I stopped ordering tech on Amazon when I got a fraud twice in a month on back-to-back orders a few years back.
First was a laptop that wouldn’t start. I looked at the bottom and the scewes were mostly stripped, and once I got them out most of the components had been removed from the boards.
Second was a Spyder color calibrator. What I got instead was a iPhone 4 screen protector with a sticker slapped on with the UPC for what I’d ordered. When I tried returning it, they gave me flack for slap-tagging a return, but I was able to escalate in that case.
@chiliedogg @themachinestops
Amazon will consistently facilitate fraud. I had sworn I would not order from them, but it seemed there was an exceptional deal on a certain type of tortilla.
There were supposed to be 12 bags of tortillas, but there were only 10.
I read there guidelines, and there is absolutely no recourse for something like this. I opened the box, now it’s mine.I had decided quite firmly I wouldn’t deal with them, and it was a serious mistake when I did.
Amazon Let Its Drivers’ Urine Be Sold as an Energy Drink
Drivers urinating in bottles has been reported in the past, but what wasn’t known is that some claim they also get penalized for having those urine-filled bottles in their truck when they return to the warehouse.
…
To avoid penalties, they end up discarding the bottles by the side of the road. Butler searches the roadsides near Amazon warehouses from Coventry to New York to Los Angeles and more often than not strikes liquid gold.
From there, it’s laughably straightforward for Butler to get Release listed for sale on Amazon, with very few checks and balances in place to ensure the product he’s selling is safe and legal. “Releasing the drink was surprisingly easy,” Butler told WIRED. “I thought that the food and drinks licensing would stop me from listing it, so I started it out in this Refillable Pump Dispenser category. Then the algorithm moved it into drinks.”
Isn’t that a plot in Moral Orel?
@UnderpantsWeevil
they need to be shut downNationalized and folded into the USPS. Idk about shutting down the biggest commercial retailer in the world.
@UnderpantsWeevil Nationalize is a good idea.
@UnderpantsWeevil
It would certainly take some work. Like the Army, they rely on a failure elsewhere to provide real jobs and paychecks.
Bring on the guaranteed basic income. Fuck your job.But income isn’t useful if you can’t buy stuff with it. And Amazon is the supply chain network that delivers stuff in exchange for money.
And Amazon is the supply chain network that delivers stuff in exchange for money.
Allegedly.
deleted by creator
So what exactly did you do to piss off the Amazon Returns department? Because from my experience, they are the most lenient company when it comes to returns/refunds. I’ve had stuff arrive broken, or scuffed up, or it was the wrong item, or I just plain didn’t like a product and every time I’ve been able to submit a return without having to interact with a single person.
I feel like you either have to be lying about your experience, didn’t even try to return it, or did something that got your account flagged.
No judgement…but why would you buy 10 bags of tortillas from Amazon?
@QuandaleDingle
I paid for 12. and it was supposed to be a good deal. why do you ask?
d’OhI’m just curious. You probably go into a hispanic food store and get them for a similar price, or better. And you know what you’re getting then. shrug
But you saw a good deal and thought they’d honor that. So it really sucks that happened. I mean, it’s tortilla! ToT
Yeah, if it’s not made by Amazon and sold by them, I typically won’t buy it. All the other stuff is just marked up stuff from AliExpress and temu.
They don’t make anything. You’re buying marked up stuff from AliExpress and temu that has an “Amazon basics” sticker on it.
I get that, but imo they do vet them and make sure it’s not absolute crap.
16 GB DDR2 + 16 GB DDR3 makes 32GB DDR5, right?
32 GBGB DDDDRR5 actually. Much better!
32 GB² DDR²5
It’s sickening how little Amazon seem to give a fuck about this. They could easily tighten up their vetting of sellers, but heaven fucking forbid they only report a $50,000,000,000 profit this year instead of $50,003,000,000.
They’ve invested extensively in automating their supply chain to the point that humans aren’t looking inside these boxes anymore. And as customer support is increasingly replaced with AI, the ability to flag and report businesses for fraud has erodes even as the businesses themselves have grown more sophisticated in duping Amazon anti-fraud systems.
The quest to remove every actual thinking human from the inside of your business results in humans outside of your business exploiting the blind spots to the hilt.
