Amazon Charges Couple More Than $1,000 to Ship Paper Plates
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I'm glad this one in this case was supposedly dismissed (though I doubt they haven't reapplied with a new name... or even just held multiple seller accounts to begin with.
Even if it is fulfilled by Amazon, even that doesn't guarantee it's not counterfeit. I can order a pallets of counterfeit items from Alibaba and ship them off to Amazon to fulfill (for a fee) so that I can qualify as a Prime shipper.
I used to sell a lot of (legit) things on Amazon (a $250K/yr revenue pace) but Amazon raised their seller fees which choked my already low margin business; and honestly since that I feel like the amount of scams and counterfeits has skyrocketed because now Amazon has trimmed people's margins so much with their high fees.
Now I hear from some others I know that sell on Amazon about how they will buy from Alibaba, negotiate a bulk rate and then sell it on Amazon. Generally they are almost all fake, but the seller doesn't care, or pleads ignorance. Then there's the shipping scams, which I feel are fairly new, but no less worrying if you're a customer. It's also a bit infuriating if you were/are a seller and people are getting away with this when you're trying to be honest.
I am a very skeptical of this story.
This was a couple of years ago - I ordered replacement computer parts to get a failed laptop up and running for a critical timeline. The parts didn’t arrive so I had to search for them and over pay locally. Amazon issued a full refund and told me to keep the parts since they were already in transit.
Not sure if the story would be the same if the items were not sold by Amazon directly, but instead via the marketplace.
They don't really have to do anything. I have no power to compel any action from them and I live in the US so it's not like I can expect the government to enforce the rules either unless Amazon starts pissing off other rich people or starts hurting a whole lot of people a whole lot of times.
My only real recourse is to stop purchasing items from Amazon which stops future problems but doesn't do anything to fix what already occurred.
Between actions like this and increasing prevalance of counterfeit items on Amazon an increasing number of people in my social circle are limiting their purchases on Amazon to commodities like toilet paper and buying anything else where quality or timeliness matter in other stores/websites
Why don't you just buy this at the store in town? It's cheaper and probably takes less time to just throw that in your cart while at the store anyway. How much time do you save by buying that online?
If a market shows up in the development near my building then I don't know if I'd even get those commodities from Amazon anymore
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
They may be technically and legally correct, but a reasonable person would not assume that paying extra for 2 day shipping still meant you'd get your items in 7 days and Amazon knows it.
Additionally the Amazon order page told me I would receive my item in 2 days from when I placed the order so it's not like I ordered it when they we're telling me it would be a week.
I agree, Amazon are usually happy to write off losses of ~$20 as a CODB, but it sounds like this is far beyond that.
I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't test ordered and seen the charges with my own eyes.
Edit: go to https://www.amazon.com/Scalpmaster-Shampoo-Brush-Purple-Coun.... Place a 1-click order. Verify for yourself.
I got a generic response from support about sellers setting their own prices. I do not know if the "concern team" will actually look into this or get back to me but my question is being sent to them.
I will no longer be using 1-click ordering until I know this issue is resolved.
This seems at best a very bad bug / loophole for sellers to exploit or at worst a deceptive scam to steal from people. I hope Amazon takes this seriously and fixes it.
---
Me: I placed a 1Click order and was charged more than the advertised price.
Prashant: Hi, I’m Prashant, I’ll be glad to help you from here
Prashant: May I've the last four digits of the order ID?
Me: 5844 For the Scalpmaster Shampoo Brush
Prashant: I see the item is being sold and shipped by a third party seller HEHENE who is charging
Me: The listing said “$0.01 & FREE Shipping” but I was charged $9.81
Prashant: $9.80 as shipping and handling.
Me: But the listing says “FREE Shipping” specifically
Prashant: Let me quickly check this for you.
Prashant: In this case, what best we can do is to refund the shipping and charges once the item is delivered.
Me: Ok, because I feel like this is false advertising. I clicked the “buy with one click” button expecting to be charged exactly what was shown (“$0.01 & FREE Shipping) but I was not.
Me: So you’re saying I should file a complaint once it shows up?
Prashant: I certainly understand your concern.
