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Comment by dingaling | Hacker News Reader

Recap as I understand it, since the blog post isn't

0. Buyer purchased item from third-party seller on Amazon

1. Seller picked a name and address in buyer's town, from an obituary, and sent parcel containing two baking mats thereto ( instead of camera lens )

2. Occupant of that address signed for it believing it to be for the deceased relative

3. USPS updated status to 'delivered' with signature and address recorded

4. However the proof of delivery shows the address from (1) and not the buyer's address

5. Buyer repeatedly appealed on the basis of (4) but Amazon only check that the parcel was signed-for IN THE SAME TOWN. Therefore requests for refunds or further action were denied.

Very clever seller, knows the system well. I wonder how many items he had to sell before striking it rich with a $1500 "lens".

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I got hit with the same-zip-code scam for a $6000 VNA on eaby and the response was completely different. Customer service immediately shuffled me off to a special claims department that investigated and got my money back within about a week.

At no point did I encounter anything resembling the Kafkaesque web of strategic incompetence that I half expected. They followed up every step of the way with courtesy and professionalism even though the seller had woven a substantially more convincing lie than in OP's case -- they had a many year history of selling equipment and radio astronomy books along with two previous successful VNA sales. Evidently it was an account hijack. In this price bracket, even a solid account history isn't a guarantee.

I no longer resent the 10% cut eBay takes. They saved my bacon on this one. It sounds like Amazon's team could learn a thing or two from eBay.

I have shifted all my budget and used buying from Amazon Marketplace to eBay.

At this point it seems like there are new stories about Amazon Marketplace scams almost daily. Does anyone think Marketplace is a priority for Amazon leadership these days? Does Bezos even know it is still operating? It's not getting the A team, obviously.

Meanwhile connecting sellers and buyers is all eBay does. They don't make devices, produce TV shows, run cloud services, etc. etc. Of course their support is good. It has to be.

Right, but if you're a seller and you get scammed, you're screwed, since eBay heavily favors the buyer.

If you're buying eBay is great. If you're the seller however, it's an entirely different story. eBay heavily, heavily, heavily favors the buyer in almost all disputes -- so much so that at times it seems as if it's automatic to the buyer's favor. I guess that's how they get people to spend money on the platform, and of course take their cut of the transaction.

There are tons and tons of seller horror stories, especially with buyers from Asian countries. They will buy an iPhone or something, pay for it, then request a return/refund from the seller but they send back a box of scrap. Even if you don't manually refund their money, they will dispute it, and eBay just sees the return tracking # as 'delivered' and gives them their money back. It really doesn't matter how much you protest, eBay pretty much always sides with the buyer.

But what's the solution here? Without an escrow service which verifies the contents both ways, the best they can do is arbitrarily choose the winner.

What we need is maybe a species of md5 for mail packages

A formulae that mix weight + dimensions + sender data + receiver data + followed route + category of contents. In several parts. Some parts (buyers adress, weight, category, etc...) can be verified for buyer, other for seller. The total formula is available only for the postman and would be easily verifiable.

When the package is sent, a mobile app sends the buyer a message with the buyer part that is checked against the data entered by the buyer in his/her own telephone. The buyer can quickly compare both md5 in the phone and must answer to the postman approving the message in order to the package being accepted in the post.

All returned packages have to be put in a special post yellow envelope available only in the post and checked against the maild5 using the weight and measures of the original (plus-minus a reasonable confidence interval). A machine calculates the statistic probability of having a different content and if under some p-value the postman will not accept the returned package.

>What we need is maybe a species of md5 for mail packages

Or maybe just more honest people?

And where do you propose we find more such "honest people"?

No ideas, most probably it will be many years in the making, you have to start with children ...

It was just an alternative (jokingly) to the idea of the "MD5 for mail packages".

The actual issue is not with the Postal Service or the delivery, it is with Amazon checks on it.

The package was sent to address B instead of address A, it was delivered by the post/courier to address B, and properly signed for by a valid recipient at address B.