CEOs are probably hedging on LLMs adapting faster to scammers then video versa, however unless they make a fundamental breakthrough like what transformers did, adding more parameters to the model ain’t gonna do it.
We are reaching a convergence of accuracy, and once a critical mass of investors realize it, this whole thing implodes. Demand for AI tech will plummet, and all these asshole companies will have to backpedal. Maybe not Amazon, but the small cap companies fo sure
It is like a cat and mouse game between scammer prevention and scammers.
And just like with piracy, the scammers will always be one step ahead of the corporations. Because Amazon may have some giant nerds working in it, but the sheer amount of nerds outside of Amazon will bypass them easily.
Scam software will never replace scam artists.
CEOs are probably hedging on LLMs adapting faster to scammers then video versa
Racing towards the Singularity, a thing that is definitely real and exists and is achievable in our lifetimes.
We are reaching a convergence of accuracy, and once a critical mass of investors realize it, this whole thing implodes.
Industrial dinosaurs have a way of sticking around in strict defiance of market forces. The O&G industry is a great example. They’ve been able to outrun more efficient and cost-effective methods of production and application of energy for decades, in large part thanks to lobbyist-lead state investments in long-term infrastructure and buying out / shutting down of competitors.
I do think the AI boom is facing bigger headwinds than the automotive or airline industries, in large part due to their bloated balance sheets and highly speculative asset prices. But in the same way the big 2008-era investment banks were saved by a multi-trillion dollar bailout from the Fed and the Treasury, I have no doubt Silicon Valley is simply Too Big To Fail in the long run.
Its amazon, just return it. That’s really the only good thing about amazon anymore, easy returns.
Not really anymore for me. A few times this past year they snuck in the return shipping cost at about $10-$15 USD. The page showed the cost refunded then added back. I don’t know but it fooled me.
With this hardware shortage insanity, I won’t be surprised if they get more aggressive with return shipping fees.
Return shipping fees? I’m guessing you live somewhere rural? Here we just drop it at a local store.
amazon has been getting less generous with the returns for years now.
Especially if you have more than a few returns per year.
Except in the UK for some reason where you can email and message them for months and pay your own damn return shipping and get fucked about and never recieve a refund.
They tried to fuck me on a return once and after a month of it sitting in limbo i filed and won a dispute though my card provider instead.
Matter of fact i think it was over ram too, but it was over a year ago.
Oh man, that sucks. Sorry, I wrongly assumed amazon returns worked the same everywhere
This is my theory. The kind of stuff I buy there is all electronics manufactured in china/Asia anyway. I could buy it direct or from ali express, but Amazon shipping is hella cheap and fast and they actually do returns quickly and correctly.
I buy and maintain about $20K of computer equipment a year for my lab. We learned around 2020 Amazon is a nest of scammers, from the suppliers to the delivery people.
There has been a significant resurgence of local computer supply retail because millions have been ripped off and only now buy in person.
Yeah, I got burned on some hard drives in like 2018 and won’t use them again. They took no action when I reported the issue with the seller. Thankfully I have a microcenter close enough that I can source most of what I need there.
My local retail supplier has seen revenues double in the last 4 years. But, they are under constant threat of scam by buyers.
It’s not just sellers, buyers return swapped items all the time.
So check the items before accepting the return? Sellers are responsible for what they sell.
Buying electronics from Amazon is really rolling the dice. I’ve received so many inadvertent open box returns… it’s just a matter of time before you get burned.
Newegg is also shit and so is bestbuy. I don’t have a microcenter near me. What else is there? I guess buying direct. Is there anything I’m missing?
B&H is a great source for electronics, computer parts, and photography.
Depends on what you’re buying. Wiredzone and Provantage are solid for enterprise/workstation gear, and for anything storage or camera related B&H is my go-to.
Best buy resellers are worse than eBay.
So they don’t have the resources to check returned goods or what? Or they simply don’t care enough?
Yup this isn’t a fraud problem. Just an Amazon problem
“… from Amazon”
Well there’s your problem.
Is amazon not a good supplier anymore? I still order stuff from them occasionally and always get what I need.
There is very little quality control. Amazon mixes supply from different sellers, so bad actors often supply garbage into legitimate listings.
No. They do nothing to vet the sellers or product they are shipping.
Amazon is a platform for different kinds of vendors. Of course there’s the scam artists who do the bait-and-switch.
