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Comment by jjoonathan | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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