It is the Amazon checks that failed to detect that the order was intended for address A and that having it delivered to address B does not represent a fulfillment of the order.

There is however IMHO no need of a complex verification algorithm, and a statistic p-value calculation triggering this or that action.

> It is the Amazon checks that failed to detect that the order was intended for address A and that having it delivered to address B does not represent a fulfillment of the order

Of course. But maybe this should be automatized and solved in advance instead to allow it and solve (or let fall the customer) later, at least for most valuable items

Well whilst a directive "check that the address is exact" to the people providing assistance for issues at Amazon would be fine and cost very little, revolutionize the whole way packets are sent, courier/postal service procedures, etc. to have the "MD5 for packets" seems too much.

I mean, it's not like the number of this kind of frauds is that large, probably somewhere there is an Amazon report stating that they have a fulfillment rate with full satisfaction of customers of 99,9999%, the whole issue (not only Amazon's of course, most "remote" or "call center based" assistance is terrible) is about how poorly this (minimal) 0,0001%is managed.

If the numbers are so small, I believe these large firms could well put in charge of these cases someone with some more capabilities than the "standard" call center guy/gal just reading a script and incapable of solving (or not allowed to solve) these cases.

Having honest people would help. But they can decide at some time not to be honest anymore, or can have their accounts hijacked by other people, giving the buyer a false sense of security.

It probably sounds silly, but I've been the victim of similar scams and so I started video taping myself opening every single package I receive. I be sure to show the tracking information on the box and then leave the camera rolling as I open it and inspect the contents.

In the OP's case, it doesn't seem like Amazon would even care to watch the recording seeing as how they are ignoring pictures that clearly show the item delivered to the wrong address with incorrect contents, but it gives me peace of mind at least.

its not silly, i had the same idea to do that. i do it for any particularly expensive/valuable packages.

eBay is only in the buyer's favor in terms of refunds. It doesn't actually go after fraudsters who refund you immediately to make you shut up after you call out their counterfeits and whatnot.

Anecdotal, but I have /never/ had an issue selling on eBay. I've even sold an old tube power amplifier (around ~700$) to HK and the transaction went smoothly.

Once upon a time, strong protections and support for customers (buyers) is what Amazon was known for.

So many stories were shared like "the thing arrived damaged, and when I called Amazon I talked to a person and they shipped a replacement out right away no questions asked."

Where is that now?

"Amazon gives better protections to sellers" is not a compelling story for attracting customers.

I won an eBay dispute as a seller and it was very easy. Buyer didn't scam me though, his account was hijacked. I believe him because when I looked at the shipping address more closely it was a mail forwarding service.

Both eBay and Amazon are "hackable" by both the buyer and seller. The available scams are different, but neither party of a transaction is 100% safe.

In my experience, eBay is MUCH more slanted to the seller than Amazon.

The real sophisticated scammers are truly unbelievable. Unfortunately, I can't say more on this stuff, but I'll hint that the most egregious scams use both eBay and Amazon, pitting the flaws of each company against each other.

I can't say with any pride that I likely know every possible scam to run on each site as a buyer or seller, although I've never personally executed any scams.

As an FYI, any seller who sells on eBay sells on Amazon. They will push to whatever they can get away with on each platform.

I'll add: to protect yourself as a buyer, find the seller ratings before you decide to purchase. For eBay, bare minimum, 99%. Anything less is too low, even for Top Rated. For Amazon, 99% as well.

Curious whence comes your familiarity with the scams?

My guess is lawyer of some kind who has somehow managed to drown in this exact type of case, either by chance or deliberate job placement.

Can you share any hints that could be used to red-flag a particular seller? Sophisticated users are surely not going to use the same account name on both platforms.

ebay favors the buyer. I have over two hundred purchases on that site from simply every day stuff to antiques. I have had three bad purchases all of which were refunded, two were refunded by ebay the other by the seller.

In the case of the seller refund they state on their pages to please contact them first because honest sellers value their ratings.

now if you are a seller ebay can be trouble and you really need to filter out selling expensive items to low rated buyers and nothing expensive to new accounts.