I ordered 2x32GB DDR5 on Amazon two years ago and received 1x32 and 1x8 in the same package.
Luckily they replaced it for me completely, still wild. Can only imagine it’s going to get worse.
Don’t buy expensive shit off Amazon. They don’t do anything to prevent fraud.
We caught a driver on camera take a picture of a $2000 PC on a doorstep, then move it back into his truck. Took a month to resolve with Amazon. If you have to deal with these clowns, use the local pickup option from a locker.
Don’t order from Amazon. Easy fix.
Hold sellers accountable. Actual fix.
I personally believe the platform provider needs to be accountable because they take a cut for the convenience and safety of the transaction.
I think, if the seller used Amazon shipping, it’s not actually the seller’s fault. Doesn’t Amazon pool all items from the same SKU together from all sellers and ship whatever they can get to the buyer the fastest/cheapest?
Yes. If you sell on amazon, and have amazon fulfill the shipping… you ship your stuff to amazon, and its just put in teh big pool with all the other items of the same kind.
Even returns get put back into the pool.
its the absolute most pants on head stupid fucking way possible to manage inventory to the point that shit like this seems almost intentionally designed for rather than a consequence of.
Which is why anytime you order anything from amazon, you should record the entire box to show its untampered with, then film the entireity of the opening and confirming everything inside is actually inside.
THere was a famous case of a guy who bought a 10 thousand dollar camera and got a box of rocks, and amazon sent him a replacement and got a box of bricks, before finally getting the camera on the 3rd try… I think recording his second opening saved him from having amazon call him a scammer.
My boss used to sell on Amazon, until one time they royally screwed him over using this method. He had a product where he was given exclusive online rights to sell. Somehow it disappeared in the Amazon warehouse, but at least they provided a refund. Less than a week later, the same product showed up back on Amazon under a first time seller.
They put a lot of local retail out of business.
Working for a small business, Amazon has absolutely allowed for the collapse of local retail. But let’s be real, people put local retail out of business. People chose convenience over community. They’d rather have it delivered to their door, or to their trunk, instead of actually taking the time to walk into a store that’s not a Target or Walmart.
My headlight connector got a little melty, just enough to get loose and stop working, just wore out I suppose.
I bought one on Amazon, along with new bulbs, installed it, and within an hour the new connector had catastrophically melted and shorted out enough to blow the fuse.
I should’ve known, the wire felt cheap, copper clad aluminum. But I thought it would be fine, it’s just a headlight 🤷♂️
Now I’ve got a replacement from the local auto parts. So far so good.
This is a problem with all auto parts, even from NAPA supplying to garages. Mechanics are going broke replacing defective “new” parts.
Makes sense. I work at a different type of repair shop, we just had a brand new $400 battery go up in smoke on first power up. Ridiculous.
Did you receive refunds or do amazon and scammers got away with it?
They got away with it. I bought the part months ago after bodging a fix on the stock connector. By time the bodge failed, the return window closed. It was $5 so unfortunately not worth my time fighting it.
Oh god yeah, so many LED grow lamps and LED drivers that melted or burned out well below their rated amperage. Leaves one to wonder if an entire house is worth saving $10.
Play the long game. Chargeback.
And lose the Amazon account anything associated with it.
Stockholm syndrome…
So?
It’s worth knowing as some people would be adversely affected.
Some people have extensive libraries there. I have over 1k books, and probably half that in audiobooks. I do have them all DeDRM’d but still it would be an annoying loss
Will*
A prudent strategy would be a 2nd account for orders, maybe?
Not necessarily, they have been known to shut down accounts they think are trying to evade a ban.
Not sure how sophisticated it is, but it does exist.
Just ordered some digital photo frames for xmas gifts, and neither one of them work. One is apparently an opened box return. Trashy!
Just got a retro handheld for a gift. Package looked a little suspicious with no way to tell if it had ever been opened. SD card reader broken. Sad to return it a few days before Christmas with no chance at replacing in time.
I bought ram from Amazon some time ago and somebody had done a sticker swap and returned. The ram sticks in the package matched the box according to all the stickers but the kit registered in software was a lower end set with different part/serial numbers than the stickers/box. The funny part was when I bought it the price difference was only like $5 but about a year or so earlier it was closer to an $80 difference.
