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Comment by _Codemonkeyism | Hacker News Reader

The only way I've got problems solved with Amazon is going to the police and let them sort it out. Worked every time.

Amazon was in now way responsive or helpful before I've got the police involved.

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

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

As someone who recently went through small-claims as a plaintiff, it is time-consuming and the process takes months to complete[0] - don't forget to be prepared to lose a half-day (or longer) to attend your hearing in court too, and you can't add "equivalent wages for time spent in court for this hearing" to your damages claim) - so for many people a claim valued under a $1000 or so simply isn't worth pursuing.

If I could reform small-claims actions, I'd make it permissible to submit evidence online/electronically with a deposition and let the judges/mediators review it in their own time, have them call us up by phone or send emails if they have any questions and only call us into a physical court-hearing if absolutely necessary.

[0]: At the start of this year I was victim to a breach of contract causing me a 5-figure loss. I filed my claim paperwork in April and got a response in June with my court hearing in August - then another week for a judgement - now I've got to wait 30 days before I can begin to attempt to collect on that judgement, which can take 180 days or more depending on how the defendant appeals or chooses to delay things. That's a possible ~540 days after the violation before we reach settlement. In the OP's case, is that really worth $1500? (Most states allow you to collect a nominal interest on a judgement too, California is 10% APR, for example - better than a savings account, worse than the S&P 500).

Depends. At a strictly transactional cost it is probably 20+ hours of effort all told to use small claims court.

I think there is more at play here, though. They wrote a blog post and have clearly been wronged. Holding Amazon accountable is one of the only ways to change their behavior. It is like fighting a speeding ticket. Some shockingly high percentage are never contested. People just take their lumps and move on. So, I think at this level it is a big enough dollar figure that (aside from the calendar time) it is probably worth your actual time too. If it wasn't they probably wouldn't have written a blog post anyway, if 1500 was that inconsequential to them.

How does fighting the speeding ticket, or taking Amazon to small claims court, going to change any behavior? The police are not inconvenienced that much if you challenge a ticket - they can just not contest and let you win. No pain to them, and they can keep writing tickets that are easily challenged. Same with Amazon - they can just agree to immediately give you your money back when you file a claim in court; no real cost to them that will make them change their behavior.

No matter what, you are the only one who suffers.

If enough people do it and hold them accountable it will change their behavior. They have to answer your claims and that costs them a lot of money to deal with small claims in whatever place in IL the blog author lives. Speeding tickets also work on the principle of everyone's ignorance of defending themselves in court if enough people fought them lawd and society would respond to this.

I've had great experiences with Amazon the few times something went wrong.

- Had a fire extinguisher shipped to me but the pin apparently got knocked out in the box and it discharged during shipping. They sent out a new fire extinguisher immediately, I got to keep the old one and got it recharged for $10.

- A water filter was held by USPS and I wasn't able to pick it up in time. They sent out a new water filter (different shipping so it got to my door) even before the first one was sent back for non-pickup.

- Ordered through Amazon Fresh and some bread got crushed by a 2L soda. Sent a one-line message to them "Bread was crushed by 2L soda" Bam -- refund for bread.

- Called, questioning a $10 charge I had on my credit card, even though I hadn't ordered anything. They tracked it down to a Prime Video subscription I had made that had ended its "free trial period." I just said "Oh! I was going to cancel that!" and they removed the charge and cancelled it for me right then and there without me even asking. I've never heard of any company doing something like that that easily. In my experience "free trial periods" are just traps trying to get people to forget and let the subscription run, so I didn't even bother asking, but they went ahead and removed it.

What did that process look like for you? Do you just call up your local non-emergency number and and tell them Amazon cheated you?

Not OP, but pretty much. Works much better if you can investigate and assemble most of the evidence yourself so all they have to do is make an arrest.

Does it bother them enough to get other police departments involved? I imagine no one they can arrest is within their jurisdiction...

Usually they will forward the case on to the relevant department as long as you stay involved and apply pressure. There's nothing stopping you from personally contacting the relevant department, either.

(Germany) For example someone used our bank account to buy on Amazon. We found out by checking our bank account. We told Amazon about it, but they only would remove the bank data from that account. No blacklisting of our bank account IBAN or anything else. Then some time later this happened again by the same person with a much larger amount. We discovered it again because we regularly check our bank account. Amazon has no blacklisting or other protection. Again they only removed the account. Then a third time it happened with even a larger amount. Wouldn't we have checked, we'd lost some money. And obviously we would not like to play that game the next 20 years - because let's name it, someone stole from our bank account and Amazon didn't prevent it but helped although told about it.

We made a report online with the police, they had some questions and it never happened again.

This was one of several incidents with Amazon that only involving the police got fixed.

The chances are the seller is a fake as well. They use stolen identity to sell and transfer funds. Police will likely end up with a dead end. You have to trace the funds. FBI would be a better help here. Now how do you get them involved? lol

> Please contact your local FBI office or submit a tip electronically if you have information about: [...] Financial crimes that involve fraud, especially corporate fraud, mortgage fraud, or other investment fraud schemes where significant dollar losses have occurred, including those impacting you or your place of work

https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us

I've heard that the FBI will definitely get involved if it falls into their investigation categories. Also, it can never hurt to call and ask anyway.

Edit: Mail fraud is specifically listed on this page relating to organized crime: https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/organized-crime

What I would be afraid of is if these folks work in groups and they hear about the one guy who dared to go after them. Then you might get one of them arrested but your life might be under threat from a dozen others. Is it really worth it?

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