Well, ebay screwed me over with their "no action after 30 days" policy when it took me longer than that to figure out the item was never shipped. Maybe they've gotten better over the last 8 years, but I'm not coming back regardless.

I think 30 days is really reasonable to see if something shipped or not. Maybe eBay could do more to alert you but if you purchase something you really should follow up and make sure you're getting it.

They really can't. This opens up the buyer and seller to myriad scams. You'd be surprised at how many buyers contact the seller, having no clue what site they bought the actual product from.

Until you find out it takes 30 days for UPS to rule on a lost delivery.

But that's separate right? UPS losing it is different than the seller never shipping it. In the former you should have paid for insurance, and the latter you should know within 30 days if it shipped.

They should ban pre-orders as well, then.

This is when human logic overrides a dumb policy. Really, people at Amazon shouldn't be overriding their brain with a bunch of text in a policy.

There's several holes with buyer side fraud as well with Amazon. Similar issues where common sense things are ignored by Amazon.

Mentioned because I think it's the case that they just don't care about anyone...versus, for example, being biased towards sellers.

> I wonder how many items he had to sell before

"The seller had one good review but didn’t appear to be selling anything else." so it looks like maybe just one item

Probably has many alts.

You would need a credit card for each. Maybe they purchased fraudulent cards or this is the first of many scams on that account.

There are virtual credit card services around, don't think amazon managed to ban them all

The same credit card can't be added to multiple accounts? Are you sure?

I'm not sure if you could or not, however if you were a scammer, you would probably not duplicate cards across accounts. If one account was banned, they would likely ban all accounts with same credit card, thereby wasting all that effort to starting multiple accounts.

I actually tried that last week. It seemed to work at first, but a couple of minutes after ordering they sent me an email that they blocked my (second) account due to suspicion of fraud, and invited me to FAX THEM (I'm not making this shit up) a bunch of documents, and they'd get back to me in a couple of weeks or so... Well, fuck you too.

No details for the fraud scoring given, of course, but I'm guessing the dup credit card combined with an overseas delivery address must have done the trick.

eBay fraudsters mastered this. They would buy and sell bullshit items like old postcards that would be shippable via first class mail, then wait a few months for the auction listings to expire, than sell a fake laptop or camera.

I was almost defrauded like this but refused the shipment and was able to claw the money back via chargeback at the cost of my PayPal account. With about 15 minutes of searching I was able to find networks of these phony sellers building up eBay points and running these scams.

I remember there was an issue where you couldn't easily see a seller's recently sold items, only currently listed and items with feedback already received. So you couldn't see that this well-reviewed person selling an Xbox for a suspiciously low price just sold 30 other Xboxes in the past 48 hours.

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

Yup that seems like it, everything needed to prove that the transaction was fraudulent on the seller's part is included here by third party sources. Amazon completely blew it.

So it seems that as a buyer, if you receive the wrong item, or the item is delivered to the wrong address, Amazon will do nothing. I'm not sure why the seller went to the trouble of sending to a different address, but didn't bother to bulk up the mass.

Technically, this also comes under Mail Fraud which is a federal crime[1]. This suggests that our author should contact both the FBI and the postmaster of their town because someone is using the Mail Service to commit their fraud. And as the latest rounds of advertisments from the Post Office state, "When you use the mail to do your business, it becomes our business."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_and_wire_fraud

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

A couple of possibilities:

  *The customer service reps have to answer a huge volume of cases and they really don't take time to read the email
  *It's ingrained into the customer service reps to follow policy to a T.  So if it was signed for, deny.  
  *They're using some sort of automated system that shows whether something was signed for.  If 'yes', deny.

I still use Amazon because of the convenience and because the vast majority of the time I never have to deal with their customer service, but in the rare instances I do I've noticed that over the past few years Amazon has become very Google-like in terms of putting everything behind systems that are either automated or may as well be (strict script-following offshore customer service).

