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Wowfunhappy

But when you use Amazon you agree to binding arbitration...

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You are not suing Amazon but rather the person who defrauded you. You have no agreement with him/her.

... you're going to travel to another state for this purpose?

You would need to file in Federal court.

Claim must be over $75k for federal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_claims_court#United_Stat...

The place the suitor lives is a perfectly fine venue... make the fraudster travel.

If they fail to show to court and/or lose, your state doesn't have much recourse or ability to rectify the situation, right?

I'm not any kind of lawyer but my guess is you could get a default judgement and then employ some sort of bounty hunter to attempt to collect on them.

As a lawyer, default judgment for sure, but no one is sending out bounty hunters for small claims court. In fact, the courts tend to not get involved at all. You, the plaintiff, would be given the means to prove the judgment has been entered, but then it's kind of up to you to have it enforced. Luckily, you can generally count on the assistance of a Sheriff's office, but often the approach is some sort of wage garnishment (with a number of restrictions), bank levy (also with a number of restrictions), or real estate liens.

Collecting on these sort of judgments can be difficult, time consuming, and frustrating.

Wouldn't a default judgement show up when they try to rent something or buy something on credit? I mean if nothing else, at least their life would be a little less comfortable.

Is $2900 even eligible for small claims? Seems like marginally yes, depending on the state. Looks like the photographer is based out of CA and their limit is $7500. FL is $5000. WA is $10,000. Go figure.

> Collecting on these sort of judgments can be difficult, time consuming, and frustrating.

Definitely, and it's quite possible at the end of the day the fraudster doesn't have significant assets to recover. Still, might be worth trying it for $2900 or more, depending on how you value your time.

Yeah, you can small claims any amount... but people usually won't file below cost of filing (around $80 in FL)

> it's quite possible at the end of the day the fraudster doesn't have significant assets to recover.

It's possible they still have the camera, if they weren't just scoring goods for resale.

Does that work for small claims?

It doesn't seem right, you could definitely abuse it to make someone's life miserable.

In the EU, it's now acceptable to file small claims cases in your home country even if the other party is located in another EU country. Most of the work is done via letter and if it gets to a hearing, it will be based on the evidence submitted by both parties.

Most cases are clear cut so the ruling is straightforward. Doesn't mean you'll actually get compensated. However, you can apply to get it enforced by a sheriff I believe.

There's been at least some effort in Congress to reign in the overuse of binding arbitration [1]. It only covers employment, consumer, antitrust, or civil rights disputes, so probably would not help in a dispute between an Amazon seller and Amazon. Still, it at least shows some in government realize forced arbitration agreements are getting out of hand.

That passed the House, but almost certainly will die in the Senate considering that in the House it only had 2 Republicans vote for it and 183 against it (14 not voting). Democrats were 223 for, 2 against, 9 not voting.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1423

But wouldn't this become an issue between the seller and the buyer, if Amazon is "just adhering" to what is stipulated in the contract?

To me this sounds like Amazon is saying "this is too complicated for us, and we don't see how to deal with it, because we don't know who's telling the truth". Like "If you've got a problem and a case, go to the police; not against us, but against the buyer".

Hmm, my first thought is: contacting a buyer outside of Amazon is against Amazon's TOS.

But if the author isn't interested in using Amazon after this incident, Amazon's TOS don't matter much.

I'd be interested to hear from someone with a bit more legal knowledge how this might go. It's a good thought for sure.

Why would he contact the buyer outside of Amazon? He would go to the police to point out his issue with the buyer, there's absolutely no need to contact him outside of Amazon.

I'd rather think that Amazon would be forthcoming in assisting any demands an investigation would make, like provide all the information regarding the seller and buyer on this issue to the police.

Sure, it would be nice if Amazon would withhold the money from the buyer until it is proven that the seller has obtained the item, but how does this get proven?

> Why would he contact the buyer outside of Amazon?

You can't sue the buyer by serving Amazon.

Got a good laugh out of "He would go to the police to" and "provide all the information regarding the seller and buyer on this issue to the police"

Thanks for that.

Ahh so parent comment wasn't sarcasm. Welp. Poe's law strikes again.

This is not a case where the police would be helpful, at least in the US. The police in the US generally will defer financial disputes to the courts.

They also, in my experience, defer dealing with theft to insurance companies.

Yep. One time I tracked down a stolen iPhone on Craigslist. The police were impressed I had the serial number, the original box, the receipt, and the photo showed the email address the iPhone was locked to.

They gave the guy a call, he answered with "no hablo inglés" so they hung up and told me, "Sorry, nothing we can do."

Amazon takes the position that this counts as "soliciting payments from buyers outside of Amazon", which is prohibited by the ToS.

See https://www.facebook.com/lalawgroup/posts/1719796444820559

My understanding is they sued the customer, Amazon stepped in to defend them, and they got a judgement against Amazon. But Amazon suspended their account in the meantime.

> But Amazon suspended their account in the meantime.

...which wouldn't matter in this case, because the seller isn't going to use Amazon again anyway after this experience.

Linked post says:

> Nonetheless, the court found that Amazon was at fault, and liable for the item, and ordered a judgment in favor of plaintiff against Amazon.

So basically sounds like the seller recovered their money.

For the life of me, I cannot understand how is it not illegal to essentially try to subvert the court system by punishing the customer/seller for using it. If I worked into he judiciary, I would be very irate at Amazon trying to establish their own law.

Why not take the buyer to small claims? Or at least, have a lawyer draft them a nice letter.

How? All they have from Amazon is a last initial.

And an address. That's probably enough.

https://www.whitepages.com/reverse-address

Could just be a reshipper (or whatever they're called) address which then goes to the actual address out of the country?

So travel to the jurisdiction of the buyer and file a small claims? How much time and money are you willing to spend?

A letter costs a couple hundred bucks at most. A state with a good attorney general might do it for free. The statistics are in your favor that you'd get your camera or your money just by sending a friendly letter on the right letterhead.

But even then, I'd take a day trip to Florida for $2905.99. Heck, this is a great time of the year to go, and I usually don't make any money when I go there.

OP should go through arbitration and blog the process/result.

Presumably there's an NDA involved.

TOS likely also stipulate an NDA

In california you can opt-out of binding arbitration.

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