Prashant: You just need to contact us here and we will refund the shipping charges.
Me: Haven’t I just contacted you?
Prashant: We can refund the amount once the item is delivered.
AMZ better cut this nonsense out right quick. It's annoying.
On a side note, I also dislike how for some items they want to put you on a recurring order. Almost did that a couple of times --and now I'm careful when clicking to read the button.
These things are very customer unfriendly.
So in the "other sellers" section with seemingly more normal prices, <<$1.01 + Free Shipping Sold by: ATammy>> they have the same effect. Huge 8-10 shipping charges once you continue to checkout, but still not visible in the cart.
What a scam!
The alternative is to have a slowly growing public understanding that dealing with them is equivalent to gambling. If they're happy with that, then OK.
I guess some people don't pay attention to the charge.
I've never seen multiple hundreds of dollars or more -- Amazon really should have some reasonable cap.
I'd be surprised if Amazon didn't show the exorbitant shipping fee to the person in this article, she probably wasn't paying attention and just clicked through assuming that it was going to be the usual Prime $5.99 next day shipping upcharge or similar.
The story described in the article would not have happened if our payment methods were all "push"-based. E.g. if you want to protect buyer and seller, a protocol could look like this:
1. select items to buy
2. send money to a trusted 3rd party (e.g. amazon)
3. the vendor ships the items or you can claim back your money in a predefined time frame
This could even be done without a trusted third party if the used money was programmable [1].
[0] having grown up in Germany where cash and debit cards are the main payment methods (and knowing much securer systems), finding out about this was quite a shock back then
I've discovered deeper in the comments that using 1-click to purchase allows for sellers to add shipping fees later that do not appear to the purchaser unless they check their order history (It says shipping is FREE on the product page but this is not actually the case). I've never used 1-click so this is why I haven't experienced this problem before.
If you have to make a conscious decision to transfer money first before they ship anything I guess you would notice that $1000 for some plates is a bit much.
A good example for this is paypal (even though I don't like them as a middleman): whenever I pay something using it I am redirected to their website and am shown what I will pay to whom in return for what and money only leaves my account if I confirm the transfer.
> 1-click to purchase
Well, 1-click buying is an anti-feature for me: it promotes impulsive, non-batched and probably quite often unnecessary buying and makes the whole process less transparent (what lead to this incident).
jeff@amazon.com
Amazon's response was: "With sellers on Amazon, we do allow them to sell their products for the price they feel is fair."
Not the case for amazon selling directly, though.
Does Amazon actually take action based on an easily manipulated screenshot?
I very much doubt that the vendor was able to slip these charges by invisibly. Seems more likely the customer simply did not read the order screen before hitting OK.
I don’t enjoy the experience of shopping in a marketplace that is full of scammers and fraud.
I wish Amazon understood that.
"Person A does a ton of shopping online, you'll never believe what happened to them!"
If local news quality bothers you, be more bothered that the person who did the translation almost certainly pulls minimum wage, while the slightly more notable person reading the same thing negotiated a significant contract. I used to write these for $9.50/hour in 2005, for a producer pulling about $13, while the anchor reading them and doing approximately nothing else was arguing over $5 million in their renewal. And the gutting of local hadn’t even started yet. Now most shops can’t even afford photographers and have their reporters shoot their own stories, probably close to minimum wage themselves if they’re fresh from J school.
You think you’re going to get Peter Baker quality reporting in that scenario? You think that newsroom is empowered to develop source relationships and produce reporting that effects social change? They’re covering a shipping overcharge in an investigative feature, for crying out loud. The stylistic technique is far from why local news is ridiculous, and that’s a very shallow assessment.
There’s a clear path to fixing local news but the market won’t permit it, on account of it being a market, not to mention the whole battalion of news directors terrified of change and wondering why their 1994 Eyewitness News rundowns don’t work any more, all the while sweating about how much more the only marketable face is going to ask for when the next book comes out. A lot of it is self-inflicted, but a lot isn’t. But don’t worry, it’ll die. The aforementioned anchor reminded me of this when I was reconsidering the industry again. He now does real estate and begged me not to go back.