request any refund at all.
I called Amazon about it and they said to let the refund go through and they sent me an email I could reply to when I was ready to be re-charged.
Extremely odd, and I was worried there was some scam I was missing. Amazon rep said the returns department made a mistake somehow.
I imagine there's probably someone that returned the same item I bought and they're still waiting for their refund. :-/
This is standard practice at Amazon and it's very annoying. Even defective items just get sent out until someone doesn't return them and items that were clearly used get sold again as new without even being cleaned.
I am glad to have read this thread. A few of the issues mentioned in comments have happened to me in the last year, but I just wrote it off as one-off scamming, did not realize it's systemic and sophisticated.
I’ve had this happen to me multiple times with Apple keyboards and mice for the office. They are listed as brand new and sold by Amazon. But they are clearly used when you open the box.
There is a post about it every week on /r/datahoarder
This reminds me of the time I bought a high-end GTX video card at Best Buy... only to find a bottle of shampoo inside. These types of return scams happen all the time.
I bought a 240hz monitor from AWH and there was a 144hz one in the box. Sad times to set that all up and see that someone got a free upgrade.
[deleted]
"But certainly I would expect accounts would accumulate warning flags and at some point be banned."
If you're going to swap the drive, why not swap in a 4tb, or a 2tb, or a 500mb?
I bought a new kid's book from Amazon.
A child had written their name inside the cover.
A child had written their name inside the cover.
The real scam is from Amazon, selling store return items as brand new.
why would they swap in a 8 tb one thah still has value and not a idk 500g one and profit more ?
I have a NAS that holds four drives. If I upgrade 8TB drives for 16TB drives, I would have no further use for the 8TB drives. I also don't have half-TB drives lying around.
sure, but if you are a scammer then selling the 8T for at least 100$ and picking one for basically free would net you more profit.
maybe it was somebody that did not think he does something wrong because "amazon is big and will eat the cost"
Huh, honestly it'd be "cleverer" to find a broken drive (that the OS wouln't even detect) and swap it into the enclosure. Then the thief can say it was defective, or the next buyer would, and there would be less of a chance of an investigation/change of policy.
Agreed, a dedicated scammer probably has many options. I suspect this was just some person upgrading a drive, probably not a dedicate scammer.
What does this have to do with Amazon? Return scams have been around for as long as returns.
Another outrage dump where prime members and AWS customers vent their spleen on the teat that nourishes their lives. It's a frail rebellion. A piece of performance art. Experimental theatre
Amazon has done a cosmetic inspection of the item and gives it a ranking on how it appears which you see when you are buying it.
There are certain types of items where you can save a huge amount of money and get great deals using Amazon Warehouse. Hard drives are obviously not one of them due to the assumption that everything is returned for a reason. An example of a type of item that I’ve always had good luck with is pots and pans.
The interesting thing about this is assume that the tracking is in place to identify who returned the original item. What would you do?
Maybe the actual scam (I don’t mean in this specific case) is buying perfectly good Amazon Warehouse items but, knowing that they had been previously returned, claiming the item was swapped out after swapping it out yourself.
So Amazon can’t really know who to blame from a single incident. But certainly I would expect accounts would accumulate warning flags and at some point be banned.