There used to be useful links ("Where's My Stuff?") directly attached to your order for inquiring about status if things are late, etc, with just a click or two... this all kinda still exists but has been buried so far up into the user interface that there's no way it isn't intentional obfuscation to try to limit any kind of meaningful interaction between the customer and anyone alive within Amazon, with a further barrier between the front-line alive people who are clearly all offshored and anyone in the US.

I've been decrying Amazon's usability for years. Such an unintutive mess of menus and sub-systems. Such a poor customer experience for anything other than simple "click and buy" usage.

I blame their extreme position ahead of other emarketers. They have very little reason to be nice and helpful. People will throw money at them regardless.

Personally, I would never buy anything on Amazon with a price tag more than a couple hundred dollars. They can't even confirm what carrier they will ship through; I'm not about to trust them for high-value items.

Agreed. I once had a new MacBook Pro delivered by OnTrac. That was not pleasant.

I think buying from Amazon itself is relatively OK, I'd have hard time believing Amazon would run any scams. But third party sellers, given no customer service beyond robots and robot-like script readers... yep, better to steer clear.

Buying from Amazon isn't enough to avoid scams. Amazon mixes their stock with 3rd parties stock.

If it's the same item, then it's already not a scam. At least not that one. The whole scam is that there is no item at all. And if Amazon doesn't check stock before mixing (which I have hard time believing) then you'd get much better luck getting money back from Amazon branded sale than from third-party one, IMO.

I once bought a projector that stopped working after 6 months. I tried all the "channels" directly available in the UI (like contact the seller) and got no answer.

When I thought there was nothing else to do, a friend told me: "The first thing you need to do in Amazon, is getting in touch with a real human". And he showed me how, which involved a complicated series of UI steps. Once I talked to a real person I got my money back in a week.

So, yes, I definitely agree. Amazon is making it increasingly difficult to talk to real humans. If I can't get into a phone call, or at least a chat, I don't bother anymore.

Hopefully this publicity on HN and elsewhere will encourage Amazon to refund him and deal with the seller.

I don't understand why Amazon keeps claiming it was sent to the person's address when it was clearly shipped elsewhere. He even has a picture that shows the tracking number and the fact that it was delivered somewhere else. This should be an open and shut case for Amazon, a very obvious scam.

Why would amazon trust the customer anyway? You just could say that in the package was bricks instead of a lens.

I started to make a video while i pack or unpack expensive stuff. Otherwise there is no proof there anyway.

I wouldn't have open the package in front of the ups guy just to return it immedialy.

He had concrete proof that the package was sent to the wrong address and had the wrong weight. The people at Amazon weren't actually listening or comprehending. Yes, it would be possible to just ship a bunch of bricks instead of the actual product, but this scam was pretty transparent.

For this very reason, I always open packages with expensive stuff in them at my local post office, under the nose of a postal clerk.

That way, if someone tries to scam me, at least I have a presumably reliable eyewitness to what was actually in the package when I received it.

Lana is usually a female name, isn't it? Not that it much matters, they still appear to be jerks.

It's common in white collar crime/social engineering schemes to use female names regardless of the criminal's gender as socially people are less suspicious of women, for whatever reason.

That's probably true, though I'm not sure that's enough to assume the gender of the offending party.

Tangentially related, and not white collar, I once had a car stolen by a female. No damage was done and, being a silly old man, I didn't press charges. I was kinda surprised that it was done by a female.

Sorry, I never meant to imply the offender was male or female. On the contrary, due to the value of using a female name, it should not be regarded as evidence of the offender's actual sex or gender at all.

It's all good. It just seemed a bit odd as we're usually pretty good about not assuming gender at HN. I'm not sure why someone would vote me down, but what good is karma if you don't spend it? ;-)

Perhaps because talking about "assuming gender" is nonsense and a complete waste of time? I'm sure you have other things to do aside from looking for ways to be offended.

Why start at 0? Did you echo this from an array?

I think Amazon is part of the scam for allowing it to happen while doing nothing about it and profiting off it like the seller!

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